…but I’m pretty sure South Africans are just genetically programmed to barbeque.

Brett and Rayola dedicated their new baby, Morgan, to God this afternoon (after a bit of on-again, off-again about the exact timing). Of course, this meant that more or less the whole church descended on their Malahide garden for a ‘braai’. The barbeques were charcoal, and none of this European ‘grilling’ business - this was through-and-through barbequeing, with plenty of patience, charcoal that’s gone almost white, and smoke - lots of it! I’ve been home for several hours now, changed my clothes and washed my hair, and I still can’t get that sweet, charcoal smoke out of my nostrils. While I love the simplicity and speed of a gas barbeque, this was truly the real deal! And with three barbeques up and running, an obscene amount of meat was prepared - and being that Stephen & I were the ethnic minority there (I didn’t work it out exactly, but a significant majority of the people around were South African of one description or another), Jan did a great job of educating us on what all the different things were, and giving me samples ahead of time

Boerewors (”farmers’ sausage”) is a hugenormous sausage - so big, that it’s rolled into a sort of spiral. Thick, fatty, yum. It’s made of beef, and several suggestions to the effect of “they just put the whole cow in, horns and all!” were made - it’s chunky, minced beef, with some amazing herbs & spices. Tasty good.

While the food was cooking, some South African sweets were going around - turned out, they were just fruit, mashed up with some sugar, then dried out a little. Jan wasn’t too sure what each one was, but I took an orange one, and the flavour of real, nothing-but apricots was just intense. Stephen had one too, and enjoyed it, although Jan had told him he thought they were the peach ones; when Stephen found out they were apricot, he decided he didn’t want any more

That was ok though - he had to save some space for the meat - several kinds of pork, lamb and chicken were all piling up in trays beside the barbeques! Although, to my potato-shaped eyes, it looked like there was nothing but meat, we also had some seriously yummy cornbread (I don’t even like corn, on its own, but this was good. The sweetness of the corn actually really complemented the slightly yeasty bread), and stywepap (almost like slightly dried/hard mashed potatoes, made from ground up ‘mealie’ [maize] meal) with sous (a tomato’y, onion’y, slightly spicy sauce). What a culinary adventure!

All I can say is, “Om. Nyom.” Congrats to Brett and Rayola, on their beautiful, healthy little girl - and the same to Bruce and Luisa, with Daniel. May God bless them, every little (and big!) one!