Clarke of the Karoo

Clarke of the Karoo

It's pour­ing with rain, the first proper soak­ing Barrydale has had this sea­son, it's a Monday morn­ing around mid­day, and we're nigh on freez­ing. We later learn that snow lies on the tips of the sur­round­ing Langeberg Mountains, not vis­ible because of the blanket of clouds hov­er­ing over the town.

We've flir­ted with a stop at Clarke of the Karoo dur­ing our two-day visit here, but as yet haven't man­aged more than at least three drive-bys, so we pull in to a park­ing lot already filling up with cars (res­taur­ants should take note that park­ing a couple of cars out­side a venue is a sure draw card to pass­ers by) by now des­per­ate for a hot cuppa some­thing. Continued

Harvesting hope with my weekly box of vegetables

Harvest of Hope

Every school week a box of veget­ables is dropped off at my son's school with my name on it. It sits, in amongst sim­ilar boxes, await­ing pick-up. It must be said that I often for­get and my box finds its way into the school fridge until I remem­ber the fol­low­ing day to col­lect it.

My pack is always brim­ming over with a vari­ety of fresh veget­ables, picked on the morn­ing of deliv­ery. This might sound pretty obvi­ous, but I have used other box deliv­ery schemes in Cape Town where, because of logist­ics and through no fault of their own, you only receive your veget­ables a couple of days after pick­ing. But this makes a huge dif­fer­ence to the state of your veget­ables (Harvest of Hope's are firm, crisp and FRESH – gor­geous!). Continued

Porter Estate Market – a perfect sunny winter morn

Porter Estate Market

The choicest way in which to spend a winter's morn­ing — the crisp air invig­or­at­ing and the skies the col­our blue that defies descrip­tion entirely – is under the can­opy of trees at the Porter Estate Market in Tokai.

Cape Town dur­ing winter is still without doubt one of the best kept secrets in the coun­try. Yes, it rains. Of course it rains, we have a wet winter sea­son. But when it isn't rain­ing, that is when out­door liv­ing takes on new mean­ing. You can actu­ally walk around at mid­day without blis­ter­ing, everything that lives and breathes is imbued with rain­fall and a zest for liv­ing, and, des­pite its not being spring or sum­mer, the air is rent with the call of the sun­bird, and little winter flowers are there for the find­ing. Continued

Visit the Milnerton Market

Photo by Skinnylaminx

The wind blows a lot out here, and it's closer to the truth to call the Milnerton mar­ket some­thing of a boot sale, but if you're in the mood for hunt­ing up a bar­gain or rum­ma­ging through genu­ine antiques, and get­ting them for a song, then you can over­look the old car parts and inev­it­able Chinese 'very cheap' toy stalls for the sheer joy of mak­ing a find!

We got chat­ting, soon after arriv­ing at the mar­ket, to the seller of socks. Almost at the start of the mar­ket stands a stall that has a sock col­lec­tion of note. I'm not usu­ally in the mar­ket for socks, but mohair socks for winter were sud­denly an imper­at­ive, par­tic­u­larly as, with much dig­ging, mut­ter­ing and re-arranging, a tiny pair ('kept spe­cially for my cli­ents with small feet') was hauled out for my son, for whom find­ing a pair of warm, thick winter socks is rather like look­ing for a needle in a hay­stack (if the aver­age chain store is any­thing to go by then children's feet don't feel the cold) ... Continued

Food & Wine Market at Hermanuspietersfontein

This is a pop­u­lar mar­ket on a Saturday morn­ing for res­id­ents of Hermanus and the sur­rounds. Its set­ting is the Hermanuspietersfontein Wine Cellars at the Hemel en Aarde Village closest to Onrus, and if you're not there to pick up the weekend's nibbles and nosh, then you're there for break­fast with friends. It's a mar­ket in much the same vein as the Neighbourgoods and the Earth Fair mar­kets in Cape Town, although on a slightly smal­ler scale. It can get busy though, so you might want to get here rel­at­ively early. The mar­ket opens at 09h00 ... Continued

The Earth Fair food market deserves a look see

The Biscuit Mill's Neighbourgoods Market has set a bench­mark for just how good food mar­kets can be in Cape Town. When it began, some three years ago now, we were blown away by Justin Rhodes' and Cameron Munro's ini­ti­at­ive, and the award-winning mar­ket now fea­tures over 100 spe­cialty traders, with a wait­ing list of some­thing close on 100 as well. It's an excel­lent mar­ket, one you'd be hard­pressed to beat ... Continued

Community markets off the beaten track

Cape Town Markets

It's sum­mer, the count­down to Christmas has already begun, and it won't be long before every­one is bit­ten, or smit­ten, by the mar­ket bug that sees us careen­ing off on Saturday morn­ings, bas­kets in tow, to revel in count­less deli­cious food mar­kets, craft mar­kets and the like that make Cape Town such a great place to be.

Local mar­kets turn shop­ping into an exper­i­ence. Instead of a mall, fluor­es­cent light­ing and count­less numb­ing shelves filled with innu­mer­able products, the ori­gin of which many of us will never know, we get a per­sonal, face-to-face con­nec­tion with local people who grow and make the products on dis­play. Continued