Tastes & Treats

Its this time of the year again that we all remember certain things from our childhood. For me it was always the incredible smells of my Granny who was Swiss baking mountains of Christmas cookies for 4 weeks before the actual day. My most favourite was always the Zimtsterne ( Cinnamon Stars) which I still bake today to give away as presents to family and friends.

A couple of months ago my son was asked by an old friend of mine to do a promotional dvd for his new  Earthfire pizza oven that is now also available at Yuppie Chef . They decided that my home is the right place to film it and many hours and many pizzas later I was hooked and bought this amazing contraption and have never bought a pizza again from anywhere else!…  It is so easy and quick and I think the best and  cheapest fun way to entertain during this time of the darn recession !!!

So today is another one of those days that boys have invited their mates to come  and “do” pizzas. I agreed to make the tomato base with those lovely fresh herbs from my garden and also supplied the pizza topping for the Dessert Pizza :

Ingredients for Dessert Pizza:

Sliced banana ; pieces of Camambert, chopped walnuts, dabs of sweet chilli sauce, NOMU chocolate sprinkles  :)  totally awesome !

To see just how easy it is to make your own crispy fresh pizza  check out this short video :

In one of my earlier blogs I also gave the recipe for Flame Tarts which is one of the typical Pub Foods one gets in the Alsace  where I originally hail from. I have tried to make them in the new pizza oven and they work perfectly well. See here for the original recipe :

Its been a while  that is for sure….. and with this year nearly over and Food24 having done this lekker move to WordPress, it was time for me to finally get my act together again and see wahts cooking out there!

2011 has been a busy year and wonderful year. I finally moved back from Stellenbosch to Hout Bay which is where I hail from and told the tenants in my house to   ..   go   Sadly after 2 years away house and garden were a total mess and its taken lots of elbow grease and tlc to get everything back into shape again.

After house and garden were back to normal my friend Monique from Belgium organised for 2 industrial Belgian Waffle making  machines to be sent to Cape Town.  After much experimenting with different kinds of recipes, I found the perfect ones for the Brussel’s waffle maker and then also for the other machine which makes waffles on a stick !!. Never having “done” any market before, it was with quite a bit of nerves that I took this step and started off at the Hout Bay Lions market which is taking palce every Sunday for the past 25 years. Despite the chilly weather I was thrilled to survive the first day and yay! even doing very well….

During this past year I also held quite a number of “home dinner parties” for American tourists… ranging from 8 to 24 people. I love doing this as one meets the most diverse sort of folks and  well its just so nice to see how thrilled these total strangers always are to be welcomed into a SA home with kids, dogs and cats and be treated really just like friends….

So all this is probably my lame excuse for not having taken the time to sit down and write  on my blog for the past couple of months. However exiting things in the line of food are about to happen in the new year which I will be sharing with you again.

I am also so thrilled that all my “old blogger friends” are  still around producing the most amazing delicious dishes and blogs .

have a great weekend all and definitely see you again next week !!!!!

Gaby back in Hout Bay x0x0x

back in my own kitchen once again