Hoya

Don't know exactly which one this is, but photographed this Hoya, which is growing in the courtyard outside our bedroom earlier today.

U for "Union Rings"

Oops, do we mean "onion"

This is a photo of the menu taken at a little restaurant in Nieuwoudtville in Namaqualand in the Northern Cape

In South Africa we have 11 official languages so you can perhaps understand why onion has been spelt phonetically.

Some interesting facts about "unions" from the book Let Food be Your Medicine, by Sally-Ann Creed (Anderson Publishing, Cape Town, 2002. (ISBN 0-9584489-3-0):

• helps to prevent cancer (due to allium and favonoids)
• reduces cholesterol
• reduces high blood pressure
• improves high blood fat profile
• alleviates and elliminates infections
• reputedly alleviates asthma, helps colds and flu
• aids in dealing with gastric infection
• richest dietry source of quercetin, an extremely potent antioxidant

A view of the restaurant

Eating my words - Ostrich steak

Several weeks back I did a couple of posts on Ostriches, which elicited a number of comments on the taste of Ostrich meat. In the second post I made the brash statement, "So, if it is a toss up between lean, cholesterol free Ostrich meat and a fatty lamb chop there is no contest – I’ll take my chances with cholesterol".

Mmmmm.....my bluff was called 12 days later when I ended up in hospital as a result of heart attack, caused by clogged arteries, which could have been avoided with a healthier diet.

One of the features of Greenacres Hospital is that you get to choose what you want to eat, from a very wide menu, which includes fish, beef, lamb, chicken and ostrich. Every morning someone comes around and you get to choose your next three meals. Feeling very brave one day I decided to have an Ostrich steak for supper. After all it is considered heart friendly and after my earlier comments I decided to keep an open mind.

The verdict - the vegetables were nice.

Where do I start? The presentation was impeccable. There was a cube of Ostrich steak on my plate, a la nouvelle cuisine. That's where it ended. For starters it was not easy to cut and then when I put a piece in my mouth it had the consistency of an amalgam of leather and rubber. Taste-wise it was akin to bad beef with a bouquet of chicken pooh. As I said the vegetables were nice.

I am not sure that I will try it again. After that experience I stuck to the fish. And by the way I never once ordered the lamb.

As for my brash comment, anything fatty I now consider "toxic waste" and it will not pass my lips.

The male of the species - Kudu bull

Several weeks ago Anna from Canada posted a delightful picture of a Kudu cow she had taken at the Toronto Zoo, which sparked a lot of interest. Its origins, however, were uncertain at that stage. As they are fairly common in this area I was able to identify it for her.

Anna carried a follow-up to the original post, by which time I was reclining in hospital, in fact I was in ICU, having just had a quadruple bypass. When I came out I promised to publish some pictures of the male of the species. Well, it has taken some time to get here, but here it is.

The pictures below were all taken at the Addo Elephant National Park.

Kudu bull


This guy's head was sticking out of the thick bush

Crossing the road
A magnificent spread of horns

T is for Trains

The main route from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town has by-passed the city of George for many years now and it has been a long time since we stopped in at George. When you are going from point A to point B the inconvenience of stopping to smell the roses sometimes does not seem worth the extra travel time.





On our last trip to Cape Town we spontaneously decided to do the detour through George and what a well worth while decision that was. As we were leaving the city, we saw a sign to the right proclaiming the Railway Museum. Some quick and fancy maneuvering in the traffic got us to where we wanted to be.






When we arived we were told the Museum was closed as the facilities were being used for a decor expo as the stall holders were busy setting up their stands. After a little persuasion we were let in at no charge.