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Saturday, December 05, 2015

MENU's Photographs of 2015

Early morning shadows on a road between the vines at Laborie in Paarl

Sunbird agapanthus breakfast

The sunset at Babylon’s Peak, seen from Creation in the Hemel en Aarde Valley

Evening on Milnerton lagoon

Hout Bay harbour

Red wing Starling Take off and Landing...

Smoke from the dying fires above Buitenverwachting wine estate

Vineyards and Mountains in the Helderberg Valley

Clifton sunset

A black backed gull in the evening light

A Clifton evening. Looking toward Oudekraal and Llandudno

A common tern at sunset

The end of summer on the beach as gulls tell us the weather is about to change

Bartholomeus Klip has a breeding herd of disease free Cape buffalo

A flight of Quelea at Elandsberg Reserve

Autumn vines, apples and olives at Hannay, Elgin

A hooded crow takes a bath at Topkapı Palace, Istanbul

A classic Greek Island church on Ios

An elegant Three master on a rainy Naxos night

Trees on the shore of the Gulf of Corinth

Blue hills of a late afternoon in Mycenae. A sort of Trompe de l’oeil, certainly an optical illusion

A last look at ancient Greece. A temple being restored in Corinth

A stormy winter Sea Point sea

A break in the storm. Looking across Wellington to the surrounding mountains

A wintry sunset over Camps Bay beach

Evening rush hour on a rainy N1, returning to Cape Town

A misty spring day near Stellenbosch

Spring is in the air and the dragonflies emerge

A carpet of Spring flowers at Postberg, West Coast National Park

A red sun setting into the Atlantic off Sea Point

The sun sets over the dam. Robert Stanford Estate, Stanford

The view across False Bay from Strandfontein

A family of meerkats in the Karoo near Oudtshoorn

Grace in flight - a grey heron comes in to land

Malachite kingfisher (Alcedo cristata)

Night view across the mouth of Cape Town harbour

The Meerlust manor house, built in 1776

Summer is here

A baby owl at Steenberg

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Friday, December 04, 2015

This Week's MENU: Beer Festival Braai at Hamiltons, 2015 WWF-SASSI Trailblazer Awards, Elgin Christmas Tweet Up, This week's recipe: Strawberry Ice Cream

Summer is here

In this week’s MENU:

Beer Festival Braai at Hamiltons

2015 WWF-SASSI Trailblazer Awards at The Table Bay Hotel

Elgin Christmas Tweet Up at South Hill

This week's recipe: Strawberry Ice Cream

To get the whole story with photographs, please click on the paragraph title, which will lead you there. At the end of each story, click on RETURN TO MENU to come back to MENU.

This was a reasonably quiet week for events, but a crazy week for us at home, as we had to get the house and the food ready for John's 70th birthday celebrations on Friday 27th and Saturday. We had wanted to do the Saturday party as a picnic somewhere nice, but it was too much of a challenge at this time of the year. Everywhere is booked for weddings and Christmas parties. We couldn't afford expensive function places and even if we had, they wanted to sell us their own food and wine and we wanted to do our own catering, and, especially, bring out some great bottles from our cellar, which we did.

So, somehow, after cooking all week, we managed a family dinner party on John's actual birthday and then managed to squeeze 30 people into our small house. Lynne has vowed never to attempt this again. She said the same after John’s 60th, when we had 60 people. Presumably, there will only be 15 for his 80th! There was lots and lots of food and drink. Thank you to the friends who contributed, we are very grateful. Did we mention that we also stripped and painted a wall, replaced some decayed planks on the deck and coated it with preservative and repotted all our planters...?

Oh, and as if that was not enough excitement, on Tuesday, John had his second cataract operation. All is well and his sight is much improved. Nowadays, it's just a five hour visit to hospital and a 20 minute op.

Beer Festival Braai at Hamiltons The festival was held last weekend and on Thursday night before that, we were invited to join other media and the exhibitors for a braai there. We tasted lots of the different new beers and ciders and ate a good braai. It was a great fun evening, except for the exercise we endured getting there.

We learnt an important lesson. NEVER leave the house for a function without checking a map. Lynne spent her ’Tween years living in Green Point so we decided to take the bus there and Uber back. She knew how to get to Hamiltons Rugby Club. Or did she? Had we checked a map we would have seen that the Green Point Golf club has now blocked the way she knew and we had a very , very healthy 4 to 5k walk first through the beautiful Green Point park at twilight and then onward in almost a circle to get there! Well, we do need the exercise.

2015 WWF-SASSI Trailblazer Awards at The Table Bay Hotel Every year SASSI (South African Sustainable Seafood Initiative) award chefs and others who support the initiative in some way. This year the awards went to seven chefs. The Media Award went to a cookbook author, Daisy Jones, a journalist, for her cookery book, Star Fish, published by Quivertree Press. Daisy’s cookbook is a collection of recipes using only green listed seafood. SASSI is aimed at informing the public how their choice of fish for consumption can help determine the future health and productivity of our oceans. We were invited to the awards ceremony on Monday evening.

Elgin Christmas Tweet Up at South Hill The Elgin Winemakers Guild decided to reward all the hard work by the Tweeters this year with a last tasting for 2015 and Christmas lunch party in Elgin at South Hill. Transport was arranged for many of us from town and a great day was had by all.

This week's recipe was served at John's birthday lunch and had everyone demanding the recipe. It is the easiest ice cream recipe ever, it does not take a lot of time to make, has only four ingredients and does not need either an ice cream maker or lots of stirring to break up ice crystals. It comes out of the 1973 edition of the Cookery Year Book, which Lynne has used for years. Their recipes are faultless. This quantity would fill one ice cream container. Make this before the end of the strawberry season and you can have strawberry ice cream in the middle of the winter.

Strawberry Ice Cream

500g fresh strawberries - 175g icing sugar - 1 teaspoon lemon juice - 600 ml whipping or double cream

Wash and hull the strawberries and cut them in half. Put them into your liquidiser or food processor with the lemon juice and icing sugar. Add the cream and blitz. You can do this until completely smooth, but we like it with a few small pieces of strawberry still remaining for texture. Freeze. It is soft serve and can melt quite quickly. You don't have to take it out to defrost a little, as you do with normal ice creams. We know you will enjoy it.

3rd December 2015

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Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169

Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005

Our Adamastor & Bacchus© tailor-made Wine, Food and Photo tours take small groups (up to 6) to specialist wine producers who make the best of South Africa’s wines. Have fun while you learn more about wine and how it is made! Tours can be conducted in English, German, Norwegian and standard or Dutch-flavoured Afrikaans.

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Recommendations of products and outside events are not solicited or charged for, and are made at the authors’ pleasure. All photographs, recipes and text used in these newsletters and our blogs are © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are usually unsolicited. We prefer to pay for our meals and not be paid in any way by anyone. Whether we are invited or go independently, we don’t feel bad if we say we didn’t like it. Honesty is indeed our best policy. While every effort is made to avoid mistakes, we are human and they do creep in occasionally, for which we apologise. Our Avast!^® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned continually for viruses.

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Thursday, December 03, 2015

This week's recipe: Strawberry Ice Cream

Strawberry Ice Cream

500g fresh strawberries - 175g icing sugar - 1 teaspoon lemon juice - 600 ml whipping or double cream

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Brewers braai before the Beer Festival

The festival was held last weekend and on Thursday night before we were invited to join other media and the exhibitors for a braai there. We tasted lots of the different new beers and ciders and ate a good braai. It was a great fun evening, except for the exercise required to get there, after we chose the wrong route

We learnt an important lesson. NEVER leave the house for a function without checking a map. Lynne spent her Tween years living in Green Point, so we decided to take the bus there and Uber back. She knew how to get to Hamiltons. Or did she? Had we checked a map, we would have seen that the Metropolitan Golf Club has now blocked the way she knew and we had a very, very healthy 4 to 5 Km walk, first through the beautiful Green Point park at twilight and then onward in almost a circle to get there! Well, we do need the exercise

Getting together with Boschendal cellarmaster Neil Groenewald and his brewer friend, with Jan Loubser and Anel Grobler

Broadcaster Guy McDonald with two of his friends and some new beers

Lots to try. The Long Beach Blonde is made by former Tierhoek winemaker Roger Burton. It was very well received. We also loved the Birkenhead Chocolate Porter

We got up to get some supper and some rude, cheeky monsters pinched our table and our beers! But luckily we found another table with some great company and beer

Sadly, because of complete exhaustion after John's birthday parties, we did not make it to the Beer Festival on Sunday, as we had planned, but we hear it was a riot. Next year, please

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Six trophies were awarded by the SouthYeasters, a BJCP judging panel of certified beer judges, to different categories:

Best Ale on Show: Brewdog Dead Pony Ale – A hop-heavy US-Style pale ale, the Brewdog Dead Pony Club Session pale ale, delivers a wash of tropical fruit, floral garlands and spicy undertones with citrus aromas of lemongrass and zest.

Best Lager: CBC Pilsner – A craft pilsner brewed in the style of a lager, the CBC Pilsner has a strong hoppy aroma with a bitter finish.

Best Dark Beer: Hoghouse Brewing Co Porter – A classic London style porter, the Hoghouse Porter has a flavour of caramel oats, coffee, hazelnuts and toast with a smoky aroma.

Best Weiss/Wheat/Wit Beer: CBC Krystal Weiss – A Weiss beer or wheat beer is brewed with a large amount of wheat. The CBC Craft Krystal Weiss is clear-filtered with an elegant twist of lemon and grapefruit producing a citrusy aroma.

Best Hoppy Beer: Devil’s Peak King’s Blockhouse IPA - Named after the historic military blockhouse on Devil’s Peak, this West Coast style IPA has a fruity and bitter taste with a citrusy, floral and piny aroma with passion fruit aspects.

Best Cider: Orpens Cider – Produced on the Drift farm, this Irish Cider is made from fresh juice as opposed to the mass produced cider made from reconstituted juice concentrate. Orpens Cider is produced the same way that the farm produces

wine with care and devotion which gives it its distinctive character.

Festival goers were treated to the sounds of the Rockerfellas, Grassy Spark, Nomadic Orchestra and Los Taco’s and had an array of tasty treats to choose from such as Hudson’s Burger Joint, Lotus Food Truck and I Love Pizza.

All in all the Cape Town Festival of Beer was a huge success continuing to climb from strength to strength each year. They are looking forward to being back for their 7th year with even more exhibitors to showcase their new and exciting beers and ciders.

Elgin Wine Valley Christmas Tweetup

The Elgin Winemakers Guild decided to reward all the hard work by the Tweeters this year with a last tasting for 2015 and Christmas lunch party in Elgin at South Hill. Transport was arranged for many of us from town and a great day was had by all

The first pick up was for Atlantic coast people and was at the Mouille Point lighthouse, where you can park free all day. We then picked up more people at The River Club and in Somerset West

Sadly, road works on the N2 made for heavy traffic for a while, but we made it in time

The first white wines we tasted were Iona 2015 Sauvignon Blanc (our favourite), Elgin Ridge 2014 Sauvignon Blanc and South Hill 2015 Sauvignon Blanc. Two superb white blends of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon: Highlands Road 2012 Sine Cera and Oak Valley 2011 Mountain Reserve, made by the late Pieter Visser

Everyone getting their phones, tablets and computers tuned into the Internet. We had some problems getting connected, but not overwhelming as we all appeared to have 3G connectivity

The next flight we tasted was Chardonnays: Paul Cluver 2014 (the wine that wowed Lynne the last time she tasted it), the excellent Hannay 2014 made by Richard Kershaw, Winters Drift 2014 and Almenkerk 2012

Then we were on to the reds

Dead soldiers

Karen Glanfield Pawley taking us through the wines

The four really great reds tasted were this marvellous merlot from Shannon - Mount Bullet 2012 made by Gordon Newton Johnson - 2012 Pinot Noir from Elgin Vintners, Richard Kershaw’s 2013 Syrah and Thelema Sutherland 2011 Syrah