Hamentashen Mission: Success

Four trays of light brown and crispy apricot-filled hamentashen came out of my kitchen in Rondebosch this afternoon! Picture evidence of the day's baking festivities will soon follow, so do not panic. I prepared the dough yesterday and added the vital secret ingredient, wrapped it in plastic wrap and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. I knew things were on the right track when the consistency and smell of the raw dough seemed to match how we made the pastries at my grandmother's. I borrowed a rolling pin from the kids at 26 Grotto and commenced baking. It was so nice to spend two hours this afternoon rolling, kneading, flouring, cutting, pinching and filling the hamentashen.

The natural light from the open shudders filled the room and this kitchen and apartment thousands of miles away from the States felt like home.

Speaking of food, Kim and I try to cook together on most nights when we're both home. It is so nice not to eat alone and much easier to prepare a second portion of whatever I am eating.

The perishable ingredients in South Africa are so much fresher than the States: milk, cheese, produce and vegetables taste and smell better here. I was told to appreciate the food by a new friend at a Passover seder last year at my friend Amy's home in Roswell. The friend, who emigrated from South Africa in the early 1990s, misses the freshness of the food, especially the dairy. He told me, "The food is so fresh, your farts will smell better!" I think he's on to something.

South Africa proudly produces so much food that it exports to the rest of the continent -- wheat, dairy, beef, poultry, pork and springbok. The "Iowa" of South Africa is the Free State (formerly the Orange Free State) -- a rural province in the center of the country with a long Afrikaner tradition. Before the South African Anglo-Boer War a century ago (the word "boer" means farmer), the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (home to Johannesburg and its gold mines) constituted the two independent Boer/Afrikaner republics. Many Afrikaners consider themselves Africa's only white tribe and use their 300-year bloodline to the African continent as proof. Primarily of Dutch stock with heavy French and German infusion, the Afrikaners speak their own language (described to me as 17th century Dutch) and -- unlike Anglo-South Africans -- largely cut their ties to the European continent generations ago.

Several thousand Afrikaner farmers produce the food that 45 million South Africans (and 500 American semester study abroad students at UCT) consume -- not unlike Zimbabwe until 2001. Land ownership and redistribution is perhaps the most contentious (and less spoken about) political question in South Africa today. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has long promised previously disadvantaged people (non-whites) access to subsistence farmland, but the government has taken no official action on the question since coming to power in 1994.

The moral of this post: the hamentashen came out great, and the milk tastes good. Remember, happy cows make more milk (and cheese).