WHY BOTHER?

My kitchen

I'm under no illusion that the world needs another food blog. I'm a home cook and not a trained chef nor am I a professional writer. Apart from Neil's gorgeous photographs, mine are taken with an iPad. I document our daily family kitchen and my offerings are purely amateur. Some recipes I make up, others come from favourite chefs and cooks and it's all a bit hit and miss. I often burn food as the boys will testify.

I love pottering around the kitchen and the garden and after many years spent either in the corporate world or our family business, I am grateful to be able to do this. It really is an amazing privilege and I try to do the best job I can.  Ever the A-Type.

Apart from my family, what inspires me most is the excellent produce that comes from our surrounding countryside. I really enjoy knowing who and how our food is produced. Food with a face, so to speak.  We have trout from the Berg just up our road, lamb from our neighbouring farm and excellent beef from the surrounding valleys. There are many organic market gardens, our free range eggs make a friends son's pocket money, our flour is ground in Champagne Valley, the local cheeseries are world class and the pork is some of the best in the country. The list goes on and on.

I never tire of exploring new producers and markets, finding good food, cooking it and eating it. Having hungry boys to cook for helps too. I'm so impatient for our building work to finish up so that we can start having friends around again for long, lazy lunches on the stoep - we're never happier than sitting around a table with friends and family.

Blogs take quite a bit of time to put together and sometimes I wonder if I should be focusing my energies on something more productive. I'm always up and down about this. I do sometimes wonder why I bother.

After thinking about it a bit I realised that I mainly do it for the joy of it all: I enjoy writing, we love living here in the Midlands and it doesn't all have to make sense.

I also hope the blog can provide a modest shop front and 'test kitchen' to promote (and eulogise about) our excellent local produce. It's about celebrating excellence and trying to live mindfully.

As good as Woolies is, it is not the only source of high quality food. With a small amount of effort on the foraging front,  we can use excellent ingredients to make some outstanding food, enviable anywhere in the world.

By buying more local produce we increase both the local skills base and competition.  The more sustainable our local economies are, the better things will be for all. Not quite Louis Althusser in its theoretical rigorousness but a good argument nevertheless that can make a real difference to communities everywhere.

x

1 Rose Lane,  Rosetta, Kwazulu Natal