When I told my friends earlier this month that I was going on a blind date with a Swedish chef, their reactions tended to fall into three distinct categories: "Oh - so youre going on a date with...
St Malo memorial, Jersey island - April 2012 On April 17 1995, a French ferry, the Saint Malo en route from Jersey to Sark in the Channel Islands, struck a rock 900m north of Corbiere ligthhouse. The...
I am a great lover of jokes. Give me an audience and a platform and the first words out of my mouth are far more likely to be a joke than any other possible opening gambit. (I once told a...
Did your family have a favourite family recipe as a child? Well, if you did, you are not alone: if you enter the term "family favourite recipes" into Google, you will get quite a few result...
Cape Town is a city of many things: of great wine, great food and unparallelled natural beauty. Whereas in many other cities, you have to look pretty hard to find a restaurant that ticks all three th...
Composition with dandelion and Reichstag, Berlin - May 2012 Saturday Snapshots is a series of non-food photographs published every Saturday on CookSister. Previously featured photographs can be viewe...
When is a wine not a real wine? And no, this is not a "how long is a piece of string" type of nonsense question with no answer; nor is it a reference to the disturbing "wine-style beve...
It had been one of those days. We had arrived in Cape Town early in the morning from London after a night of little sleep, non-functioning seat-back TVs and rather too much alcohol (refer to previous...
Surfs up - Noordhoek, Cape Town - Feb 2011 Noordhoek beach is a long, wide sandy beach located below Chapmans Peak on the west coast of the Cape Peninsula, approximately thirty-five kilometres to the...
When I was at school, one of my brothers friends used to refer to himself as "having grown up in the Bronx". With a ponceyness well beyond his years, he was appropriating for himself the ro...
When I was back home in South Africa recently, as usual, I stayed at my brothers house. Its about as different from my own house in London as you can get - and I dont just mean because its a...
Although we humans like to view the world as a static and predictable place, where we know how things function and have an expectation that they will continue in much the same vein, every now and aga...
Succulent - Algarve, Portugal - December 2010 I love the 3D effect of this little succulent; its finely furry leaves; and the brown dotted leaf trim that looks as if it was painstakingly painted on. ...
Many wealthy people are little more than the janitors of their possessions - Frank Lloyd Wright Stuff. Why are we so addicted to it - acquiring it, having it, keeping it? On my recent trip to Cape To...
It’s a small world after all, sing the characters at Disneyland. And although most of what Disney purveys is a fairy tale, they are spot-on in this regard. At the end of February, I went skiing in th...
Zulu wedding beads, Greenmarket Square, Cape Town - April 2012 Greenmarket Square is a cobbled square built in Cape Town in 1696 when a municipal guard house was erected there. In 1761, the guard hou...
The human race has many motivators – stimuli that cause us to behave in a certain fashion or refrain from behaving in a certain fashion. The desire for approval is a huge motivator, relied on for cen...
Vineyard squirrel, Groot Constantia (Cape Town) - February 2011 Saturday Snapshots is a series of non-food photographs published every Saturday on CookSister. Previously featured photographs can be v...
Llandudno sunset - February 2011 Llandudno takes its name from the north Wales seaside town and is a residential suburb of Cape Town set above a perfectly formed bay on the Atlantic seaboard. There a...
“You can’t go swimming for at least an hour after lunch, otherwise you’ll get cramp and drown!” “While you are living under my roof, you’ll abide by my rules.” “You’re going out wearing that? You’ll ...
River of tulips, Keukenhof garden, Holland - May 2010 Keukenhof Gardens near Lisse in the Netherlands was opened in 1949 and is the worlds largest flower garden, covering 32 acres. Each year staff pl...
So - who can tell me what a Trojan horse is? This is one of those questions that shows your age, Im afraid. If you are of a certain age (ahem!) you will tell me about how the Greeks besieged...
When I started visiting Stellenbosch and Paarl the Cape winelands for the first time as a student, eating was the furthest thing from my and my companions minds. The main aim was to find wineries tha...
An exuberance of blossoms - February 2011 Because every girl deserves flowers on her birthday :) Saturday Snapshots is a series of non-food photographs published every Saturday on CookSister. Previou...
When I first got to the UK in 2000, I embarked on a culinary voyage of discovery. Suddenly, berries that had cost half a months salary in South Africa (or simply werent available) were available on e...
Photo courtesy and © Harbour House website There are many things in this world between which there are proportional relationships. Sometimes, this is a direct proportional relationship: the more you ...
Me and my shadow - Chatel, France There is absolutely nothing that clears my mind of all the clutter as completely as being alone, on a pair of skis, on a snowy mountain. It tests my body, it challen...
Skiing is something that Nick and I only got round to relatively late in life. Unsurprising, really, considering that we grew up in a country where snow is unusual enough to make the evening news, an...
A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn’t see the clouds at all – he’s walking on them – Leonard Louis Levinson Its a...
Bumblebee - Spring 2009 Trees are blossoming, days are warmer and the bumble bees are coming out of hibernation. Well hello there, Spring - Ive missed you so. Saturday Snapshots is a series of non-fo...
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