In the middle of the power outage, our sensible Germanic visitors arrived bearing nibblies that required no heating up. They had noticed on their way over that our suburb was plunged in darkness and that the traffic lights weren’t working. Coming from the first world city of Munich and thus not being used to repeated breakdowns in basic services, I think they were quite impressed to find that we were in fact looking forward to an evening without electricity. Well, at any rate without Eskom-supplied electricity.
A small light in the kitchen (I feel that one should not wield sharp kitchen implements by flickering candle-light) was plugged into an extension lead, which snaked through the window into the garage, where the deep-cycle battery was concealed. My handy hubby had already fired up a gas cooker, which he had placed – rather ironically I thought – ontop of the electric stove. And a plethora of flickering candles was scattered around the house and creating a romantic mood even in the guest toilet. Sussie (i.e. hubby’s sister) was busy whacking the living daylights out of a couple of eggs, while Boetie (i.e. my hubby) was splashing in another splishel of milk, and then another splishel, until the pancake mixture was nicely runny.
K and Y brought along a beautiful red wine at a wine estate yesterday, and some organic olives, organic olive pesto (yummmm), cheese, cucumber, sweet pepper and a long crispy baguette. We added some more stuff from our fridge, sacttered it all over a couple of large plates, and voila, we had a spread fit for a king and his nobles. And there were enough pancakes to feed a small army.
Over dessert (we ‘slaughtered’ one of the adorable Milka Easter Bunnies that our thoughftful friends had brought over from Germany), we watched a slideshow, on the laptop, of K and Y’s trip to the picturesque island of Madeira last year, and looked at all the photos they had taken on their 5-day journey up the Garden Route.
And when we finally rolled into bed, exhausted but oh-so-happy, we all agreed that it had been a wonderful fun-filled evening by candlelight, and that we were going to plan a few more!
Grains of Sand 