#Cooking

Sometimes I buy spices, thinking the fragrant, colorful little packets might motivate me to cook something. Unfortunately that rarely happens and the spices get old and sticky and I wind up throwing them away unused. For this reason I rarely shop for spices anymore, even though South Africa – with its cacophonous mix of eastern and western cultures and cuisines – is a great place to do so.

I enjoy cooking and I used to cook regularly. But in recent years, for reasons I don’t completely understand, cooking vanished from my life. It happened gradually – I started eating out more, food-shopping less, and eventually couldn’t find the time or motivation to cook anything other than scrambled eggs, toasted cheese, and Woolworths’ veggie burgers.

Two days ago I went to Spar, the grocery store in Melville, with my friend Anita. Anita noticed something in the refrigerated section near the bakery.

“Look at that!” Anita shouted.

Joe and I recently received an invitation to brunch at the home of our friend Karen, a.k.a. Bing. (Her name is Karen. Her name is Bing. She has other names too, but I won’t get into that.)