European Wild Boar Delivery In Nelspruit

On Saturday Cules,Minki and I travelled to Nelspruit in Mmpumalanga to deliver some young wild boars we sold to a guy there. We offered to deliver them as I was keen to visit some old school friends of mine living there. Our 25 year matric reunion is coming up in July,we have never had a reunion of any kind so many of us will be seeing each other for the first time in 25 years!!! The Class of '87 sure has a LOT of catching up to do which is why this event is taking place over THREE days!! The old hometown is never going to know what has hit it....Back to this weekend past,I also met up with a girlfriend I last saw 30 years ago when they moved away to Nelspruit...as we walked up to each other we each said "You look just like your Mother!" simultaneously and burst into tears of joy and clung onto each other laughing and crying until we caught the rather worried looks on our husband's faces....I have never before talked non stop for three hours and then it was time to go and her husband assured me that I mustn't dye my hair for the Reunion, as I wouldn't look like my Mom anymore then....Back to the pigs, catching them was quite a mission,to say the least.... boy,did we have fun,I got charged and every time we caught a screaming youngster we were charged again..,10 times over, as that was how many we had to deliver...One thing I do know for sure,grey hair or not, is that I am rather good at sprinting and jumping on to the back of our truck now,in fact,I know I can probably still outrun anyone on the farm at age 42 with an angry wild boar on my heels as motivation....except for Jess, maybe...!

Cules and the boars' new owner looking at his piggery...

"This is our new home??"

"You get off first!"

"No,you go first!"

"Look at all those pigs..they are kinda scary!"

"Ohhh,lets go!!"

"Wait,I changed my mind...I want to go back to my old home....!"

Too late !

Welcome to Nelspruit!

The End

Pita Bread Baking

The girls have agreed that I should teach them how to bake a few different types of bread. Not that I am the most successful bread baker around...I have a loaf of rye bread refusing to rise as we speak.....Anyway,what got them all fired up was these pita breads I made the night before last. This is going to be so much fun,we get together every evening when Tarien comes home from work and then we make the dough,leave it to slow rise in the refrigerator for the second rise and pop it into the oven the next morning (which will be my job seeing as I am the early riser in the family ) ...and everybody gets to have warm,fresh,home baked bread every morning for a week....We have to be realistic here...by that time we all would be a little tired of baking bread every day,but at least my kids would (hopefully) have learned something about bread baking...

Pita Bread Recipe


Ingredients:

1 package of yeast, instant or quick rising is fine
1/2 cup warm water
3 cups all purpose flour
1  teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon  sugar
1 cup lukewarm water,make sure the water is not too hot and kills the yeast!


Preparation:

Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup of warm water. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Let sit for 10-15 minutes until water is frothy.

Combine flour and salt in large bowl.

Make a small depression in the middle of flour and pour yeast water in depression.

Slowly add 1 cup of warm water, and stir with wooden spoon  until elastic.

Place dough on floured surface and knead for 10-15 minutes. When the dough is no longer sticky and is smooth and elastic, it is ready.

Coat large bowl with vegetable oil and place dough in bowl. Turn dough upside down so all of the dough is coated.

                          Allow to sit in a warm place for about 3 hours, or until it has doubled in size.



  Once doubled, roll out in a rope, and pinch off 10-12 small pieces.(I did 8) Place balls on floured surface..

  Preheat oven to 500 deg F. at least an hour before baking and make sure rack is at the very bottom of oven. Be sure to also preheat your baking sheet.

    Place balls on floured surface..

Let sit covered for 10 minutes. 

Roll out each ball of dough with a rolling pin into circles. Each should be about 5-6 inches across and 1/4 inch thick.

N.B.  Spritz each circle with a bit of water,which would make them pouf up beautifully.

Bake each circle on a pre- heated baking tray smeared with olive oil  for 3 minutes until the bread puffs up. .

Because my circles were a little bigger than normal,I baked each one individually,which sounds like a lot of trouble but really wasn't as 3 minutes go by quickly and the results were SO worth the effort!

When you take these babies out of the oven...for the love of all that is Holy,do NOT stack them on top of each other.... Instead,be clever and put them on cooling racks covered with a cloth.

We cut ours in halves and filled it with a tuna mayonnaise filling with lots of lettuce...yum,mmm



                                                                         The End

Name That Movie Answer...

Ta Daa!

REAL STEEL

No-one knew except for Michaele, who is way too clever and went and Googled it....

I am sure she was a FBI or CIA agent in a previous life....

This movie is a must see, even my husband who has a pet hate against all Sci- Fi type movies watched this one with a smile on his face....after I got him to sit down and watch....

Name That Movie

Ok,so both our tv's decided to conk in the day before yesterday and we have just arrived home with a 47 inch beast of a LCD thingey and we are lying low watching movies...

"We'll probably get our asses kicked but at least we will go down swinging..."
Name that movie....

Flowers For Leontien

Leontien

Sending you huge [(((( huggs))))],tons of love,kisses and a rose from my garden in South Africa!!!
You are in our thoughts and prayers.
Liesl
xoxoxo

Darting,Capturing and Transporting Rhinos.

A couple of weeks ago Jess went to see how her boyfriend and his team operates to capture and move 10 rhino's they had bought for their Game Farm. She has witnessed a couple of these operations now and absolutely loves it. She has had her truck charged by a very cross Rhino bull once after he woke up from having a wound treated too....! She found herself standing alone on the back of the vehicle when the bull decided her truck was the best target for him that day and she had to slide over the roof to get inside and drive it away before the angry bull could do too much damage! My heart nearly stopped when she told me about that episode...! Are you aware of the rate these unique animals are being slaughtered by poachers in Africa...? I doubt my Grandchildren will see them in the wild.......Anyway,here is a couple of pictures of the "behind the scenes" happenings in the day of the life of a South African game rancher...The pictures are in no specific order as I was scared of losing some due to the new Blogger.....

That's Charl standing on top of the trailer overseeing the loading of  the rhino cow and calf.

Jess is standing on the far right..

You have to be a quick -on-your -feet thinking type of person to do this job as it is very dangerous and the drugs used to put the animal under can be potentially deadly...

Helping a drugged animal onto its feet before loading it...

Charl waiting for the little calf to follow suit and sleep like his Mommy...he wasn't very keen at all!

Hard at work...

The poachers mostly kill the little ones as well....

Charl darting one of the rhinos from their helicopter....

Jess loves flying about in it...

Covering their eyes so they don't stress too much....

The difficult terrain they have to work in...

Come on man,will you get down and sleep already???

The vet cutting off the rhino's horn so the poachers will hopefully leave them alone...

Although the first killings for just the little stump left over has started happening elsewhere in the country already....

It takes a whole lot of manpower to get the drugged animal to the truck....

This particular animal has been shot 21 times with an AK 47 last year but has made a full recovery!!

Thanks to these people fighting behind the scenes to preserve these animals...

Finally!!! The calf is asleep.....!

The End

The Lady In Red And An Ode To The Donkey

While driving through the city of Polokwane a couple of weeks ago,we found ourselves having to drive through the  city centre ...a place we ALWAYS avoid,but Jessica had to be at UNISA to enroll for another course she is taking....I remembered the statue of a donkey that has been there forever as an ode to the humble,hard working  donkey...We went round and round that Plaza at least three times that day and I never once could get a decent pic of it as there is just no-where to park in that area..ever..,it is crowded and busy with taxis speeding by non-stop and Cules made every ones day by passing by the donkey as slowly as he could possibly go....While going through the photos later on,I was thinking how absolutely funny the one pic actually was...

Woopsie...!

My first try...

Can you spot what I was trying to capture on camera??

That darned Colonel is absolutely everywhere!!!

Hallo boytjie!!!

If only that donkey could talk.....

It actually looks like he was thinking of kicking that lady here...

Look at that zoomed in ear and the raised leg....

OK,both ears are floppy and he is only resting that leg closest to the Lady In Red...

Good boy....

The End