FORTHCOMING EVENTS

22 October 2011:
Visit to Waverly Hills organic olive farm.
 
27 November 2011:
End of year function and fundraiser – spitbraai at the home of Stephen and Pat Flesch.
 
February 2012:
Visit to Andreas Viestadt’s vegetable garden on Paul Cluver’s wine estate at Elgin.
 
17 March 17 2012:
Annual grape harvest and wine stomp at Marianne wine estate in Stellenbosch.

Also in the pipeline:
A herb-growing workshop with Bridget Kitley in Stellenbosch; outing to Graze Slow Food Café at Stanford.

RECENT EVENTS

VISIT TO LEO FOODS

 
On Saturday, 27 August, Slow members gathered in Westlake for a tour of Slow Food member Jackie Leone’s factory, Leo Foods, where she produces biscotti, panforte, amaretti, and other Italian delicacies, as well as a variety of other biscuits and a deliciously rich chocolate sauce.
 

We were instructed not to wear any jewellery or perfume, and required to don overalls and hairnets. Jackie then conducted us round the factory, to watch the women, singing in beautiful harmony, mixing panforte and pressing it into moulds.   Inspired by visits to Italy, Jackie started in a small way by making panforte in her kitchen, when her children were small. The enterprise has grown over the years, and now she has an immaculately-run factory, supplying, among other outlets, Woolworths and Pick & Pay.

  
The visit was followed by a lunch at the elegantly restored Casa Labia in Muizenberg.
  
  
CHANGES TO THE COMMITTEE
  
The Slow committee has recently lost two members. We bid farewell reluctantly to Erika Reynolds, who has left Cape Town to take up a position in Kuala Lumpur. Vic de Valdorf has also had to resign from the committee because of pressure of work. We are delighted, however, to welcome Jackie Leone onto the committee.
  
  
VISIT OF GERMAN SLOW FOOD MEMBERS
 
On Saturday 1 October Stephen Flesch and Cecily van Gend met Eberhard and Angelika Volk, Slow Food members from Frankfurt, at Luke Dale Roberts’s Test Kitchen in Woodstock. They are planning a tour of the Western Cape next year with a group from the Frankfurt Convivium.

One of our members, HinWah Li, recently spent a holiday at the Kalahari Farmhouse in Namibia. This is her account of her stay there.
 
The first and lasting impression I have of Namibia is of its sheer grandeur and majestic beauty. Our first trip to Namibia was in 2009, where we drove through the Richtersveld, and the Fish River Canyon. To this day, the images of the national park and the canyon haunt my memory.
 
To me, Namibia is a place where you have the opportunity to seriously take time out from your busy schedules, away from your iPhones, tablets and laptops, the lot. It is a country where you can take a few steps back to really enjoy what nature has to offer.
 
The first day or so may be pretty tough, not hearing the cheery peep notifying you that you have been inundated with emails and missed phone calls. But by the second or third day, you get used to the quietness and serenity, and you start to enjoy embracing this great openness.
  
At this point, time will feel as though life has slowed down and the days of the week lose their relevance and simply melt away.
    

So it is through this timeless and beautiful country that we travel across until we reach our stopover, the Kalahari Farmhouse, just outside of Stampriet.

The Kalahari Farmhouse belongs to a collection of lodges known as the Gondwana Collection (www.gondwana-collection.com). They have very reasonably priced lodges scattered across Namibia - from one beautiful location to another; from the Fish River Canyon in the south, to Etosha National Park in the north.

 
The lodges are especially well-priced for South African residents and citizens, who are eligible to apply for a Gondwana Card, entitling the card holder to significant discounts on accommodation, meals and excursions. 
   
The Gondwana Collection lodges are located on previous pieces of farmlands. By creating these oases for visitors, the lodges are turning once-marginal farms into sustainable loci - reviving local flora and fauna, while supporting local communities through employment. The more intimate lodges can cater for up to 25 people, while the larger lodges can accommodate over 100 guests.
  

 
On our southern Namibia trip in 2009, we stayed at the Canon Village. It was here that we took part in an excursion, to the small, intensive farm, some distance from the lodge, which supplied most of the fresh produce, from salad leaves to bacon, to all of the lodges in the Gondwana Collection. We were very impressed by how much food was produced on this small piece of land.

Two years on, the farm has moved to Stampriet, where water is plentiful, to the beautiful setting, where we find the Kalahari Farmhouse.

   

We were shown around the farm by a very hospitable and knowledgeable Bernd Otto Grahl. Bernd happened to at the Farmhouse this particular weekend, as the manager was away on leave.     Bernd walked and talked us through a brief history of the land, which was originally set up as a sheep and cattle farm. The Farmhouse now employs 26 people from the local community. It produces its own bacon (smoked on site), as well daily producing as four blocks of cheese, with delectable flavours from chilli and cumin to garden herbs. This farm supplies all of the Gondwana lodges, with vegetables, Gouda and sheep feta cheese and meat. After a relaxing afternoon, reading on the stoep and enjoying the lovely weather, it was time to make our way to the tastefully decorated dining room for supper.

  
We sat next to the cozy fire where we enjoyed homemade butternut soup, a superbly prepared main course of beef rump steak and roasted vegetables with a beetroot salsa and rice, followed by a delicious upside down pear pudding. It was most certainly a meal worth remembering.
   
The following day, we woke to another beautiful morning, through the cracks of the shutters. After an appetizing farm breakfast, we began making our way back across the border.

   

This was an exciting journey exploring a vast and beautiful country sprinkled oases where we enjoyed the scenery and hospitality, along with meals prepared with fresh produce, knowing where it all came from. It is as Wendell Berry has said ‘eating is an agricultural act: consumers are the co-producers. Carlo Petrini once said ‘By being aware of what we eat and by making good, clean, fair choices, we can influence production and contribute to a better environment and, ultimately a better life for our farmers and ourselves’. A stay at the Kalahari Farmhouse is one such example, where we chose to be co-producers.

   
We cannot wait to spend a few more days at the Farmhouse - we are already planning our next trip.

HOUSE SITTING/SWAPPING

Yvette van Kempen is a Slow Food member who lives in Tilburg in the Netherlands and is a regular visitor to Cape Town. She will be in Cape Town from January 3-25 2012, and will possibly be returning later for several months each year. She is looking at the possibility of house sitting, or possibly swapping houses. So if anyone is interested in going to the Netherlands in January, or perhaps later, or looking for a house sitter, contact Yvette at info@yvettevankempen.nl.

We have received this notice from Miguel Ullibarri, of A Taste of Spain tours :
 
Dear Slow Food fellow members,
  
We are contacting you again to let you know that we’re glad to maintain a 150 Euro discount offer, special to SF members who join our 2012 “Ultimate Foodie Tour of Spain”. We have programmed 2 new departures of this culinary tour in May and September, and are already receiving first reservations.
  
The tour - including Madrid, Rioja, The Basque Country and Catalonia - is a great way to savor what’s cooking in Spain through private visits to traditional food & wine producers, markets, hands-on cooking classes, very special meals, cultural activities… all by the hand of our local experts.
  
You will find the brochure and booking form of our 2012 “Ultimate Foodie Tour of Spain” here. We’d very much appreciate if you could please forward this to the other members of your SF Convivum.
On a different subject, SF members with a special interest in free-range & sustainable farming may like to know that we’re organizing customized tours for small private groups to the land of the famous Ibérico ham, in Western Andausia. We program these tours upon request from November to February (during the acorn season), including a 3-4 days stay at a family-run Ibérico farm in the beautiful “Dehesa” ecosystem to take part in the traditional Ibérico pig slaughter, elaboration of Ibérico ham & charcuterie, local cooking classes, ham carving…
 
For further reference on our “Ibérico tours”, you can view at SF Siena’s website for information on the Ibérico trip that we organized for the SF Foundation for Biodiversity and the Real Ibérico Consortium, involving SF farmers and ham producers from Italy and France. Those willing to experience this can contact us at culinary@atasteofspain.com, we’ll be happy to put together a customized tour proposal for them.
  
Thanks again for your time, we hope that you find this interesting and appreciate your help sharing word of it! Please count on us if we can assist you from Spain.