A blast from the past - Flashbacks from way back.

In the name of Allah most gracious, most merciful.

11 Ramadhan 2014. 9 July 2014.

Dad, Uncle Achmat and Oupa Abdul Aziz

My lift to a school food garden check-up was running late this morning. The weather is so fabulous that I put the washing on the line, hung out the towels and tidied up. Abu is busy planting poles to knock on shade cloth. So before the day gets ahead of me, I plonked myself in front of the computer and started emptying out my thoughts, here goes.

It’s so weird hey, the older we become, and the more we contemplate on the practices of our parents and elders. Our diets were actually very balanced. We had everything in moderation, Mondays were good for fish because of the full course meal on Sundays, roast chicken only on Sundays, as a second dish, bredies during the week which included green vegetables and pulses and curry or biryani or steak and kidney pie on Fridays. Saturdays were fried kidneys and eggs or smoored sausage, maybe a raisin loaf popped in the oven for late snacks. Desserts would be fruit salads or jelly, canned fruit and Ideal milk or my favourite honeycomb sponge. On colder days, vermicelli, klapper tert, bread and butter pudding, tapioca or sago, but potato puddings were strictly for merangs. And don’t forget the stewed fruit.

Eid was special – Cornish Hen or freshly slaughtered chicken curry with fluffy rotis, Corned beef, roasted tongue, leg of lamb or silverside. Crayfish when in season, maybe some duck that we slaughtered. Sambals and salads and an array of different biscuits, loaves, coconut or jam tarts, hertzoggies or twee gevriet koekies and trifle. There was an air about Eid the week before to clean and beautify the house before Laylatul Qadr - The Night of Power. Sometimes those oil paints were a bit much ne? But my Mom would cut onions and place them in saucers to absorb the smell. Onions are amazing vegetables for cleansing and purifying the body, you know. In the Sudan we were advised to place a slice of onion in the water to be ensured that it would cleanse either the water or our colons from bacteria.

Our parents really knew their way around not only the herbs but also how to use and why to use spices and managed to work out a good diet plan. We were also encouraged to consider others at the table and who had no table. Today a Mom insists “eet nog my kid, jy het mos heel dag gepwasa, maak sommer die hele pizza klaar ons wil mos nie mors nie.”  

Someone gives a plant some scientific name and starts with: “research shows, that turmeric is known to help with Alzheimer’s disease”, and we are all off to buy turmeric because research shows so we sommer want to throw in a tablespoon and gulp in down. It was included in your diet regularly, but we forget. We don’t make yellow rice anymore, we buy that precooked little bakkies at Woolies, because it is so convenient and have become the instant gratification generation. Also we have changed our pallets to prefer the tastes of sodium and tartarizine and MSG smothering our food and marring our taste buds, I don’t even want to go into the fallout of eczema, allergies, and asthma, diabetes and weight issues.

Don’t even make me go to those Maggi blocks or Oxo blocks. We use it because the recipe states to use stock. Hello, what is stock? The water that you boiled the vegetables in and throw down the sink or the water from the corned tongue or beef. Or make your own and store it. Onions, garlic, spring onions and leeks and herbs are the backbone of bredies and roasts. Waar het Maggi geleer om kos te maak?

 My Mom used to say “gooi borrie op daai sny in haar hand om die bloed te stop en die sny toe tetrek”. Fetch a piece of aloe from a neighbour; some castor oil leaves for migraines and packed on the back for lungs; malfa pressed into a ball to releasing sap for earache; parsley water for bladder infections; ginger for nausea; lemon water to get the blood pressure regulated; a groen amara  infusion for colon problems, turnips for kidney and bladder aliments; Epsom salts for tired feet and muscles; bi-carb to clean teeth; chew on a clove for toothache; the milky sap of figs for (vratjies) warts,  and the best remedy for flu simmer some water with a lemon squeezed, a piece of green ginger, spoon of honey. When it was cooled off my Mom would pop in two dispirins and you drank it, Med lemon take a hike. It’s all in the spice cupboard!

Their knowledge of nutritious foods were not learnt on Google. How about  spinach to get your haemoglobin count up; some nutmeg generously grated over steamed veggies for boils; cinnamon water to help slow down prenatal bleeding; periwinkles for good iodine content;  salmon, snoek and tuna for all kinds of health issues; garlic for infections and bacteria.

I think the generation of our parents were kwaai and we do not honour that, we call it outyds. They had so much knowledge of how to live a quality life that was infused with celebration and warmth and happiness and Shukr and Sadaqah. Our rooms were constantly filled with either family who did not have a home or parcels and hampers of food. They worked hard either at a job, home industry, in the home, for the Mosque or maddressah, a social consciousness that we can only dream of and theories practice in the everyday.

Generosity was the very fabric of their being. Sundays a “diepbord” would be dished for the neighbour and the cakes for boeka would go to neighbours Muslim or Christian alike. An orphan or widow ranked high on their agenda, not to mention a wayfarer or student. Sharing was their mainstay: A snoek is always shared with someone as is a bag of potatoes or onions or oranges or box of tomatoes or tray of eggs. Their earnings were so much less but had so much Barakah.

Cleanliness practiced was by far more superior to the spray cans of Mr Muscle that we brandish around, Mr Muscle was working at Murray and Steward. On Thursdays, the house would be turned out, all bedding changed, every floor scrubbed, polished and buffed, every window washed including the window sill, every pot scoured till it shined (my Mom gave me her Classic pots purchased in the 70s and although its handles are a bit verwoes they are still perfect), every cupboard repacked, every toilet bleached; every piece of furniture washed with vinegar, all cutery first with lemon then with Brasso or Silvo;  every carpet or mat washed and I could go on and on.

But enough, let me show my son my Mom’s triple S remedy to get rid of stains on the white tablecloths. Wet it and rub on some sunlight soap, lavish with either salt or suurlemoen and throw it out on the grass into the sunlight! Did I say grass? There is a bit of lawn here, OK just a small patch!

Plant food and involve every member in a house turnout! And please add your family remedies and recipes.

 

Yasmine