77. Biltong.

I found myself, a few years ago, in charge of the computer systems at a bookshop. Every now and then, I would get a desperate phonecall on a Sunday morning or a Tuesday evening; “Help! Help! The system has crashed, oh wise and mighty computer guy.”

The dress code was a little dodgy.

29. More gourmet cooking with 23thorns.

South Africa has no national cuisine. This sort of makes sense, because we don’t really have a national culture. We have lots of them. We all know what a bunny chow is. But if you asked us, we would tell you it was Indian food. We all know what Bobotie is. But that’s Cape Malay food. There’s Melktert. But that’s Afrikaans. We know what a smiley is. But it can’t be part of your national cuisine if no-one you know can bear to look it in the eye, let alone eat it.

Restaurants serving the traditional South African “smiley” are required to have a qualified trauma councillor on their staff.

Gourmet Cooking With 23thorns

I must confess to being a little taken aback. In my last post, I mentioned two minute noodles. Without any explanation. Sorry.

I try to be careful about this. If I am using words or concepts that I know are uniquely South African, I try my best to translate or explain. If that’s too tricky, I just avoid them.

This is why you will never read my absolutely fantastic post about the time I took 2kg of kudu biltong to a friend’s braai by mistake. He had asked me to bring the wors, and thinking he meant droewors, I decided to go for biltong instead. He actually meant boerewors. It was hilarious. We still laugh about it today. Luckily his wife had made enough sosaties to sink a battleship, and there was pap, so the braai turned out OK.