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Ally its a damm shame Africa is so far away.LOL We both seem to share a passion for good food as does Loobie. We eat alot of vegetables and squash is one of our favorites. Lots of times we eat grilled fish from our gas grill. Mainly what we call Speckaled SeaTrout. I catch alot of these along with Red Drum or Redfish and Flounder which is kinda like a Halibut except way smaller). I don't know what saltwater fish you all have in Africa. Anyhow we love salad, with lots of baby spinach and romaine lettuce. We usually get salad dressing from the local italian resturant.
My wife is full blood Coonass (Cajun French). She cooks with alot of spices. My family has alot of Irish in it. I was raised eating potatoes and she was raised eating rice as alot of her family is in the rice farming business. Well looking forward to the next recipe to be posted. Take care Arti.
BtW I know that fried food is terrible but the next time I cook some I will post some pictures. Later

Hey Shannon

Glad you clarified what a coonass is! Yeah, good to know that people are people - we also eat stacks of salads and veggies - probably because it is so damn hot here most of the year, and when it is not hot, it is warm!

Sitting here on a Saturday night - it is your equivalent of November (late Autumn - almost winter - June), and it is 11pm, the temp is about 23C and I am in shorts and tank top! You can't eat too many soups and stews in this weather...though I do love a great currie (and can make one - my brother's wife is Indian and she taught me, also breyani and samoosas!) - the trick is to marinade your meat not only in the spices, but also add yogurt (plain) to the marinade.

Thanks for the explanation on brisket - not something that I have ever cooked before, though I can get it at the butcher - I checked after your post!

Fishing is really big here, both salt water and fresh water. If you are keen, there are lots of boats to charter for deep sea/big game fishing - huge barracuda, tuna, sword fish...Also great beach/rock fishing. When my husband was younger, he often went out snorkling and ended up collecting mussels, crayfish, crab...Love to snorkel myself, we also scuba dive (Aliwal Shoal - about an hour down the coast from us is very famous in dive circles), though I haven't really dived since I had kids - someone has to stay with them!
Availability at the fish matket - all the seafood you can imagine, the tuna, butterfish, red roman, rock salmon, shad, sardines, sole, hake, - the list goes on. I live on the east coast - Durban is a huge port city, and I am only about a mile from the beach - google earth Umhlanga Rocks to have a look. Agriculture is also really big here, and organic produce is growing (pardon the weak pun) all the time. I am also just about two hours drive from some of the best trout fishing in the world in the Natal Midlands and Drakensberg mountains - or Mpumalanga (near kruger National Park) if I want to travel further (about 10 hours drive), which we do!

SA is a large country with a relatively small population, so lots of farm land - we get great beef, and Karoo lamb, and the country almost lives on chicken (except that for most people it is KFC!). Big wine growing country too - check it out. Can't drink it because of the Avonex...

I'm there dude. I have a cookbook that has lots of smoker recipes in it. Since it is electric I'm going to hope it can hang outside. We have a Sam's right down the road. That sounds like a good use for my stimulus check . Have you ever noticed also how Sam's club has kick ass meat? At least the one around here does. If I need to feed some folks, I always go there. It's like having a butcher shop close by. I would have never thunk it until I strolled by. I must have been in that place a hundred times before I discovered how good the meat there is.

We also have the Dayton fish market right down the way and I want to learn how to smoke salmon.

Hey Shannon

If you have a PO Box address, I will gladly send you some Nandos sauces (they can be pretty hot though!), or else pm me your res address and I will send...
Thai curries are not at all the same as real Indian food - Thai uses a lot of coconut milk and tend to be a little sickly sweet, though their peanut satay is great (Nandos does a great peanut chillie sauce/marinade, but in general, they do what we callperi-peri - hot or very hot chillie marinades for grilled chicken), as is the sweet chillie sauce - we get a lot of Thai restaraunts here, not my fav). Indian food is very aromatic and spicey - can you get garam masala there? If so, I will try to dig up some recipes - would you prefer a meat (lamb, beef, chicken) curry or prawn or crab? Also veg is great, and Breyani is a meat & rice dish served with dahl (a kind of spicy gravymade from chick peas and lentils) - superb! Let me know if you are interested, I can also send some Indian spices - dirt cheap here.

Take care.

Indian is one type of food I've never even attempted. I've only had two curry dishes in my life and I liked them both. We are smack dab in the middle of "middle America". Lots of farms and factories. We do have some gourmand stores in Dayton since it is a fairly large city (about 600,000) and are only about 30 minutes from Cincinnati. Unfortunately, I live in the historic part of Dayton's NW side, and although there are lots of good restaraunts close, the gourmand stores are all points south. So after I see a few posts using some good Indian spices, I may have to take a shopping trip down in the southern part of town!

I loved looking at those crayfish. Shannon, you have to cook so many pounds of them because they actually yield very little edible. Is that correct? We do some blue crab 'pickin' around here, but not too many crayfish boils. I love to pick crabs though. I usually just buy those already prepared at the Dayton fish market (which happens to be very close to my house). They use a boil that looks, in it's delicious residue left on the blues, like what you boiled those headsuckers in. I need to quit reading this thread. I'm getting hungry!

Hey Lew

Again, we have stacks of stores that are dedicated to only Indian spices, don't sell anything else. The east coast has a huge Indian population left over from the colonial imports of cheap or indentured labour in th eearly part of the 20th century. They have kept their culture, languages (mostly Tamil and Hindu), religion and of course, food! Could be because of the forced segregation in the apartheid days - isolation stopped assimilation into the larger community and kept their identity.

Lots of great recipes - be happy to send you some spices too Lew - browse the 'net, decide what you want and let me know. Happy to oblige, as I mentioned, my brother's wife is indian, and I love the food. The mesh between west and east in their marriage has even lead her to develop a sausage, boiled egg, and bean curry - my husband and brother adore it with roti (bit like a soft tortilla), though I know it sounds a bit odd!

Be waiting for order details from Lew & Shannon...As Jack will tell you, I am serious with this offer - it is fun to share your culture, it is not expensive for me and I enjoy it! If anyone else wants anything in particular, let me know & I will see if I can get it.

Shannon - I am a middle aged woman and obviously not a teenybopper in love with a pretty face, and I am very upset that Texan Jason Castro has been booted out of American Idol. He has such a unique voice, and phrasing when he sings, and he seems to understand the value of respect and humility, something most 'pop' stars don't get. He is a credit to his Mama and to Texas - nice boy, hopefully will go places.
Take care y'all!

I was upset when they let the Irish girl go and the nanny, Brooke. How could you not like her? Oh well, gaspy little David will probably win it all since it's a teenybopper popularity contest at this point.

I got sucked into that show by NOT leaving the room to watch something else when the wife was watching it. Now I sit there with her and yell at the TV right next to her! I resisted any and all reality TV until "the Deadliest Catch". Now I'm absolutely addicted to that, Ax Men, Top Chef and American Idol. Oh well, it gives me something to watch when football's not on! However, the NHL playoffs are some of the best sport you can ever see, and if they are on during one of those shows I grab my cajones back and make a B-line to the bedroom TV too:D !

Lew I was just about to ask you to give me your man card so I could stamp it EXPIRED. ROTFLMAO
Hey did you go check out the electric smokers yet. I'm going to get one after I recover from mom's day. My man funds have been depleted. LOL
Later

Hey guys

I am in SA, and I get sucked into it too! I am not a 'reality tv' fan - didn't know this was classified as such, I hate Big Brother, and have never watched it passed the first episode many years ago...

Yep, weird little David A will win - not a bad singer, just very young and a bit odd! The other David is pretty good, but these guys are all 'professional' musicians, whereas the Texan, JC, was very new to singing, seemed fresh and charming, and 'undiscovered' - he didn't have the best voice, but great potential and a genuine identity.
Brooke, the nanny, was my second fav - very natural and sweet, lovely husky voice - didn't like the Irish lass too much, a bit arrogant. You guys are all the same - protest about watching 'chick' stuff, bet you blame your wives for making you watch Desperate Housewives too...

We get Discovery too, but I am not familiar with the "deadliest catch", but can imagine what it is about. We watch a lot of NatGeo Wild - think we'd get enough living where we do...The only sport I really get into are the 'biggies' Olympics, Rugby World Cup - yeeha SA won 2007 - Cricket World Cup, Soccer World Cup - SA in 2010 if anyone is interested ( I have two cottages on my property and a great guest suite), oh, and Wimbledon every year!

Just a passing thought, if you take an average life span of 75 years and divide it into thirds (youth, middle age, and elderly), then we are young until 25, middle aged from 26 to 50 and elderly from 51 to 75! Or, more pleasantly, if we live to 90 years of age, then we are young until 30, middle aged from 31 to 60 and elderly from 61 to 90 (or death)! Either way, I sadly qualify as middle aged. Or, to cheer myself up, we could be kids from 0 - 20, young adults from 20 - 40, middle-aged from 40 - 60, and elderly after 60! Oh well, that old quote - youth is wasted on the young - is so true.
Don't forget those addresses guys.

All the best.