As lovely as a long weekend is, it seems to take a week to get your internal calendar back on track. Norm and I had decided to also try to get back on track with living a low carb life again after Easter and on my first day back at work Norm welcomed me home with a delicious low carb dinner. He wrapped chicken breasts in bacon, roasted sweet potatoes and steamed gem squash and baby broccoli. We added cheddar to the gem squash and sprinkled it onto the broccoli to increase the fat content.

On Thursday he baked a pork fillet and mushrooms in teriyaki, roasted broccoli, zucchini and green beans and steamed a gem squash to go with it.

On Wednesday night Norm and I booked to go and see his ex-colleague Mae Sithole perform at Cafe Roux in Cape Town city center. It is our fave music venue. They insist that the audience give the artists silence and the respect that they deserve. I detest people chatting when watching live music.

We arrived at the venue just after 7 as we intended to have dinner there.

I ordered the braised chicken fillet with mushroom sauce and steamed vegetables at R120 and it was really tasty! The chicken was tender, the sauce delicious and plentiful and the vegetables were al dente.

Norm ordered the tagliata: seared beef sirloin with rocket, roasted baby tomatoes, garlic, chilli, toasted pine nuts & parmesan shavings for R145.

We both were really happy with our meals and pleased that there were low carb options available.

Mae came on stage just after 8:30ish. She was supposed to be joined by her brother but he did not make it to Cape Town in time and so Mae brought several friends on stage to play with her instead.

First Mae had a musician called Mapumba who is originally from the DRC come up to join her. Mapumba had a lovely deep voice which sounded wonderful combined with Mae’s.

I found a clip of Mapumba performing to let you experience his voice.

The other artist she brought on with her was a guy called Nick Turner.

Nick and Mae also sounded great together. They sang a few tracks. I’ve posted the only video I can find of Nick performing in English but it has the whole album not just the tracks he did with Mae, so enjoy!

We had a great evening. The last song was one of my favorite songs that Mae does and Mapumba jumped in with a brilliant sort of reggae vibe and they rocked the house! I was almost crippled from dancing but it was worth all the knee pain! I do love this song.

In my last few blogs I have been discussing the dramas with getting refunded for Sam Smith’s cancelled concert and my refund finally came through this week. I saw that Sam also cancelled his appearance at the Billboard Awards so his injury must be quite serious. I hope he recovers with no permanent damage.

Speaking of damage, after more than a year of intermittent droughts in South Africa, several areas have been subjected to flooding. News24 reported: “The death toll in KwaZulu-Natal as a result of heavy rains and flooding this week has risen to 70, acting Premier Sihle Zikalala announced on Thursday morning.

At a media briefing on Thursday, Zikalala began by thanking government, communities and all those who have offered support in the aftermath of the devastating floods.”

Beaufort West has been suffering dreadfully due to ongoing drought and had a bit of relief this week with heavy rainfall, however it is not enough to break the drought or fill the dams to sufficient levels.

Climate change is having a severe effect globally, if only our governments gave a damn.

Speaking of ineffective governing, we woke to another service delivery protest in Hout Bay on Friday morning.

My drive to work was through the area protesting but this time the police were on site managing the commuter’s safe passage through. The residents in Mitchell’s Plain were not as lucky. “A protest in the Siqalo informal settlement in Mitchells Plain turned violent on Friday morning and roads had to be closed, said the City of Cape Town’s law enforcement spokesperson Wayne Dyason.

Significant damage to electrical infrastracture was done. One transformer, two distribution kiosks and one pole feeder cable were set alight and destroyed.”

We heard that commuters were being pulled from their cars by the protestors.

Approximately 150 of the Hout Bay protestors returned to the township and marched to Dontse Yahke and started staking out areas of land in the environmentally protected area. The land removal authority had to go to court to get authorization to remove any structures built but I had heard that there were no shacks built, only marked out in preparation for building. The saga is ongoing around this area.

In addition to the protests, there were several busses set alight in Cape Town. A golden arrow bus was set alight as well as a MyCiTi bus that was heading into the city centre on Nelson Mandela Boulevard also caught fire. As with the train fires mentioned in a previous blog, it is the taxi services who stand to benefit the most from these situations as it results in more passengers for them if the other means of public transport are put out of commission.

SA has an election coming up very soon. I read this week that out of the top 20 best-performing municipalities in SA, 15 are run by the DA. This is according to Good Governance Africa’s 2019 ranking of municipal performance.

I hope the DA retain power in the Western Cape, as they seem to be far less corrupt than the ANC. Of course, that bar is not set very high!

On Friday evening Norm attended a charity dinner at the British Consulate’s residence so I was flying solo as it was a Rugby event and was R1000 a ticket so I decided to give it a miss.

For my dinner I ordered sushi from K1 in Hout Bay. I tried to keep my choices to items with minimal rice but failed somewhat, but at least it wasn’t all rice filled choices. I had a few new choices, one was called Butterfly, this was salmon wrapped around steamed prawns and cucumber. I also had Salmon cocktail which I did not expect to contain rice based on the picture on the menu but was basically a rice ball topped with a sliver of salmon. I will have Butterfly again but not the Salmon cocktail. I also had my usual crab salad and salmon roses.

I enjoyed it very much, rice included.

On Saturday we were up early, Norm was on a business call and I sat outside with the pups waiting for him. My wrap was a gift from Josh and the necklace was a gift from his Mom Jackie. They match perfectly don’t you think? #DressedByDavidsons

We went on a road trip to the Vintage Ideas Market held at the Simondium Country Lodge near Paarl.

Our friends Mel and Cyril had a stall there for their Potted Up business. They up-cycle containers found in waste management facilities or bought from charity shops or garage sales, thereby turning other people’s discarded items into beautiful water wise pieces of art for decorating your home or garden.

There were so many stunning items to choose from that I struggled to choose just one, but I finally decided on this one.

I absolutely adore it! It looks lovely on my porch with my other pots.

We ran into my friend Bronwyn who was there with her sister in laws and some other friends and we all found a cool spot on the veranda and settled in with a drink.

We were starving and so we ordered lunch. Norm and I derailed on the low carb plan and had pulled pork sandwiches with chips. I only ate half my roll if that gives me any credit in the willpower department? No? Oh well, it was yummy!

We spent several hours there chatting and drinking and having a laugh, all in all a lovely afternoon! We finally left about 4:30 and headed home.

We saw the Franschhoek wine tram tootling along next to us while driving home.

That is still on our to do list! It looks like so much fun.

We took well over two hours to get home as there were three major traffic jams on our journey home. One was due to a truck rolling over.

We saw three car crashes on our route, but the other two were not impacting traffic, so we were unsure what caused the other traffic jams but the roads around Cape Town were all chocka!

We had a quiet night in as I was knackered from the heat (and the 3 vodkas I consumed on the veranda!)

We watched the end of series 3 of Outlander and there are only 3 series available on SA Netflix and I’m so upset it’s over! I loved it. I hope the remaining season becomes available here.

We started watching a new series called Shadowhunters which is like a modern version of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with more attractive actors and a bit of technology thrown in. I’m enjoying it so far even though it is a wee bit cheesy. But I love anything with demons, vampires or angels in it.

Today I had drum circle. It was our first circle held at Gerri’s new house in Marina da Gama. I am directionally challenged and was worried about finding it but I had no issues getting there. Gerri’s new home is so lovely!

We had a soul nourishing day drumming on the communal drum.

We even learned a new song. It is a tricky one, but the chorus is easy.

After drumming I was ravenous and Norm was working so I popped into Allegria Cafe in Hout Bay for an omelette. It had Emmental cheese, bacon and caramelized onions.

It was just what I needed and was high fat and low carb. It was cooked perfectly.

Tonight we chose Indian Oven for a takeaway as they do not use flour in their sauces and they do cauliflower rice. I ordered prawn curry and Norm and I shared saag paneer and cauliflower rice.

It looks lovely but it wasn’t. The prawns tasted quite rubbery, like they thawed frozen prawns in the microwave. The spinach had way too much pepper. It was rather disappointing and I give it 2 Kitten Stars.

We have a few fun things on our calendar over the next few months. We are attending the opera iCapuleti e I Montecchi in May and we also booked to see Kinky Boots at The Fugard in June.

It is Josh’s birthday as well as Caitlin’s birthday in May. Cait’s is on the same day as Mother’s Day and Lily is coming down for a wedding the following weekend so we will all go out for dinner to celebrate then. Norm also booked for me to fly to George to see Trevor as it is Trevor’s birthday in June.

I love having things to look forward to. It gets me through the monotony of every day life.

Until next time, Kisses from the Kitten xoxoxo