OH MY WORD – I’ve been selected!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m on the list for the KZN/Eastern Cape section of the auditions – I’ve got my list of instructions and all that’s left is to RSVP, people, by the 21st.
This is a competition MADE for me. Ultimate Braai Master, YES, I can do this (with the help of my trusty Braai-Master, and hubby, of course).
So I started filling in the entrance form – which was wonderfully fun and light-hearted. Half-way through, I started doing the math, and realised that 52 days off work to go on tour with Justin Bonello (my cookery-hero) cooking up a storm on fires all over the country just wasn’t going to be possible for either my husband or for me. My husband has his own engineering/production business with an exciting (and chef-worthy) product about to go to market internationally, and I work in the very busy finance department of a large high school. Six weeks would be diastrous for us both. So I abandoned my entry. No photos submitted, questions left unanswered, the submit button never clicked. I put it out of my mind.
One of the questions on the entry form was ‘what sort of food do you cook on the braai’ – my reply was ‘anything – from amarula malva pudding to pizzas on the fire to chocolate banana cake – I’ll tackle anything on the fire. I am as happy, actually happier, when I am cooking over flames (not gas, people, never gas).
I think it may have been this comment on my entry form that resulted in the organisers emailing me to say that my entry-form had caught their attention anyway, and that I had made it to the auditions. You can imagine the excitement – the planning – the recipes I went through. I know exactly what I would cook – I know what I would pack, and how I would set up our camp kitchen on a patch of ground for the day. I know how I would present the food, and I think we would make it through to the next secret day’s events.
BUT – and there-in lies the rub, there-in squats the toad, BUT - I am already committed to something I cannot wriggle out of on that weekend (trust me, I’ve been scheming). And if we were to make it through – there’s the problem of the six weeks traveling and cooking for the TV show.
Stay tuned – I will let you know what we decide…….I’m still scheming 
Meantime, if you’d like to check out some of the things I cook on a braai-fire, hop over to my blog at www.firedupcookingsa.com and browse around. See you there!
