Real, cooked food was incidental in the grand scheme of things. ‘If we could eat pudding first, we would,’ Uncle Joey often quipped with his own brand of irreverence. And sometimes one or the other of them would indeed take a dip into the pudding bakkie first.
Mavie kept her cooking plain but flavourful with mixed herbs or thyme, bay leaves, salt and white pepper, nutmeg, cloves or cinnamon, depending on the dish. Everything had a smoky flavour from the woodstove and this gave the food a unique taste. That stove provided slow cooking at its best, although Mavie was not a fan of its erratic ways. She had great battles with it: slamming lids and letting off a litany of swear words quite often. The cleaning of all the movable parts was a sooty business and was cause for more f and b words.
Mavie’s most used recipes from the Salesians Boys’ School Recipe Book, 1960s.
The sisters were in their 20s and early 30s and they too wanted to be able to cook fast on an electric stove. But the electric cabling in the house was old and because of the uncertainty of the Group Areas removals, which were now in full swing, they did not want to go through the expense of re-cabling to a new electricity box.
Instead, Stella used the gas stove that she had for camping. Her favourite camping spot was Duikersklip before the Hangberg flats were built to the top of the dip, just before the rise of Hout Bay Sentinel. She, Meneer Wilfie and her friends would climb over to the rocky bay on the other side, which was very popular for kreef-diving. We went along for day trips but never stayed over.
Stella would also use the gas stove on countrywide road trips with her friends. She cooked only at weekends, after work on a Saturday. When she came back from her travels, she would cook dishes she had learned about. A peri-peri prawn dish with cashews and rice with saffron, after she’d been to Mozambique and Yorkshire pudding to go with the Sunday roast after she’d been to England.
Her travels also led to us receiving lots of holidaymakers: Indian Hindu and Tamil friends from Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Pinetown, and once some Portuguese people from Lourenco Marques who came to Cape Town to see if they wanted to stay here. They chose Rio de Janeiro instead after Mozambique gained independence in 1975 from Portugal, the colonial power that had governed the territory for five centuries. They got out before the civil war erupted.
Mavie cooked all the traditional meals that everyone was cooking at the time. For breakfast, Jungle Oats or mielie meal porridge – and Weetbix for those can’t-be-bothered days. For supper, she cooked all the bredies (green beans, tomato, cabbage), frikkadels, cabbage-wrapped frikkadels, liver in tomato sauce, sugar beans stew, Irish stew, mince-and-pea curry with white rice, spaghetti bolognaise and bobotie. Lunch was usually leftovers or a sandwich with tea.
For special occasions on weeknights, there was pot roast brisket (cheaper than lamb chops in the 60s and 70s), pot roast beef or pot roast chicken. Chicken was a luxury because it cost more than red meat. All were served with squash, cauliflower with white sauce, roast potatoes and yellow rice. Rustic soups enriched with soup bones full of marrow, vegetables and barley were winter highlights, followed by pumpkin fritters with sugar and cinnamon.
Climbing Table Mountain – Stella, Dor, Ivan and Mavie, 1950s.
One of the Lansdowne Anglican Churches picnics to Churchhaven. L-R: Dor, Mr Smith, Mrs Smith, Meneer Wilfie, me, Stella, Mavie and neighbour, Mrs Ivy, 1964.
At the beach, back row: Stella, Mavie, Uncle Julian. Front L-R: Mrs Ivy, cousins Marlene and Lorna, me and Ivan, 1962.
Mavie on the rocks at Mouille Point, 1950s.
Sometimes there was corned beef or homemade steak ’n kidney pie with boiled potatoes or mash, salad made with tomato, onion and lettuce and squash with mustard as the accompanying condiment. Macaroni cheese or savoury rice with a tomato-onion-lettuce salad was always paired with breakfast sausage or minute steaks. Lamb chops or fish fillets or kuite (fish roe or fish eggs that look like sausages) came with potato chips and a tomato and onion smoor.
I didn’t eat the kuite or rollmops. I also drew the line at giblets stew, homemade brawn, tripe and trotter curry. But I did eat kaiings though, made from the excess fat cut from the meat, chopped into tiny bits and cooked in a pot until crispy. So lekker. ‘Lekker’, by the way, was without a doubt the most-used Afrikaans word in our family.
My favourite was when Mavie made bredies. Just after the meat and onions had browned (or burnt and she had done a quick rescue mission), before the veg was added, she would call me in from playing outside for brood-in-die-pot and tea. A slice of bread was put into the pot to cook a few minutes and it absorbed the browned fat and onion juices. It was very lekker.
All the lard was stored in containers in the fridge and used for cooking. Even the excess fat from Sunday roast was saved and used again for the bredies. Uncle Joey would visit most days and head straight for the bread bin for a slice or two of bread, spread with fat and topped off with whatever leftover meats or spreads and jams were around. (He wasn’t supposed to eat those. Doctor’s orders. He had diabetes.)
Then there was the Christian ritual of Good Friday pickled fish from a recipe that was invented and shared by Cape Malay slaves4. Hot cross buns were always bought – I don’t think my family had a recipe for them. We ate the same menu for Easter Sunday as we did for Christmas, except without the Christmas doekpoeding. We had one of the usual winter puddings, usually with custard.
Easter weekend was more about church than food, although I got the impression that chocolate may just have sneaked into first place ahead of piousness for some. The Easter holy week began on Palm Sunday with the handing out of palm crosses that symbolised Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, riding on the back of a donkey over a street that had been covered with cloaks and beside which people stood waving palm fronds.
The weekend began on Thursday with the blessing of the anointing oils, holy water, wine, wafers, paschal candles and incense, all of which were to be used throughout the archdiocese for the rest of the year. Thursday evening there’d be a special service during which the priest washed the feet of fellow clergy, deacons and lay ministers. In recent years, some churches have introduced a paschal meal after the service, as an attempt to reimagine what Jesus did the night before he was crucified.
Good Friday was sombre with the re-enactment of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross held in the field behind the church. I found this frightening and sad. It was as if one was right there in Jerusalem all those thousands of years ago, especially if the weather was overcast and gloomy.
The re-enactment required the congregation follow, according to European processional traditions, a narrator reading passages from the Gospels. This was a shorter service than the three-hour focus on gospel readings, solemnity and prayer for adults in the afternoon. Between these two church services, there was much munching on pickled fish and buns in homes across the city.
The midnight mass, called a wake mass, was held on the eve of Easter Sunday. For me, it was the most beautiful event on the church calendar. It was dramatic from the moment one entered the darkened church where the only light came from candles flickering on the altar.
The priests and altar servers would enter in silent procession without the characteristic pipe-organ music and hymn. An altar server walked ahead carrying the incense burner. There would be opening prayers after which we filed out to hear another prayer while standing around an enormous fire. Then the paschal candle, studded with religious symbols, would be lit.
Back in the church, we would all receive light from this paschal candle to light our little white candles in cardboard holders. The paschal candle would