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Showing posts from November, 2014

Pancake Weather

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In South Africa we make pancakes when it rains. Directly translated, we bake pancakes. These are not American pancakes, neither British nor French. They are neither crumpets nor crepes. They are pancakes. This afternoon Riyadh had a brief trickle of rain.  It rains, you make pancakes. You start off with the batter (a family recipe) which has thickened in the fridge for at least 3 or 4 hours.   You NEVER make the pancakes with freshly made batter.   It's simply too runny.   The gluten needs to develop so that the pancakes are soft and not chewy. You take the cold, thickened batter out of the fridge, turn on the heat and get a heavy pan ready.   Stir the batter thoroughly and add a bit water if its too thick.     Family tip:    add a teaspoon or two of sunflower oil to THE BATTER.     While you are waiting for the pan to heat up really well, mix white sugar and ground cinnamon in a bowl or jar.   Get a large plate ready and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar on

Window = George = Greek

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My town, George was proclaimed by the  Earl of Caledon , governor of the Cape Colony on  St George's Day , 23 April 1811, and named after the reigning British monarch, King George III.       Adriaan Geysbertus van Kervel was appointed the first magistrate.     One of Van Kervel's first acts as magistrate was to dig a  furrow  to supply the first thirty six  plots  in George with water.      An 1819 map shows the original furrows and storage dam where they remain to this day in the Garden Route Botanical Gardens.     My house is right there.   If only they had supplied 40 plots... The Georgian era is a period of British history from 1714 to 1830, during  the reigns of the kings George I, George II, George III and George IV  (with the sub-period of the Regency, defined by the Regency of George IV as Prince of Wales during the illness of his father George III).  The style of Georgian and Regency houses was based on that of classical Greek architecture. The propo