Digg this

And… she’s back. Things have changed.

Gone are the joys of living in a seaside town, of fresh fish, Woolworths food stores, and drinking cappucinos in between shopping missions. Gone is Mrs X’s purse; which granted me the opportunity to flit from store to store to store like Robert Mugabe’s wife (just buying veggies- not diamonds.)

Gone is my kitchen with a million baking trays, a functional oven, and the stove that boiled water in two minutes.  Gone is the German electric slicer, three fridges and two freezers that I used to fill to the brim.

Most sadly, I am removed from the three people who used to wash my dishes as fast as I could fill the sink.

It’s time to start varsity again and I am back in Grahamstown. Lectures start tomorrow (gnnnnn gnnn gnashing teeth).

I’ve moved myself into our house. We call student communes diggs, and mine is an old wooden-floored, high- ceilinged relic that I share with three other girls. Allow me to introduce Fish, Whale and Nemo: Tenants of The Respectable House.

We arrived to find mould covered walls, and boxes of useless junk left by the last tenants who were clearly not concerned with hygiene. It’s been a deep- scrubbing, box- heaving week that sucked up the last days of vacation in a blur of happy reunions and new discoveries.

The weather has lived up to Grahamstown expectations; it’s been murky, a little rainy and generally mad hot. Nemo and I were wilting so we made some iced tea. (i. e. heaven)

Refreshing Iced Tea

I’ve heard Nemo tell that some people, like her mother, have an irrational fear of making iced tea. Instead, she buys concentrate. Whale and I agree that iced tea concentrate and things like Lipton are not really iced tea. It’s quite simple really. Make tea. Make it cold.

·         Get out your two funkiest tea pots.

·         Boil the kettle.

·         Pop in two tea bags. But nice tea. Like vanilla. Or something minty. Preferably rooibos based.

·         Brew for two minutes or so.

·         Now pop in some yum herb; like lemon thyme or mint. Or basil.

·         Brew some more.

·         Add 5ml vanilla essence if you have vanilla tea. Add a few slices of lemon. Sweeten with some brown sugar.

·         Add a tray of ice cubes and leave to chill. 

·         Drink on your stoep (porch) and dream of the sea.

I know what you’re all thinking. You’re looking at this picture of a half-finsihed bit of tea in a plastic Russian Bear vodka bottle and you’re worried that now that I’m back in the world of low- budget student days I’ll be posting recipes for two minute noodles and cup- a soup. 

Never fear, as I always say. I’ll be hooking up some catering for the hungry people of G-town and you should know by now that I’ll never let myself go without Yum! for too long. And I won’t post any more recipes for tea.

In fact, I did some catering today for that awesome water- sparing society Galela Amanzi:

Lemon melting moments

Focaccia with olives, origanum and caremelised onions