Last Sunday it got up to 33 degrees but as I took Saturday off from cooking due to the heat I had a lot of cooking to do. 

I popped a small gammon in the slow cooker. Usually I cook my gammon in coke, brown sugar and pineapple but none of those are allowed with Banting. Instead I coated it in mustard and olive oil and then topped it with vegetable stock and cooked it til tender. I wanted to have it for lunches and snacks.

Norm had bought some lovely hake earlier that week which needed to be cooked so I cut them into pieces, dipped in egg and breaded by rolling in a mix of almond flour and coconut. I steamed mixed veggies and added a bit of coconut cream and curry. I roasted crispy sweet potato wedges in coconut oil to go with.

  
The third meal I cooked on Sunday was to go in the fridge for Monday, I made the family fave Banting cottage pie. I was so glad I only had to heat it as I had another traffic nightmare spending 1.5 hr on a 20 minute trip. I came home and had a swim to cool off, it was so hot again it was 33deg C.

My cottage pie with caulimash and cheese was divine. I made a salad topped with Parmesan shavings and avocado to accompany it.

   
 

Tuesday I got up at 6am to avoid the stop-go traffic jams but got stuck in it on the way home so only got home exhausted at 7pm so we got takeaways from Spiro’s again. We avoided chips and instead of the sweet, sticky ribs I craved chose to go with the chicken kebabs and we shared an order of grilled halloumi with their Greek salad.

I awoke from a dead sleep at 4am due to the heat. I eventually became aware my fan had stopped. At first we thought it was that the electricity had run out but Norm noticed the plugs were on and was kind enough to go down to get my downstairs fan to stand in til we could get a new one but I struggled to get back to sleep and my alarm went off at 6. 

Wednesday again I sat in traffic for hours. At least I have great views.

  

  
Photo credit.

I came up with a new meal, I cooked woollies chorizo and mushrooms in a knob of butter and then removed them from the pan and browned chicken breasts in the leftover spicy oil. I put it all in the oven, but next time I won’t bother precooking the chorizo so much as it will cook enough in the oven. I will just cook it long enough to cook out the oils to brown the chicken. We just served it with red cabbage which I cooked in butter and balsamic til a good crust formed on the bottom of the cast iron pan then added a bit of boiling water to soften the cabbage and get a nice sauce by scraping the bottom.

  

There was another fire, it started in Glencairn then moved to Fish Hoek Wednesday and Thursday.

  

I made a sort of gumbo out of the last of the roast gammon, chorizo, mushrooms and prawns and served it with zucchini spaghetti. It looks a mess but was so tasty! 

  
Friday night Lily and Caitlin had bought tickets for Norm and I to see Rodriguez at the Grand West Arena as a birthday gift. Lily and I snapped a selfie before we left.

  

If you have never heard of him then you must watch the entire documentary Searching For Sugarman. It is a touching, melancholy film and gives insight to why when the crowds yelled ‘we love you’ he yelled back ‘it’s mutual, you gave me a life’ which was such a goosebumps moment.

  

The show was opened by Alice Phoebe Lou. A local Cape Town girl with the delicate face of a fairy and the voice of an angel.

Crowds make me twitch and the show was sold out. There were more drunken Afrikaans people there than I have seen in one place ever. The group next to us were all very drunk and incredibly loud. Several people asked them to keep it down. The girl in the seat directly next to me clapped out of tune and incredibly loudly, you know that loud deep clap that sounds like someone clapped your ears?  Unfortunately she sang every song the same way. She also took a non ending stream of photos and her phone made a loud ching every time it snapped a pic as well as flashed a bright light and she held it with arms extended so it sat right by my ear. She was the only person in the stadium jumping up and down and dancing. It was chilled music not trance FFS.

  

My last nerve snapped when her hands went high and started swaying widely, going all the way right and all the way left which meant they constantly moved across my face. I shoved them hard back in her direction and told her to wind her neck in as she was the most annoying, attention seeking woman in the world.

When she heard my accent she went mental. 

“I’m going to take out a restraining order on you. You don’t even belong in this country, get out, go back to where you belong” and a long, spittle fueled litany of slurred drunken nonsense shouted at me throughout the best song with my back turned to her. I got fed up eventually and said “enough now child shut up”. The people in front of us also asked her to shut up. This was a red flag to a bull. She went crazy, screaming, shouting, cursing. I finally shouted, “enough, shut UP!”

Eventually Norm and Caitlin stood up and moved me down to sit by Lily. 

  

I could still hear her shouting and at one stage she got into another fight with the people in front of her. Caitlin said for a bit the silly cow was crying. Five minutes later she was loudly singing again. By the end her husband had left.

Barring that nonsense we had a great night.

  
We were home very late and starving as we didn’t have time for dinner so we just had some cheese and seed crackers. It was well after 1am when we finally passed out exhausted.

I had to take Pixie to her doggy Chiro in Noordhoek for 9.30 and rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth and dressed and left. I came back and made brunch for us.

  
I made zucchini fritters topped with fried eggs, tomato and avocado, it was delicious.

The girls had gone on the Franshoek Wine Tram tour and then had parties after so were not in for dinner.

  
Norm is so busy dealing with work issues so I was alone but did not want to fall off the Banting wagon due to laziness so I threw together some dinner with what was in the fridge. 

I used the remaining zucchini mixture and made more fritters. I cooked chorizo and prawns in chili and tomato and served it on the fritters.  

We had done a quick shop at Spar and bought a different brand chorizo than Woolies and I wasn’t keen on the new brand. The texture was more like a hot dog than a pepperoni. I like the pepperoni texture the Woolies brand has. This is lovely. 

  
I just chilled at home with the animals, so I rented a film I knew no one else would enjoy. I chose A Walk In The Woods with Robert Redford and Nick Nolte.

  
Nick Nolte looks rough. Like high blood pressure and gout kinda rough. Robert Redford hasn’t aged that well either, all that 1970s sun worshipping messed with a lot of fair skinned people. But he looks like he’s in good physical shape as opposed to Nolte.

It was average at best. It felt too midlife crisis self-indulgent. Don’t bother.

Today I’ve woken to howling wind, we even got a little drizzle last night. It’s pleasantly cool for a change. I’m feeling very lazy but want to go and do a shop. I would like to put a pork roast in the slow cooker for Sunday dinner. But I’ll see if I make it out of the house!