The Holiday

Happy Mandela Day!

I took advantage of my July summer holiday in the USA to celebrate a real American 4th of July with fireworks and a barbeque as well as Mandela's and my niece Jill's birthdays on July 18th.

But I also recreated many of the other non-July holidays I missed celebrating this year with friends and family by being an expat living in South Africa. The month was like Christmas, Mothers' Day, my birthday and Thanksgiving all rolled into one big month-long holiday celebration!

Happy Independence Day in Denver!

my contribution to the 4th of July barbeque ... a peach, blueberry & lemon thyme cobbler!

Merry Christmas in July in Denver too!

Christmas crackers and Rwandan shweshwe bunting

shweshwe stockings hung by a real fireplace where they belong!

mini rhino crackers on a Christmas giraffe plate

Happy Mothers' Day in Austin, Texas!

Just like the Thanksgivings in Kansas that I remember!

friends, family, good food! (@ Milano in the Crown Center, KC)

more family!

Thankful for new babies!

Belated birthday cocktails cruising to Catalina Island in Cali

an aquarium birthday party in Long Beach, CA

and a birthday party at The Magic Castle in Hollywood ... complete with real magicians!

Okay and I even celebrated Cinco de Mayo several times over in Denver, Austin and L.A. ...

Feliz Cinco de Mayo in Denver!

Happy holidays!

USA bound for the month of July!

Leaving today for Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Texas and California to visit with family and friends for the whole month of July! Woo hoo!

Independence Day fireworks. Authentic Mexican food in Denver and LA and Tex-Mex in Austin! Continuous electricity. Binge-watching Masterpiece Theater. Serial pod-casting Serial. Heat and humidity. Kansas City BBQ. Austin barbeque. Cheap electronics. Christmas in July with family (but sadly not Vince, Lou & Serge)! The Pacific Ocean. The Rocky Mountains. Summer!

And since I'll be Out of Africa, a well-deserved blog-cation!!! See you in August, Africa!

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

nachos and margaritas @ the HRC in Mandela Square

All the Americans at the Hard Rock Cafe's Cinco de Mayo party thought we knew what we were celebrating on May 5. We all assumed that Cinco de Mayo was Mexico's equivalent to the USA's Independence Day on the 4th of July. And unfortunately there weren't any of our fellow Mexican-Americans there to correct us.

So when I got home, I did some research and found out that Mexico became independent from Spain on September 16th, 1810, almost half a century before the events leading to the Cinco de Mayo holiday occurred! So then what's up with Cinco de Mayo?

Viva Frida!

El Día de la Batalla de Puebla, or The Day of the Battle of Puebla - or more commonly, Cinco De Mayo, - recognizes an unlikely military victory by the Mexican army. In 1862, during the French invasion of Mexico, an ill-equipped 4,000 person Mexican army, greatly outnumbered by the French, fought the Batalla de Puebla on the fifth of May -- and won!

greetings from Lou & Serge

On May 9th of that same year, Mexican President Juárez declared that May 5th become a national holiday, commemorating the unexpected win. Soon after, the French took control of Mexico City and remained in power until 1867. With the end of the American Civil War, the United States could also assist Mexico in the later part of the decade and help free them from European military control. Cinco de Mayo has since transformed into a Mexican-American holiday.

Part of our annual month-long May Fest, we always celebrated Cinco de Mayo in the USA by going out for nachos and margaritas, wearing sombreros and channeling our inner Frida Kahlos at a local Mexican restaurant so that's what we did here too. But now at least I know what we're actually celebrating!

Holiday food is life!

One way that people like to celebrate their holidays is with food.

Easter 2012 menu from NY's Osteria del Circo

Back in the USA, the Christmas holiday meals we prepared over the course of the season were strongly influenced by our families' heritage. Seven fishes for an Italian Christmas Eve (me and Vince). German crown roast of pork on Christmas Day (Vince) and borscht and chicken Kiev for a Russian Epiphany (me again.)

Easter cuisine was kind of up for grabs. We would typically go out for brunch in NYC as our main meal of the day followed by a light supper later that night at home in NJ. Could be to a French restaurant, Italian, Greek or our old standby, the Russian Tea Room - any cuisine that includes a strong Easter menu. Thanksgiving was without fail an all-American turkey. And Independence Day? That would be a barbeque at the shore on the Fourth of July.

If we were traveling during the Christmas or Easter holidays, we would naturally check out the local customs and fare. Like oysters for a French réveillon on New Year's Eve. Last year we were in Mozambique for Easter so Easter lunch consisted of king prawns straight off the fishing boats!

An Easter supper in our NJ dining room

... and another Easter supper in our NJ kitchen

This year for Easter we stayed put in Joburg. We had Easter Sunday lunch at Mosaic with Eat Out Chef of the Year Chantel Dartnall at the Orient Boutique Hotel in Pretoria. But before that, we indulged in some traditional South African Easter dishes which we made at home.

First on Good Friday, our one meal of the day was poached kingklip. Along with Ash Wednesday, Good Friday for Catholics is a day of abstinence which means in addition to being meatless, it is also limited to only one full meal for the whole day.

After our Good Friday dinner, we prepared pickled fish from the leftovers for Holy Saturday's dinner. The suggestion and recipe for this Cape Malay Easter classic came from a blog called Scrumptious South Africa.  Award-winning social media strategist, cook, food writer, recipe developer, professional freelance journalist, editor and blogger Jane-Anne Hobbs Rayner (that's alot of hats!) also included a bonus fish paté recipe for the leftovers from the pickled fish dish. This recipe keeps on giving!

Eating pickled fish is a South African Easter tradition. Celebrated Cape Malay cookbook author and chef Cass Abrahams, of German and Xhosa extraction, was raised as a Christian in Johannesburg and converted to Islam when she married into the Cape Malay community. Growing up, her Christian family would eat pickled fish and hot cross buns for breakfast on Good Friday before going to a prayer service - a very long one in the Johannesburg City Hall - and have the same afterwards. Pickled fish with hot cross buns? Abrahams believes this cross-cultural tradition started in Cape Town's District Six where Muslims, Jews and Catholics once lived closely side by side.

On Easter morning we broke our fast with Jane-Anne's Hot Cross Buns Bread and Butter Pudding with Pears. It is an excellent way to use up those left-over Good Friday hot cross buns and it was delicious!

Why did I never think of using hot cross buns this way? It reminded me of Craig Claiborne's Egg Nog Challah French Toast recipe (NYT Cookbook, 1992) which we make every year on Christmas morning!

Of course the best part of making holiday foods from heritage recipes other than your own or eating the local food of a country you visit or live in during a holiday is that the food then becomes a part of your holiday tradition. We can make this hot cross bun recipe every Easter morning from now on and harken back to our first Easter breakfast in South Africa. And we will.

Mexican Hot Chocolate from Azteca

Hot Cross Buns Bread and Butter Pudding with Pears and a Caramel Amarula Sauce

Amarula Hot Chocolate with an elephant Peep and choco-rhinos!

"glub!"

elephant Peep eye!

And after Easter ...

Easter Monday egg salad and ham hot cross bun sliders

pickled fish pate and beetroot hummus on baguette slices

USA CARE Package

Vince brought me back a CARE package from the USA  ...

So now I could make REAL tollhouse chocolate chip cookies for book club at my house on Wednesday ...











... and we were able to serve REAL s'mores for our post-Independence-Day-pre-Bastille-Day-FIFA-WC2014-braai on Sunday!

Happy!

Happy 4th of July from Pretoria, South Africa!

photo by Dana Dwyer

4th of July Pity Party

American down to my toes

Vince is in the USA for some meetings in New York next week. But before that, he is in California to spend the long 4th of July weekend with our sons. First they will meet in Monterey where my younger son Nick is stationed with the Marines. There is a big 4th of July parade in Monterey and Nick will be marching in it. Then the three of them will go sailing in Half Moon Bay and probably take in some of the uber-patriotic food and festivities at the downtown Monterey street festival before they head up to Oakland where my older son Alex lives just in time for some fireworks somewhere over San Francisco Bay.

I am beginning to regret my decision not to accompany Vince to the USA. But (as my reasoning went at the time) I had already been to the US to see our sons twice since Alex was in Africa with us last Christmas and I will probably go back again before Nick comes here for this year's Christmas holiday. It'll be no big deal. And besides, my rear end is just starting to recover its feeling after the last endless butt-numbing flight from Joburg to San Francisco in April.

When Vince and I discussed his upcoming trip last month, my butt was still mostly numb and I guess I let it influence my decision to stay behind. (Nobody hops on a plane for 20+ hours without really thinking about it first.) But now that the reality has sunk in that I will be without family in South Africa for the 4th of July, I am having some decider's remorse. Boohoo. Time for a pity party!

4th of July = beach

I never used to be so nostalgic about the 4th of July. Patriotic, sure, but nostalgic, no.

And it's not that I particularly feel tied to the Macy's fireworks display which I've seen many times over NY's Hudson and East River on park benches and from a boat. (Although they truly are the best!) I have spent the 4th in cities out of the country before - in Paris and London and Dublin and last year in Joburg - which meant no fireworks whatsoever on any river from any vantage point. (Although one time I was actually flying home from Europe at night on the evening of the 4th of July and had an aerial view of all the fireworks going off all across the tri-state area. Unexpected and quite something to see!)

CHQ parade & symphony concert

In the USA I have cheated on New York with other big cities too on the 4th - Boston (great live music on the Esplanade to accompany their awesome fireworks,) Washington DC (great music too and a "monumental" background.). On the west coast, I have seen the fireworks myself before over San Francisco Bay and even further (north)west in Anchorage where the fireworks do not even start until almost midnight after the sun finally goes down!

flares line the lake perimeter for the fireworks display

Even though I do equate the 4th of July with the beach,  I have two-timed the Jersey Shore plenty of times with other beach towns - Chatham, Edgartown, Block Island, Nantucket. And I've even snuck out on the beach altogether with a lake of all things! In Chautauqua - fireworks and flares.



And it's not like I have nothing to do on the day itself. I am going to the US Embassy 4th of July party in Pretoria. I will be surrounded by plenty of red, white, and blue Americans ... some of them even Marines. I sure hope that when I do, I will be able to shake off this melancholia and feel better about my decision to be independent on Independence Day. Once again I turn to my Facebook albums for solace. Here are some pictures I scraped off from celebrations past to help me cope ...

Southside Johnny at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park. A local Jersey Shore ritual, Southside performs there before every 4th of July.

The parade in Mantoloking.

With its Grand Marshal and Mrs.

And veterans.

Aly in the Manto parade

Vintage cars and red firetrucks and decorated bikes.

After the parade there are games at the yacht club.

Have to have some John Philips Sousa to accompany the...

... barbeque at the yacht club, along with kayak and canoe races, a memorial mile run and a flag-raising ceremony.

Red White and Beer.

Gathering on the beach after dark in Point Pleasant to watch the fireworks over the Atlantic Ocean.

We brought some of our own too.













Oooohaaaah!

Back to the beach the next morning in Mantoloking for the Memorial Paddle-Out.

Lots of house and cocktail parties! Here I am on my way into the July Governor's cocktail party at Mantoloking Yacht Club.















There's a regatta, the Barton Handicap in Barnegat Bay,

a sailing selfie

And more sailing just for fun.

summer jewelry!

That's Governor Pataki!

Had to get in some baseball if the Yankees were in town.

A requisite stroll on the boardwalk over the weekend for some games and rides.

Hmmm. That's a lot of nostalgia for a little ol' American Embassy celebration in Africa to live up to. I better start thinking of this 4th of July as just another Independence Day out of town ... Way out of town.

God bless America!