The Degustation Plate

Okay, things forgotten in light of yesterday's memorial post are (in no particular order):

1) In a bizarre twist of fate, another person our family knows died on the same day as Gum. We didn't know him that well, but well enough to know he is being missed just as much (if not more since he is a fair amount younger!) as Gum. He was (now follow closely) my mom's ex-boss's wife's mom's husband :) That said, we knew him slightly better than that cause he was married to my Cape Town psychologist (a truly wonderful genuine lovely lady!) and they both lived in the small dorp of Riebeck West (just down the road from my aunt). See, plenty of little connections there. His story is particularly sad because he was now suffering thru his 3rd and final bout of cancer ... and it'd spread to his brain. Sigh, clearly 02Jun was not a good day all round.

2) It turned out to be an even worse day than that by some added admin issues. Out of the blue I got a phonecall that afternoon from Citroen Northcliff (the good folks who'd sold me my zippy little motor). Seems there's been a little mix up they said. Turns out their incompetent sales person (well, he apparently no longer works there so that's where they're laying the blame, but really who honestly knows??) mixed up the registration of my car along with 2 others. They only picked this up when one of the mixed up cars was stolen. I've been driving around with the wrong licence plate since September! Forget just that, my insurance has been insuring a car with a VIN & Engine Number that are apparently not mine! You can just imagine how this cherry topped my day. Now let's see how the folks at the insurance & Netstar take it ... sigh

3) At least this is a good one ;) I'm happy to report that Henna seems to be successfully potty trained (no word on Bell yet). Yesterday afternoon while they were running around outside she came inside the house and peed in their potty. That's the fourth time she's done it (okay so it doesn't sound like a lot, but I'm just so impressed!). The downside, however, is that they are aiming for the smell to figure out where best to pee ... and despite being asked specifically not to, the maid insists on cleaning out the potty every single time she's here (that's twice a week). Which means we have to wait until they pee in the hosue again before we can expect them to be able to use it properly once again. Quite frustrating. I'm thinking of cunning places to hide the potty on the day's the maid comes ... who would've ever thought ?!? Oh and btw. the veggie garden is finally coming along (seems those holes in the bottom of the pot are a definite must-have for water-drainage!) and the buns have been enjoying a few tasty leaf varieties every so often. Oh, and did I tell you that Bell has started digging? She started her first hole on the weekend and it has now become a sort of dual hole. I can't tell if she's digging to get at tasty grass roots or because she's trying to make herself a burrow ... fingers crossed for the first option!

Last night Varen & I went for dinner with JofH (YogaCherryl is off yoga-ing in Hong Kong, lucky thing!) and Maroon at a new restaurant called Faff. It's taken over the premises where the Singing Fig used to be. It was lovely. I think the best thing about this restaurant is the concept of their Degustation Plate, which allows you to try up to 3 dishes from each course. Sadly you can't mix and match with these (I would've liked to have mixed up my mains with the pasta's but it wasn't allowed) so I only tried it for dessert. But let's start at the beginning. I started with their Twice baked Gruyere cheese soufflé. I don't really know what I was expecting from this but it sounded delish so I tried it :) The cheese flavoured sauce was good, but the whole dish was a bit too much like a scone with cheese sauce so, I think I'd try something else in future. For mains I had Polenta crusted salmon & crab cakes, grilled radicchio, creamed potatoes with ginger & honey jus. This was very good, but 3 cakes were far too many for me to finish. Varen had a combination of the Meat Mains and said it was very good, so good he didn't even need his knife to cut it, the side of his forked worked just as well ;) JofH and Maroon both had a variety of pasta's and pronouced the House Gnocchi the best they'd ever had. Dessert was an excercise in sheer indulgence. Ordinarily I wouldn't have had dessert but it seemed to good to resist and had a variety of their Chocolate truffel tart, Lemon tart & crème fraiche and House made Belgium chocolate truffles. Decadent and far far too rich for any of us (except JofH, we all indulged in their Degustation Plate for our desserts) to finish! Oooh, I felt it this morning - a combination of the late night (11pm and still waking up at 5:40am this morn!), the wine and the rich food!

Anyhoo, we're off to the farm this weekend with J9-double0blonde and Squeak, I'm so looking forward to it :)