110 ml margarine (at room temperature)
375 ml icing sugar
100 ml cream cheese
5 ml vanilla essence
chopped walnuts (optional) (or pecans)

1. Cream margarine and icing sugar.
2. Beat cream cheese and vanilla essence together with above.
3. Stir in chopped nuts.
4. Refrigerate before using as it will be very soft from beating.

250 ml sugar
250 ml sunflower oil
3 eggs
375 ml cake flour
10 ml baking powder
10 ml cinamon
5 ml bicarbonate of soda
250 ml mashed banana (2 large ones)
250 ml coarsely grated carrots
125 ml chopped walnuts (replace with pecans if you wish)

1. Beat sugar, oil and eggs well.
2. Sift dry ingredients together and add to above.
3. Add banana, carrots and nuts. Mix lightly.
4. Pour into 2 layer cake tins
5. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes at 180 degs C.
6. Ice with cream cheese icing.
7. Keep in fridge.

Do this when quantities fresh herbs are available.
January or February (in Ficksburg).

De-bone a shoulder of lamb and cut it into portion size pieces.
One large potato per person.  Plus one extra. Peel and cut as for roasting.
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper.  Plenty of salt!
Handfulls of fresh rosemary and oregano.  The more the better.
Remove a small amount of rosemary from the branch.  Keep the rest whole.
At least 150 ml olive oil.  Maybe a little more.
A good amount of lemon juice.

Assemble everything in an iron pot with a lid and cook over a fire for two hours.

Rick Stein says “this is not a recipe”.
I say, its great!

Serve with salad:
Tomatoes, basil, a little lettuce, onions and garlic and the best vinaigrette that you can think of.  More lemon juice than vinegar.  Don’t skimp on the garlic (unless it REALLY strong).  Also feta cheese and black pepper.  Would really like to try this with goats cheese.

Fresh baked bread to serve.  Rooster koek?

A bottle of red wine.

You will soon be on the sofa, thinking that you are in heaven!