Homemade Heaven

This sure has been an epic journey. The last day of this hike was as long and difficult as it has been for me the last month to get my life back to a place where I can publish this final post.

The final day started off early. As this was our second time on the Fish River hike, we were happy to know that we had 4-5 hours of easy walking, with few river crossings, before we could be sitting comfortablely at Ais-Ais relaxing with a cold beverage.

Click here to follow the last walk home.

I must apologise to those who are following the Canyon trail and have had to wait almost a week for part 5, I have had some technical problems – but I am happy to be back: “Faster than a speeding bullet, More powerful  than a locomotive, Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, Look, up in the sky!

The fifth day is a long flat road, with the one short cut which we had decided to take. It’s the short cut past “the German’s Grave”. But before we got there, the river had to be crossed, falling had to be done and everything in between.

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The fourth day of hiking is dry and dusty. While you are always surrounded by the natural beauty of the canyon, like the great big arms of God hugging you on both sides, with the life giving river that you follow, crossing it but leaving it behind.

t’s a day that reminded me the it took the Israelites 40 years to walk about 390km from Egypt to the Israel. This day is not so much about the time or the distance (both are great), it’s about the lesson.

I had hours of alone time walking on flat hard surfaces, time spent getting my mind around the vastness of creation and my importance in it.

I have spent the last two days complaining about the trials and tribulations of the Canyon, the cold water, the river that was deeper and faster than comfortable, the nights which were longer and colder than I expected. But before you start to think that all I do is complain, I will say that the Canyon after all the rain had a beauty for beyond that which you would expect in a desert.

he carpets of flowers were a highlight of my day.

I have many people comment to me about hiking and ask “Why do you do it for fun?”. It’s a little more complicated than just getting from one place to another, it’s being in places that so few people see and experience. I feel like Neil Armstrong when he placed the first human footprint on the moon. All the training, all the pain, giving up your comfortable bed and sleeping on the cold ground – all fades when you look up and see a cliff face or a still pond with a mountain reflected in it.

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man wealthy and healthy and wise” – These are not words penned in the Fish River Canyon. Early to bed, that’s easy – you’re exhausted, you lie in your sleeping bag looking at the stars and before long you are sucked through a wormhole into a sound sleep.

The problem is, as most adults under the age of 80 don’t go to sleep between 7 & 8pm, once you’ve done your 7 or 8 hours of restless sleep – it’s then only 4am. Now at home, if you were really keen you could jump out of bed, put the kettle on, bake a few loaves of bread, plait your hair or even darn your socks. Dawn in the canyon is at 7am – not before! Doing anything before it’s light is impossible. So for 3 hours you just lie/toss in your sleeping bag, feeling your hip bone engraving the Ten Commandments into your liver.

Never the less, it’s still wonderful to wakeup to the fresh cleanness of a beautiful morning.

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In life you lose things like teaspoons, pens, one sock even marbles. Three months ago I lost some one very close to me, he left – the warning signs were there, but I was not prepared for his complete departure from my life.

I wondered around, going through the motions of doing life. People knew I was sad, but I felt that even though I looked normal from the outside, part of my insides had been ripped out and placed in the box together with my loved one – covered in sand.

Fourteen months ago I planned this trip to hike the Fish River Canyon. My late friend laughed at my crazy habit of roaming around nature, staying in tents and using a spade to lower the toilet seat. But never the less encouraged me with words like “life is for the living” and “getting drunk outta town don’t count”!

I could never had imagined that 3 months before I would leave on another life affirming trip, I would have to say such a final goodbye to such a large part of what I thought made me who I was.

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One of the joys of the Homemade Heaven staff kitchen is hiking. Over the years I have shared many hikes throughout Cape Town as well as some of the more adventurous hikes in Namibia. 

The most important thing in preparing for a multi-day hike is planning your food. Everyday has to be broken down into breakfast, lunch, supper, snacks and extras. Each meal has to be thought out from convenience of preparation, weight to calorie ratio (empty calories don’t make the cut), space and not least of all taste.

If you fail to plan, you will fail to eat. When you are hiking an average of 20km’s per day, you need the maximum energy you can get from your food, without wasting energy carrying heavy loads. All this planning falls into my portfolio, as I am the one who has too feed the troops.

The first hike I prepared for was a huge learning curve. We ended the hike with huge smiles and bags still filled with food! All this after reading every hiking website and blog.

The real lessons come from discovering just how much 2kgs of sugar weighs and that while taking potatoes and butternut sound like great hiking foods,  peeling and cooking them is not as practical when you’ve hiked 7 hours and have 20 minutes of daylight left before it’s tools down for the day.

I have fine tuned a recipe for a great snack bar that is not only tasty, easy to prepare ahead, travels well and has plenty of goodness thrown in for good measure.

Click here for the recipe.

Back in the day (when there were dinosaurs and no TV in South Africa – the 1970′s) life was very simple. There were a lot less choices in my life and not because I was growing up in a rural village in communist China, it was just thought to be necessary. 

When we did eventually get TV, for a good few years there was only 2 options – on and off. Now we have satellite TV, with 180 choices (and most nights still comes down to 2 choices – complete rubbish and rubbish). My mom always kept only one flavour of ice-cream in the house- again 2 choices “yes” or “no”.

Expressions like “You can’t have your cake and eat it” were heard often. I still don’t understand where that comes from, I would rather not have it if I can’t eat it. Another favourite, “You can’t have the best of both worlds” – which “other world” were they talking about?

These are still questions that rattle in my head from my teenage years. And to think our teachers were supposed to educate us, and here I am left with 2 huge gaping holes in my head, wondering about who got to eat the cake and where this “other world” is.

But things have changed now. We have 24 hours of TV (Yippee!!!), a land line, a mobile phone, a lap top, a PC, an Apple Mac and 14 different boxes of “tried once and decided we didn’t like” cereal (and feel guilty about throwing away food) – a never ending amounts of choices.  I am starting to wish for the 2 choice days : “Yes” or “No” and “On” and “Off”.

There is one exception, I have found a cake that I can have, eat and have 2 of my favourite flavours in one go- Banana and Chocolate. It’s my answer to the modern world of choices, without the head splitting “other world” question.

I hope you’ll like this combination and have your cake and eat it!

Click here for the recipe

In the modern life of internet and mass information, one phenomenon which has sprung to life are the “World Days”. Some of them are for very worthy causes, others are just plain ridiculous.

This month we are celebrating, amongst others,World Red Cross Day, World Press Freedom Day, World Anti-Terrorism and World No Tobacco Day. All wonderfully worthy things to spend sometime remembering.

But then you get, interspersed between these worthy causes, arbitrary days or even weeks which mean nothing, like National Cleavage Day, British Sandwich Week, Be Nice to Nettle Week or Limerick Day.       

Mothers day is one of the most precious celebration days of the year and is celebrated in South Africa on the 2nd Sunday in May.  This is a great day to take sometime to spoil and show appreciation to the woman / women who are our mothers.

I have a wonderful Mother and Mother-in-law . They are everything I wish I could be a Mother. They are kind and patient, they don’t judge unfairly, they support me, even when they know that the outcome might not  be as good as I might have expected it to be. But after all the toy throwing and tears, they are the ones with the words of comfort and love which they know will help me get through any trial or temptation.

They respect me as a woman and a mother, gently giving advice, without ever being know-it-alls.I’m supported with the freedom to make the mistakes, which they might have made, but are always understanding when I fail -but  never say “I told you so”.
 
 I thank God for these 2 wonderfully beautiful women in my life. I am blessed to have Mothers that love me and are never afraid to show it.

I am sharing a recipe from my Mother’s private collection. It is a full of childhood memories of love and spoiling. I hope you will try it and think of your mother when you make it, and that your memories will be as happy as mine.

Cape Point, a World Heritage Site, is 65km South West of Cape Town. A spectacular reserve featuring sheer cliffs with a rugged coast line.

This protected 7750 hectares is home to a rich collection of fauna and flora, this is a nature lover’s paradise.

It was this area which was given the name of Cape of Storms from Bartolomeu Dias in 1488. The point is a graveyard for many a ship. It was this graveyard hike which we visited yesterday – The Thomas Tucker Shipwreck trail, situated at Olifantsbos (Elephants Bush).

An easy walk which passes along the coast, passing the debris of those ships which have not successfully navigated the Cape of Storms.

It then turns inland, up a slight rise, from where you can take in the views of the bay and beach from above. The entire walk only took us an hour and 15 minutes, bearing in mind we do walk rather faster than average.

After our walk, we crossed over the peninsula to Borjiesrif to have lunch on the rocks. It started to rain, so we ended our picnic snuggled in the back of the Jeep, and watched the sea.

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