A feast for foodies

Quote of the week

People to watch

Meet Nokx Majozi, a South African chef and head pie maker at The Pie Room at the Holborn Dining Room, an acclaimed restaurant in London. Majozi left her hometown of Durban in 2001, aged 22, to pursue a love for cooking inherited from her late father. She now lives in London with her husband and daughter.

Watch her in action:

Spotted on Instagram

If you are obsessed with visuals and high styling, look no further than this radical platform at the “intersection of Art, Culture, Ancestral AI & Neuro-Design". Follow @Samaritual.

South African style guru Neville Trickett has an online store where you can buy some of the best finds he has collected over the years. This is a goodie. Follow @SaintVerdesurplus.

Find(s) of the week

Hello Asia! in Sea Point in Cape Town is Laureen and Anneliese's favourite Asian supermarket. The neatly stacked shelves in this small shop have everything from bamboo kitchenware and lovely glassware to every conceivable pantry staple for Eastern cooking (and even anime figurines and merch). And the prices are brilliant.

We recommend this affordable but fantastic soy sauce (R145 for 1.9 litres) and Lao Gan Ma Crispy Chilli, the OG of chilli crisp (R58). And we can highly recommend the Kuki Naturally Pressed Sesame Seed Oil (R95).

And a 1kg refill pack of Kewpie mayonnaise is only R155.

This Wang Korea Kimchi is fantastic (R153). And Tiger Balm (R82). An absolute classic. And hard-to-find Bonito flakes.

Our other finds include an Ichiro Japanese sashimi knife (R576) and this great whetstone (R202) for sharpening knives.

These and many other items are available online, and they are shipped across the country.

In-store, we stocked up on packets of rice paper, big bags of frozen, affordable edamame beans (forget those tiny expensive punnets from Woolworths) and glass canisters with bamboo lids (prices from only R32). We love using them for spices. We also bought wood-handled scrubbing brushes (R18 each) — great for cleaning non-stick cookware — and the nifty long-stemmed strainers (R48).

The glass teapots are beautiful. But our really big find? The Beauty Cosme face masks. They are only R22 each and are as good as the big-name Payot ones we have raved about before. 

Food

Do you know the other bush tea?

Here and there is a person in the world who prefers South Africa's stepchild fynbos tea, honeybush, to its world star, rooibos. Honeybush can be any of a whole bunch of Cyclopia species, but only Cyclopia subternata (marsh or vlei tea) and Cyclopia genistoides (coastal tea) are grown commercially. It's a sweet and fragrant indigenous herbal tea, even tastier than rooibos, but the statistics say that not everyone knows it, or that the taste varies greatly.

A few years ago, according to Landbouweekblad, only about 500t of honeybush tea were harvested, compared to 12,000t of rooibos. This means it is difficult to get hold of the tea. Here and there you will find it at a Cape farm stall, but it is usually not cheap.

If you live in the Cape Peninsula, you can get it at Dried Fruit for Africa at Okavango Junction in Brackenfell at a reasonable price of R44 for 125g and R122 for 500g. You can also order it online at driedfruitforafrica.co.za.

A healthy life

Five health benefits of cinnamon:

Cinnamon is made from the inner bark of cinnamon trees and has been used medicinally for thousands of years to improve conditions such as fever and inflammation (the hidden danger), prevent common colds and diarrhoea, and improve metabolic health. However, the main benefit is regulation of glucose and insulin in the blood.

According to Forbes Health, eating even small amounts daily can help reduce blood pressure in people who have obesity.

Sprinkle on yoghurt with apple and honey for breakfast or over toast. Orange veggies and cinnamon are lovers. Sprinkle over roasted sweet potatoes or try this roasted butternut with brown butter and cinnamon. Or roasted plums with cinnamon. Delicious with thick plain yoghurt.

Build muscles with resistance bands

Use stretch bands to supplement your cardiovascular exercise. They're cheaper than weights.

Ilse Bigalke, one of our Fomolistas who recently broke her upper arm, sings the praises of the elastic bands she used for her rehabilitation. She has fully recovered and now has much more toned arms.

According to an article in The Conversation, exercises with resistance bands help to build strength, boost metabolism, reverse muscle deterioration and increase muscle mass.

A set of five bands of different resistance levels costs R149 at Takealot. Also check at sports shops and pharmacies such as DisChem.

Cook

Make these Korean wrappers with the rice paper you bought at Hello Asia! (They are widely available at Eastern stores and Woolworths also stocks them.) We like using the smaller version. You could add chicken or prawns if you want a non-vegetarian element.

Video of the week

Songs turning 50 this year

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