Meneer Wilfie, me, Stella, Mavie and neighbour, Mrs Ivy, 1964.
At the beach, back row: Stella, Mavie, Uncle Julian. Front L-R: Mrs Ivy, cousins Marlene and Lorna, me and Ivan, 1962.
Mavie on the rocks at Mouille Point, 1950s.
Sometimes there was corned beef or homemade steak ’n kidney pie with boiled potatoes or mash, salad made with tomato, onion and lettuce and squash with mustard as the accompanying condiment. Macaroni cheese or savoury rice with a tomato-onion-lettuce salad was always paired with breakfast sausage or minute steaks. Lamb chops or fish fillets or kuite (fish roe or fish eggs that look like sausages) came with potato chips and a tomato and onion smoor.
I didn’t eat the kuite or rollmops. I also drew the line at giblets stew, homemade brawn, tripe and trotter curry. But I did eat kaiings though, made from the excess fat cut from the meat, chopped into tiny bits and cooked in a pot until crispy. So lekker. ‘Lekker’, by the way, was without a doubt the most-used Afrikaans word in our family.
My favourite was when Mavie made bredies. Just after the meat and onions had browned (or burnt and she had done a quick rescue mission), before the veg was added, she would call me in from playing outside for brood-in-die-pot and tea. A slice of bread was put into the pot to cook a few minutes and it absorbed the browned fat and onion juices. It was very lekker.
All the lard was stored in containers in the fridge and used for cooking. Even the excess fat from Sunday roast was saved and used again for the bredies. Uncle Joey would visit most days and head straight for the bread bin for a slice or two of bread, spread with fat and topped off with whatever leftover meats or spreads and jams were around. (He wasn’t supposed to eat those. Doctor’s orders. He had diabetes.)
Then there was the Christian ritual of Good Friday pickled fish from a recipe that was invented and shared by Cape Malay slaves4. Hot cross buns were always bought – I don’t think my family had a recipe for them. We ate the same menu for Easter Sunday as we did for Christmas, except without the Christmas doekpoeding. We had one of the usual winter puddings, usually with custard.
Easter weekend was more about church than food, although I got the impression that chocolate may just have sneaked into first place ahead of piousness for some. The Easter holy week began on Palm Sunday with the handing out of palm crosses that symbolised Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, riding on the back of a donkey over a street that had been covered with cloaks and beside which people stood waving palm fronds.
The weekend began on Thursday with the blessing of the anointing oils, holy water, wine, wafers, paschal candles and incense, all of which were to be used throughout the archdiocese for the rest of the year. Thursday evening there’d be a special service during which the priest washed the feet of fellow clergy, deacons and lay ministers. In recent years, some churches have introduced a paschal meal after the service, as an attempt to reimagine what Jesus did the night before he was crucified.
Good Friday was sombre with the re-enactment of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross held in the field behind the church. I found this frightening and sad. It was as if one was right there in Jerusalem all those thousands of years ago, especially if the weather was overcast and gloomy.
The re-enactment required the congregation follow, according to European processional traditions, a narrator reading passages from the Gospels. This was a shorter service than the three-hour focus on gospel readings, solemnity and prayer for adults in the afternoon. Between these two church services, there was much munching on pickled fish and buns in homes across the city.
The midnight mass, called a wake mass, was held on the eve of Easter Sunday. For me, it was the most beautiful event on the church calendar. It was dramatic from the moment one entered the darkened church where the only light came from candles flickering on the altar.
The priests and altar servers would enter in silent procession without the characteristic pipe-organ music and hymn. An altar server walked ahead carrying the incense burner. There would be opening prayers after which we filed out to hear another prayer while standing around an enormous fire. Then the paschal candle, studded with religious symbols, would be lit.
Back in the church, we would all receive light from this paschal candle to light our little white candles in cardboard holders. The paschal candle would stay lit until Pentecost. There’d be a benediction with incense, and prayers would be sung as was the tradition of the Solemn or High Mass. Only then would the lights be switched on for the continuation of the mass with hymns sung to the accompaniment of the pipe organ.
These were all symbolic of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the grave – rising out of darkness on the third day. The tradition goes back centuries to the days when Christians could not read the Gospels for themselves and the stories were told through images, symbolism and re-enactment. Going to this mass felt like touching the ancient past.
All Holy days, events and foods went according to the seasons, except at Christmas, when we ate a traditional British meal, as was the custom at the Cape since colonial times. Girls were taught all these dishes by their mothers and in Domestic Science classes at high school, out of a 1948 textbook called Housecraft for Primary Schools by R Fouche and WM Currey. Often new recipes were swopped or cut out of newspapers and British magazines.
The Christmas meal was oven-roasted leg of lamb with potatoes flavoured with a sectioned onion. The meat (always carved by Dor) was served with cauliflower and white sauce, gem squash and yellow rice, gravy and Dor’s mint leave salad, with chopped onion, salt, pepper and a dash of vinegar.
The flagship of the meal was always the doekpoeding made days before. Making it was a long process that began with freshening up the calico cloth in which the pudding was boiled. The batter consisted of breadcrumbs, fruit mix and nuts (bought at Wellington’s Fruit Growers in Darling Street in the city centre), flour, eggs, yellow sugar, a little milk, measures of mixed spice, all-spice and cinnamon. The calico would be spread over a colander and the mixture spooned in, before being tied with string and lowered into a big pot of boiling water at the bottom of which was a plate to hold the pudding’s shape and to prevent it from sticking to the pot. There it would steam for five hours.
The Christmas pudding was served with custard and it would last for days. Mavie did not add coins or brandy, as was the tradition. She would not be caught dead buying brandy, and she feared that coins would lead to choking.
On Christmas day, the usual visitors would drop by after the morning service before they went off to their own family lunch. They’d be served Bashew’s, the cooldrinks delivered to the door in wooden crates on Friday nights, or tea, and tarts or fruit cake.
On Christmas Eve we always went to the magical midnight mass at Our Lady Help of Christians. Carols were sung before the High Mass and were followed by a benediction. When I was still a child, Mavie would take me to the morning service.
A big part of the rituals of Christmas and Easter was to go to Klip Cemetery in Grassy Park to put flowers on the McBain family grave, after which we walked over to the grave of Great-grandpa José Antonio and Great-grandma Minnie, near the World War II soldiers’ graves. Dor’s flower arrangements were of such a high standard they could have easily been used as centrepieces at a bride’s table or on a cathedral side altar. Her work was showcased far and wide, including at the flower festival at St Mary’s Cathedral. In the 1980s she received, during Pope John Paul II’s reign, two papal medals for her work in the church.
We also made a point of going to greet Uncle Joey and his family.
