Happy New Year everybody!
I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I’m so relieved that 2010 is behind me. Personally, it was a rough year and I sure hope that this new year has some nicer surprises in store for us all!
So in case you didn’t know, I went home for the holidays. Home being my place of birth: the sleepy hollow of Bulawayo, in Zimbabaloo. (That’s the new official name, by the way. Write it down.) I’ve not been back over Christmas for a number of years now, and normally miss the party bus mass exodus of Zimbos heading home for the holidays. This results in missing special drinking time with friends from long, long ago. There are a number of insanely awesome parties that take place (I know, right?), and I usually get to read about them over social networking channels, resulting in my achieving a non-Zen-like state of loser-dom. It’s vicious.
Sista Bliss and I booked our tickets on a relatively new, low-cost (read dodgy & suspicious) airline called Kumba, operated by Air Namibia. We overnighted in Jozi with family & flew into Bulawayo on a sunshiny Tuesday. Or was it a Thursday? I forget, mashed potato brains as a result of holiday-mode – nevertheless, unimportant. We flew in, it was awesome, The End. Here’s what we arrived to:
A rocking metropolis, you’ll agree?
Suffice to say that 10 days with our family consisted of a massive amount of bikini-time, good food and much needed rest. And the occasional scream through the house each day at a staggeringly earlier than normal time, “Its GIN O’CLOCK baby!”, culminating in a keen gathering at my dad’s bar.
Christmas Day was no different. However, waking up to a very cheeky power cut at 7am and a mountain of food to cook didn’t do much to encourage our loving Christmas spirits; we bundled begrudgingly into the car and sped off to church in the hopes that whilst we were away giving thanks for all our blessings, the electricity fairies would magically come in, wave their ZESA wands, and all would be well again. Yeah… not so much. We had to move to Plan B, which came in the form of a Weber kettle braai and shoved the turkey and lamb in there for a few hours in the hopes that we could at least eat some meat with our cranberry jelly and mint sauce. The power eventually came back on at 2pm, and we were able to furiously rattle the side dishes together, and enjoyed a wonderful, truly African Christmas lunch.
My mum bashed out a complete cracker of a festive punch, and I managed to smuggle the recipe out of the country to bring back and share with you all! I’m calling it Di’s Cherry Blossom Sherbet. You’re welcome!
What you’ll need: (serves 6)
4 Cherry Blossom tea bags
2 Rooibos tea bags
2 liters of water (you can substitute 1L of water for champagne at the last minute if you’re that way inclined)
100ml red berry juice
Juice of 1 lemon
Lots of ice
To garnish: sprigs of mint & miniature rose blossoms
And then…
Boil the water & allow the tea bags to steep for about 10 minutes. Discard the tea bags and allow the tea to reach room temperature – this can be done the day before. Add the remaining ingredients just before your guests arrive & decant into a large jug or punch bowl.
After an incredible holiday with our family, Sista Bliss and I reluctantly began the perilous trip home – it consisted of a delay of epic proportions on the first leg of our journey; our plane to Johannesburg had technical problems (read hung-over technicians) and we eventually departed Bulawayo 3 ½ hours behind schedule, resulting in our missing our connecting flights to Cape Town. Being the silly season, there were no available seats left on any other flights that evening, and we had to again call upon our awesome family to put us up for the night until we could get back to the airport at 5am the next morning to be put on standby. Here’s a snapshot of Sista Bliss and I two hours into aforementioned delay:
All smiles, see? I unfortunately cannot show you smiles on the ass-end of our journey. They simply did not exist. All I know is, by default 2011 is going to be a much happier year, I’m sure of it!
Chef Privé 