Is everyone eggcited
about the upcoming long weekend (in South Africa our easter weekend is from
Friday 19 April till Monday 22 April)? I do believe we’re in for an eggtr
Winter!!
Hopefully you won’t have an eggcessive
amount of chocolate eggs to bite into … just try and do a bit of eggsercise and you’ll be fine.
If you’re travelling, please don’t eggcelerate over the speed limit – the cops always
have eggsact camera proof, they need to
make eggsamples of speeding
drivers. And don’t try to eggsplain
to them why you were speeding … they may just eggsterminate
your license!
With this issue, I wanted to compile some clever ideas to
decorate your Easter table … and a few EGGCELLENT
‘fake’ egg eating ideas!!!!! That’s just super eggstraordinaire!
Thanks for all the lovely and chatty emails!!! I
always enjoy reading them.
Send me pictures of your Easter tables, your yummy food and
your egg hunts!
A while back I started to chat with Beatrix – we were both
cycling in the gym. She’s part of the Kolping Society (http://www.kolpingjhb.co.za/) (some of
her ancestors). They go to Soweto weekly and teach people to make
candles, etc – for them to resell. Beatrix knows I’m into food.
Inviting the ladies (and 1 gentleman) to Randburg, Beatrix
asked if I would come and show them how to make peanut butter and microwave
jam. A few bags of raw peanuts were brought from Limpopo … They
also wanted to learn how to make quick-ish earrings.
Last week Wednesday I arrived at the Kolping house – my
nerves were a bit shot. 13 Ladies and 1 Gentleman. Tables were
pushed together to form a big square and they all sat around it. There
was no time wasted in diving into making earrings! It was really
impressive … they knew exactly how to use the pliers for the earring hooks
& loops. Some of them make some intricate necklaces (with tiny tiny
beads!) – some made quick easy earrings using denim jeans’ loops.
After a few hours (and me being on my feet the whole time),
I separated them in 2 groups. 1 Group started to cut up pineapples for jam and
prepare seeded grapes for jam too. I have made jam in the oven before …
you need 2 glass rectangular dishes that can fit next to each other .. you then
line 1 dish with foil and add sugar … the cut up pineapple goes into the other
dish. And you bake it. After the required time, you add the sugar
to the fruit with some lemon juice and you SHOULD have jam. But this time
it didn’t work … the dishes were too big to fit next to each other, so I had to
put them below each other. The sugar got too hot – oh my goodness, I
nearly jumped into my car and drove home!!!!
Now the peanut butter … personally I think it’s a whole
waste of time and energy. So we had this raw peanuts with the brown paper
skins on - so first the peanuts have to roast in the oven – THEN THE SKIN
has to be rubbed off … it’s then ground in a food processor till smooth (you
add little salt and oil to help the process). After the peanuts
were cooled down from roasting, some of the ladies started the ‘skin rub’
process … it’s a process! They stick to the nuts, the nuts are tiny
…. After about 1 cup was skinned, we blended it in a blender (we didn’t
have a food processor that day), added some peanut oil and they all liked it!
With everyone having the recipes printed out and in their
hands, I let them do the microwave jam. Seedless grapes were bought at a
reasonable price (look, you can use normal grapes, but then you sit with the
seeds … and yes, I know there’s a method of adding something to the jam to let
the seeds rise to the top, but I can’t remember what it was.) Anyway, so
they were all excited and took turns opening the microwave, stirring and
checking the consistency.
When you make microwave jam, it only needs 500 g fruit – so
it’s not recommended for when you want to sell in big amounts … makes about
1 x 300ml jar. The teams switched and then they made another batch
of grape microwave jam, but since we had more pineapples, we also made that in
another microwave. Pineapples are tricky … lots of water content, so they
took a bit longer!
For another group I showed them how to cut baby marrows in
long strips – heat vinegar, sugar, peppercorns & bay leaves – pour over the
baby marrows and you have a pickle. We did the same with precut
carrots. After 6 hours on my feet, I was
finished! Some of the girls cleaned the kitchen, they gave me a little
speech and a small pot plant.
Remember the pizza recipe I talked about last time? So
a lady emailed me and said that she forgot to prick the base before baking it
for 9 minutes …. And it actually puffed up – almost like a pita bread! So
of course I had to try it, and yes! Sooo fabulous!
A gym friend gave me a small container of CHICKEN BIRYANI –
so I scooped that on top of my pizza crust, sprinkled with cheese and baked it
– IT WAS ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!!!!!!
My throat is dry, my fingers cramp and I wish you all a
happy few holi-days!
No comments:
Post a Comment