So how do we track back in time to find the origins, the stories of how our favorite foods began? Who put fortunes in cookies and tomato sauce on spaghetti? Food pairings and cultural dishes have a long history. From spice trades, to climate regions, culinary history continues to evolve. Natural food traditions complement…
Tag: ideas
Educational Food Topics: Mind-Fuel Learning with young South African students
Our future is bright! When I got the opportunity to help design and facilitate environmental education lessons around various food topics with students around the Western Cape-I was amazed by what these fresh young minds are thinking. Two different workshops hosted by the City of Cape Town’s Youth Environmental Programme YES and Leaders of the Future…
How to Harvest Seaweed: Superfood Nutrition from our Ocean
Edible Sea Vegetable: SeaWeed I confess, my kitchen turns into edible science experiments almost every day. Seaweed is my new ingredient in the kitchen lab. Once you get to know the nutritional facts and the familiar taste of popcorn it has when nori (a type of seaweed) is roasted on the fire, then you’ll definitely give…
Easy Spicy Zesty Sweet Chickpea Salad Recipe
What happens when you juice pineapples, carrots and fresh green serrano chiles? A spunky zesty salad with sweet and spicy flavours can be created to fuel you through the day. Last week, we bought lots of great farm produce from the City Bowl Market. Back at home, I put pineapple and carrots and threw…
Real Food Foraging in our Urban edible landscapes.
Real food foraging is taking Freetarian tactics to a whole other edible landscape. It’s not about rummaging through the grocery store’s dump site or scrapping bubblegum off the concrete. Real food foraging is a learned art: It bridges culinary knowledge, environmental awareness and plant/fungus identification to your own edible advantage. Growing up with a Greek…
Recipe: How to Make Spring Roll-Nori Wraps
This Nori (seaweed) wrap recipe is an alternative to spring rolls. It’s perfect for getting a balance of essential vitamins into your diet. It’s also delicious and beautiful to share at picnics and parties. It pleases: vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and my dad who likes to live on garlic and lamb chops will even chow these…
Urban foraging and making Mulberry Tart
Growing up, we used to pick wild mulberries. The dark mulberries ripened to their juicy capacity and fell on the pavement, painting the sidewalks purple. This was nature’s graffiti and we were young urban foragers. Just below Chicago’s purple EL line, we thought the forest preserve was our Jungle Book fantasy and we ate from…
Scream for Ice Cream at Breakfast: Banana. Strawberry & Pecan Recipe-Egg and Dairy-free
Who said you can’t eat ice cream for breakfast? I don’t have a Vitamix. I don’t have an Oscar. But I can still make easy raw food creations with what I have. I’m using the trusty MegaMix Juicer. During the days tofu was all the hype, Mom would add frozen bananas to our morning tofu…
Share. Cook. Love: The Cook Book
Our story began 2005, Feb 14th. Durban, South Africa. A Surfer met a Gypsy at Capoeira class. It was a Monday, after the first day of our third year at University. 7 years later, in the province where it all began, we told everyone we loved to join us for a festival of families, a…
A Durban Curry Bunny Chow Heat Feast in Cape Town
Climate change and Durban curry? What do they have in common? It’s the only meal that will cool you down when a sub-tropical heatwave rolls through Cape Town. A humid blanket covered the the whole city. To survive the heat, we consumed the heat. We invited our friends and a self-proclaimed Durban curry chef to…
To Cook or Dehydrate: Raw Food Recipes and Creativity
I just learned how to harvest Aloe Ferox from the ‘cook’ book Rawlicious-Recipes for Radiant Health. It’s a recipe book that encourages you to make colourful and vibrant food by encouraging you to put aloe in your smoothies, have sprouts as a kitchen staple, and make edible flower salads that look like birthday confetti. Who…
The Search for Cape Town’s Best Gatsby Sandwich
Once upon a time there was the Gatsby Sandwich. Related to its American cousin, Hoagie. Gatsby is South African, from the Cape Flats, and is the ultimate meal you can carry like a newborn baby, it’s as heavy as one too, crammed with a variety of ingredients and most commonly accompanied with chips stuffed inside. The Gatsby…
World Nutella Day
Feb. 5th is World Nutella Day and it’s a surprise that I missed it. I had a love affair with Nutella in 2003 and it lasted til 2005. During that time I was the main author of “How to incorporate Nutella into 3 meals a day” the sub-title should have been “how to gain…
Fool-proof Crepes
For my birthday this year, my ‘sweet as sugarcane’ man made us a crepe breakfast. His speciality in the kitchen ranges from delicious pasta dishes, creative braai ‘BBQ’ fish marinades, and his exceptional skill to flipping crepes with ‘kitchen ninja zen’ style. There is no need for a spatula when he is around so I…
Guacamole on Toast
Fresh vital goodness on toast, for breakfast, for a snack, appetizer, or just because it’s avocado season-Guacamole toast has been born. Or is it the lazy way of getting all the pungent delicious flavours into one bite without cleaning a food processor or pestle and mortar? Well if you have a cutting board and a…
Coconut Milk Borscht with Drunken Rice Noodles
Quite possibly the most delicious comfort soup on the planet. If soup is as old as the history of cooking, then this one surely makes history. Why? Cause we’re marrying Thai and Eastern European flavors into one incredibly colorful noodle dish, this ain’t your everyday ramen, folks. Rice noodles and beets get dunked and drunk…
The Perfect Soft-Boiled Egg
Is the perfect boiled egg done in 3, minutes, 4 minutes, 4 and a half? What if the egg is extra-large, or has been refrigerated? The beauty of the perfect boiled egg is that you develop your own quirky habits of ‘knowing’ when it is ready to the consistency you enjoy dunking freshly…
Amatungulu Num Num Jam (Carissa-Natal Plum)
Carissa, also known as the Natal Plum, Num Num, Noem-Noem, or Amatungulu in our household was found growing just steps outside our house in Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa. My boyfriend Chris grew up with his grandfather making this jam out of the Carissa fruit that grows in Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal. So when we saw…
Food Language Speaks Up!
Food and communication is a necessity for all of us and this blog is a celebration of variety, sharing of ideas, cultures and the language of food which ultimately connects us all. The food that will be and has been created in my kitchen and friend’s kitchens will be spoken about in this blog, as…
The Culinary Linguist 