Lentils

“If you need a photo for the day, I can send you what I took in the park” – this is what Jess offered me a few moments ago. We’re in dire straits people. Not because Jess takes bad photos (she actually takes pretty good ones) but because I tried to outsource the task today. This, after being cocky about February and writing in the morning. How the mighty have fallen on the 2nd. Here I am, again, writing after bedtime. Today was quite uneventful: No Clifton; no Beta; no De Waal Park plaque.

After work Jess took Kit to the park so that I could rest (I was hitting a wall). I spent the time making lentils and nachos because we finally had our neighbors over for a glass of wine.

With little else to offer today, I’m going to be so bold as to share a recipe with you. You should know that I probably won’t be sharing any other recipes here because I’m a one-dish-wonder. This is all I’ve got to offer. Okay, that’s not entirely true, I can make a good spinach pie (thanks, Mom) and a lovely and quick roast potato but my only go-to… my go-to is lentils.

This recipe is a version of Buffalo Horn Curry.

Strange name, yes – here’s the back story: My folks have a piece of art depicting a buffalo’s horns that is made from the Axel of a car. A few years ago my dad and uncle decided to mount it on the wall. It is seriously heavy though. Due to its weight, they took them a long time to get right. While they were trying, my mom cooked lentils. Moira was not following a recipe. Moira was winging it (my mom is a very good cook – justifying winging it). My dad and uncle took so long to hang said art work in the garden that the dish reduced and reduced. The potatoes and cumin (a topping that does not feature in the recipe below so don’t get too excited) started to burn; so did the curry. My mom about had it.

“For fuck sake’s,” she said, dragging the pot across the hob, away from the heat.

It was around 9pm – way past appropriate dinner time; way past the time she would usually have left the curry cooking.

To this day, there has never been a buffalo horn curry that tasted that good.

Here’s the recipe. It won’t be laid out like a regular recipe, I’ll just tell you what to do:

Cut up on an onion in smallish pieces (smallish because I don’t have the skill to cut it very finely, nor a knife sharp enough. Also, why is it that some onions make your eyes tear up and others don’t?). Get a big pot. Pour some olive oil in. Fry the onions until the pieces are a bit translucent. Crush one glove of garlic. Put that in too. Reduce the heat a little as apparently garlic can burn easily and get bitter (my mom told me this). Pour a tin of coconut milk in the pot. Stir a bit. Then add some medium curry powder – a heaped teaspoon will do. Let that simmer a while (your heat is lower now).

Simmer.

Add a can of tinned chopped tomatoes (my mom says that someone told her that whole tomatoes are much tastier but then you have to chase them around the pot a bit, cutting them into smaller pieces. No one wants to do that. Get the sliced and diced ones). Then you drain a can of lentils (by that I mean you open the can and then pour the liquid out) and throw them in there too. Salt will help now – a pinch or three.

Reduce.

Reduce.

Reduce.

Keep stirring. Keep stirring.

Oh, you needed the bathroom and then came back to your pot? Sorry, the bottom is burnt. Oh, you quickly looked at your phone to answer a WhatsApp. The bottom is burnt now.

All is not lost. Keep stirring.

Reduce it until there’s hardly any liquid left. By now you should’ve probably cooked some rice, too. Sorry that I missed that step but I don’t really know how to cook rice properly. It’s a bit of a hit and miss. Google it – there are some ratios that they advise.

If you miss with the rice, not to worry, you can just eat the lentils on their own – so delicious. Avo is pretty mandatory as a topping – a squeeze of lemons helps – and feta works well, too.

If there is a trick (which there isn’t), it’s to reduce it more than you think you should. It gets taster and taster. Put it in a taco or a wrap. This will feed two people (depending on which people). Yesterday I came home from the park with Kit, and Jess had cooked dinner. I looked in the oven and then went to the courtyard and said, as graciously as I could, “In future, I will need more potatoes”.

Photograph of the day: Not Kit in the Park, by Jess, but a building near Home Affairs in the centre of town. I took this on my cellphone out of my car window after lodging a few marriages. I’ve admired this building’s colours for a while now.

 

 

 

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February

Dear February

Welcome.

You’re a different kind of a month. You’re short, quirky and what Wednesday is to days, you are to months. That is, few can spell you.

I’m fond of January. Kind of have to be because it’s my birth month but, let’s be honest, January can be a bit much – a bit loud. A bit too “new year, new me“.

Listen, February, one thing we know for certain is that you will be different. Some of that change will be beyond your or my control; and some of it I will take responsibility for, starting now …

Here I am, on the 1st, writing in the morning.

Good start, February, good start.

Sitting down in the morning means I get to sleep earlier. It means I get to unwind rather than wind up before I close my eyes. I need that. A few people have mentioned, in comments, and over WhatsApp and email, that they read my daily post the next morning. That means they go to sleep earlier than I do. Unacceptable.

love

Lara

—

Photograph of the day: Look closely, there’s something white hanging from one of the drawers behind Kit. It is probably one of Jess’ socks. Wait, that would mean Jess had any socks left in her pairs. I did an inventory this morning. I could find only one pair. Jess denies any wrongdoing. She says she has not worn any of them. Pathetic attempt to distract from the truth that has now been uncovered: Jess is the one-sock culprit.

 

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Snapping Shrimp

31 days of writing and taking a photograph every day. Thank you for coming here to read about the everyday moments that stand out to me.

Today my wife and I sat and talked with smoothies at Camps Bay Tidal Pool and then we had a swim together. A day date. We haven’t had one in a long time (day or night) and it felt wonderful to connect.

This evening the three of us went to Beta beach and I remembered two of my favorite sounds: The water sliding up the shore and disturbing the shells on the beach, and the clicking you hear when you dive under the sea. I had to Google now to remind myself what the clicking is from. Apparently it’s the snapping shrimp. The next time you swim in the ocean, go under and listen for it.

Photograph of the day: The swell rebounding off the tidal pool wall. I like that it looks a bit like a painting.

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Together

If you need a good painted, I know one (that’s an aside and has very little to do with what I want to write about today but our painted, Victor is so good that I thought I’d just mention it. He’s really good). We’re repainting our bedroom and a few doors and window frames. That means our bedroom was not an option for Kit’s nap time (around midday) nor was the spare room because Jess was consulting from it.

At around quarter to 11 I picked up a sleeping Kit from her car seat and walked her into my friends’ Meg and Reka’s garden, up the spiral staircase, down their passage and then slowly placed her in Kagiso’s cot (he’s still on two naps so the timing worked). I then shut the door, lay down on the couch and read my book on Kindle, resisting Instagram and my email, hoping that sleep would find me too. I woke a little before Kit and carried on reading.

When Kit stirred close to two o’clock, I picked her up, chatted to Reka for a few minutes, and then left their house.

In the first months’ of Kit’s and Kagiso’s lives, we didn’t really reap the benefit of our children being born two weeks apart. Not because we didn’t want to. I think we didn’t really have the capacity for it yet. But, now, coming out of the first year, suddenly we do. Suddenly they’re stealing each other’s sippy cups and taking handfuls of the same penne bolognaise on the beach and playing tag-team with cots and demanding more double cream yoghurt at the same dining room table and bathing together and listening to Reka read Where’s Spot. And it’s not so much about Kit and Kagiso being together (that’s really lovely and helluva cute to see their small interactions – even if when it involves, as it did today, a tug of war over the umbrella pole).

It’s for us.

Finally, we get to do some of it together.

Photography of the day: Kit on Clifton 4th at 7pm on a Monday. A bit of alright.

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Not much to report today other than these small happenings:

* Jess had a really big bug on her forehead at Kirstenbosch. I said as much and reached out to get it – she panicked, shook head quite violently, all the while saying, in a rather high pitched voice, I don’t know if you’re joking or not. I was not.

* I put in a lot of effort into making a picnic for us to take to Kirstenbosch. We had chosen a spot on the grass by the time I realized I had left it behind. Our friend Kerry said she’d run down to get it. But we had to explain that it was not in the car – it was on the kitchen counter. I needed a moment to get over it, and then Kit and I made our way slowly (because Kit walked some of the route) back to Vida (we had already made one stop there for a coffee and a croissant).

* Kerry and her Gemma (just shy of six months’ old) came with us to Kirstenbosch. When I was finally back from Vida with the goods (a toasted zaam, banana bread and mango strips), we spoke a little about how with some friends – even close ones – you never really know what’s going on in their lives because they won’t tell you. Kerry said that even when she tells herself she’s not going to tell anyone (for the same reason everyone tells themselves this – fear of vulnerability, judgment … to try keep up with appearances), she doesn’t manage it. One minute later she’s all, “Do you know what happened to me…”

I adore that about her. In those stories, she tells me, again and again, that it is safe for me to share mine.

* I’m never quite sure which wind is blowing, only that it is. If it is blowing, we mostly bet on Clifton 4th but this afternoon we found a small nook of stillness at Beta – the water so clear and so cold. The first two photographs come from there.

* The third photograph is from our courtyard after the wind had had its way with our bougainvillea for the whole weekend. That sounds oddly sexual but I’m leaving it like that.

 

 

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No frills

,

This morning I held a ceremony for a couple in their lounge. I thought they had cleared their lounge for the ceremony because it was so simple and beautiful, with an arch and views of over Green Point and the sea, but they said that they were still going to get furniture. The bride’s sister pressed record on the camera on the tripod. After the ceremony, the bride’s mom took photographs, which she said she hoped were okay.

There are quite a lot of couples that say they want a no frills wedding. I completely get it that and I’m part of celebrations like that every week. This couple was different though. They had frills but only the exact frills they considered important: The arch, the flowers, the dress, the veil and linen suit. And then they had the essentials: the venue (their first home together), their family, and each other – that most of all.

When I got to my car, Jess had messaged to say that Kit had fallen and that she was okay but that she had a graze on her nose and forehead.

Later, at bath time, I asked Jess, “Were you worried about what I’d say about Kit’s face?”

“No because I was so nice to you about her falling off the bed.”

Photograph of the day: The oak tree above our backyard in the wind. Today the wind made us feel like we had very few options for an afternoon activity. We could go to the Aquarium or to the Aquarium or we could visit the Aquarium.

We decided to go to the Aquarium.

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Feel it but only half way

,

During an elopement ceremony this evening, the bride’s very close friend did a reading by Roy Croft, entitled Love. She read it so beautifully. When I told her this after the ceremony, she said she had to practice for two hours to be able to get through the third paragraph without crying. She said she had practiced it again and again with her husband and he had told her to pause for longer. She told me that when she read it in the ceremony, she could only allow herself to feel the poem half way because otherwise she wouldn’t get through it.

I’ll place the poem below.

Photograph of the day: The Apostles as I left the rocks on Clifton 4th. Over to Roy:

I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am when I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what you have made of yourself,
But for what you are making of me.

I love you for
the part of me that you bring out;
I love you for
putting your hand into my heaped-up heart
And passing over all the foolish, weak things
that you can’t help dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out into the light
All the beautiful things
that no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good,
And more than any fate could have done
To make me happy.

You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.

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The Chronicles of Camps Bay Tidal Pool: Today two young girls were running a restaurant there. Their kitchen: A boulder next to the water. They were at absolute capacity. Spinning. Kit stood and stared, eager to be a part of whatever game they were playing.

Trying to create an “in” for Kit, Jess mentioned to the girls that Kit likes to play with older children. One of the girls said, “But we’re a restaurant”. Clearly Kit, at 14 months, didn’t have a certain ‘it’ factor that the business requires. At one point, between orders, I heard the one girl ask the other, “where is the oven again?”

This restaurant had standards. I know because, A, they had decided on the layout of the kitchen and stuck to it, B, they wouldn’t take on a partner or even a customer that couldn’t talk (sorry, Kit) and, C, they wouldn’t an order for an omelette. This restaurant was fancy. Their menu consisted of sushi (seaweed), something else which I didn’t catch, and chhhocolat (suddenly the restaurant had a French influence here).

When our friend Meg came out of the water with Kagiso, we told her about the restaurant experience. She said, “Speaking of funny things children say, she was walking earlier in the afternoon in Green Point Park and she heard a girl who couldn’t have been much older than say, “Grandma when are you going to give me some real estate”.

It’s about time, Grandma.

Goodnight.

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Two things about today: I drove to Stellenbosch to do a signing (that is the legal side of a marriage) in a bride’s parents’ home. I saw ring boxes on the patio table and asked if they wanted to do a ring exchange. They said yes. I asked if they wanted to do the very short ‘ceremony’ in the garden, which overlooked vineyards. Yes again. Before the questions I had to legally ask, I read one of my favorite poems, called The Present.

The Present
For the present there is just one moon,
though every level pond gives back another.
But the bright disc shining in the black lagoon,
perceived by astrophysicist and lover,
is milliseconds old. And even that light’s
seven minutes older than its source.
And the stars we think we see on moonless nights
are long extinguished. And, of course,
this very moment, as you read this line,
is literally gone before you know it.
Forget the here-and-now. We have no time
but this device of wantonness and wit.
Make me this present then: your hand in mine,
and we’ll live out our lives in it.
The groom explained that he really liked the poem too, especially the part about the light being seven minutes older, because he is a scientist by profession. The bride’s father, who had tears in his eyes, showed me his own wedding ring. He said he had only ever taken it off for a few hours in the decades of their marriage. He said that the ring had cost R200 and that is was plated gold, not the real thing. He stood in his really beautiful garden in his beautiful home, overlooking a vineyard, and he told me that he had discussed changing the ring with his wife (who was standing next to him) but that they decided that it was a good reminder of where they came from. He said it reminded him that he didn’t get married for money or status or what others’ thought.
After the signing, I had a slow lunch at a cafe I stumbled upon where I read through my ceremony for Megan and Hendro and sipped on Rooibos tea. The ceremony went really well. Right near the end of the ceremony, we performed a Celtic Handfasting Ritual, centered around community and family. The groom’s mother came up first with her ribbon and drapped it over Megan and Hendro’s hand, demonstrating that Hendro’s childhood family gave their blessing for their marriage. I then called Megan’s mom up to do the same. Problem – she didn’t have a ribbon. There was a little panic and one ‘runner’ but I said that it was okay, that we’d have to improvise and I started looking around for something that could stand in the ribbon’s stead. And then one gentleman in the back row took off his silver tie and passed it forward. Ingenius. Megan’s mother then came up and placed the tie on the couple’s hand, demonstrating that Megan’s childhood family gave their blessing for the marriage. Lastly, Hendro’s grandmother held a third ribbon symbolizing that Megan and Hendro had forged, as a result of the union and the ceremony, their own family. Megan’s aunt was invited up too, to represent Megan’s grandmother who couldn’t travel from the UK to be at the wedding. They were meant to share a single third ribbon. But another gentleman took off his blue tie and gave it to Megan’s aunt, and so a second ribbon and a second tie were placed over the couple’s hands before the blessing and the tying of the knot.
At the end of the ceremony, Hendro’s mom came to apologise about the ribbon and started to explain what she things happened to the second ribbon but I told her that that was the best part of the ceremony – I told her that the handfasting couldn’t have gone any better. Hendro’s father agreed. While we were talking about the ceremony, a gentleman came to retrieve his blue tie. We untied the knot to loosen and return it. Hendro’s dad then took off his own cream tie and said he’d like to offer his tie as a replacement. Such a beautiful gesture. (Also, the color palette really worked).
Time and time again, I have learned that the best part of ceremonies cannot be planned. That is not to say ceremonies shouldn’t be planned – they absolutely should be. I mean only that you should leave room for the spontaneous – you should be familiar enough with your plan to let it go for a minute or two to allow some magic in, and then pick it back up when needed.
Photograph of the night (low light and on my phone): Yesterday I wrote about the fact that I was having a hard day but not what caused it. Kit fell off the bed in the early ours of Sunday morning. I woke to the sound of her hitting the floor. I got a big fright, seeing her on the floor, crying. I searched her for any signs of a bump or damage but there were none. Once I had calmed her a little I carried her downstairs to wake Jess at 3am to help me make sure Kit was okay. She was.
Yesterday was hard because I was really exhausted from the hard night but mostly because I got a really big fright. It shook me. And so, the doorbell aggravated me even more than usual, and so did the barking, and the lack of bread in my Checkers 60 order. And the best possible thing I could do was be kind to myself and have a nap and I did (on my wife’s encouragement).
We will make sure it doesn’t happen again. And by that I mean, we will visit Baby City and put up a bedrail (I didn’t know it was a thing until my friend told me this evening).
Here’s how I found Jess and Kit sleeping this evening when I went to get ready for bed. Aren’t they beautiful.
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Doorbells and pomegranates

No matter how I try to spin the day – to make light of it – it refuses to be described as anything except a hard one – I thought about talking about sparkling water and how much better it is than plain old water or how Jess confessed that there aren’t many of her sock pairs left, though she denies she had anything to do with their absence – but it all feels quite false. The truth is that today my wife rearranged her very busy day so that she could have a few minutes to sit with me on the bed – to talk to me and let me cry. When we were done, she made us sandwiches and then, despite a very long to-do list, I took myself to bed for a nap, next to my sleeping daughter.

I don’t think you’ve come here to only read about the good days. Maybe you’re here to also hear about the tough ones. Maybe it’s okay to admit that I’m exhausted today. It’s okay to tell you that when I ordered Checkers 60 and the bread didn’t arrive (the whole purpose of the order), it felt catastrophic. To know that when the doorbell rang (it is usually unplugged) for the second Checkers 60 order (for the bread again) it infuriated me (the doorbell, not the bread – give me all the bread). Then my dog started barking incessantly on account of the doorbell – doorbell = intruders. Between all this, a number of people tried to call me unsolicited. That’s a good word to describe the day – unsolicited.

Okay, goodnight now. I did take a photograph today – of the courtyard (it didn’t quite work) and of our fruit bowl but really, what do pomegranates have to do with today. Fuck all. It was just a desperate last-minute attempt to maintain writing and a photograph every day, for a year. 23 for 23. Here is that pomegranate, looking a bit smug – more ornament than food. If anyone has any ideas as to what to do with it, please share. Don’t talk to me if your idea is floating it in champagne.

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