Bridget McNulty

A restaurant with a difference…

// April 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Cape Town, Life (and the living of it)

… Not a restaurant with a view, but one with a whole lot of charm.

Yesterday my man and I went for lunch with two dear friends at Sibanye Restaurant in Imizamo Yethu, the township just outside Hout Bay. I was a little reluctant, not to go for lunch in the township, but because I thought it would be very touristy – Sibanye is specifically aimed at tourists.

I was (very) pleasantly surprised. The restaurant is in a shack quite close to the entrance of Imizamo Yethu, and although we attracted a few stares when we walked in, we were pretty much treated like locals for the rest of the time. Inside the brightly painted shack there are mismatched tables and chairs and some very popular arcade games. The lunch is a 3 course meal (for only R60 – a steal!) and it was absolutely delicious. Starters were small vetkoek-type pastries stuffed with delicious mince and served with a tomato salsa-type sauce. Mains were beef or chicken with samp and beans, cabbage, more tomato mix, pumpkin and delicious potatoes, and dessert was tea or coffee with freshly made koeksisters. Delicious!

Sibanye was started by a team of two – Randy Mcknight and Nathan Roberts – and they’ve got the place running as smoothly as you could wish. They even hooked up a pair of teenage gumboot dancerts to provide midmeal entertainment, a real treat! It’s aimed at tourists, local and international, and seems to be a more chilled alternative to Mzoli’s Place in Gugulethu. Bear in mind, though, that you do have to book 24 hours ahead, and it’s only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday lunch.

In the mood for an unconventional Sunday lunch? Check out Sibanye, you won’t be disappointed.

Care for a taste?

// April 3rd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Cape Town, Life (and the living of it)

I went to the most delicious (literally, the most delicious) festival last night – the Taste of Cape Town festival. What a fab idea! They get 18 of the city’s best chefs and set them up in a long line of fancy tents, and then each chef chooses three items to feature on their menu – only each item is just a ‘taste’, a mini portion. You buy crowns, which are the currency of this lovely kingdom, and then you can stroll around and choose which delectable dishes you want to taste… Yummy!

It was such a stunning evening last night – balmy air, a light breeze, one of those sublime summer evenings (possibly one of the last sublime summer evenings!) and my man and I were like kids in a candy store deciding what to eat… We settled on a delicious sweet and sour prawn cake on potato curry, fried duck in spicy rice, dark chocolate balls in white chocolate soup (unbelievable) and a flourless chocolate torte (divine!) Can you tell where my weakness lies? Not with the savoury but with the sweet? Pretty handy, too, that everything was in such small portions, so I didn’t feel diabetically guilty!

It’s such a treat to step out of the ordinary and do something completely different, especially on a week night, and we’re trying to train our tastebuds to be just a little more adventurous for our round-the-world trip…

(not the one I had last night, but I wouldn’t mind tucking into a bite of this!)

The thing about being diabetic…

// October 20th, 2008 // No Comments » // Diabetes, Life (and the living of it)

… is that, even when you’re extremely healthy (as I am – I boast about being the world’s best diabetic!) there are days when you feel a little off.

Like today.

I woke up at 2am last night with low blood sugar (or hypoglycemia, to those in the know). How can I describe how awful this feels? It’s 2am, so you’re all groggy, and you wake up with a pounding heart… At first you’re not sure if you’re going to be sick or if it’s a low or if it’s a nightmare that’s made your heart beat so fast. After a few minutes, you get it together enough to test your blood, and then get up to go to the kitchen and eat something to correct the low.

Now, midnight snacking is all fun and games when it’s a game… with friends… and you’re hungry… and feel like eating. But when you’re feeling low – fuzzy head, disconnected, slightly headachey, still that horrible fast heartbeat – it’s no fun. No fun at all.

This is only the second night-time low I’ve ever had, the first was when I was in Malawi learning to scuba dive. All the info I can find says it’s usually to do with exercise the day before (i.e. yesterday) and it’s true my man and I went for a bit of a hike, but I didn’t think it was too extreme… Can you believe exercise can affect your blood sugar for up to 24 hours after you’ve done it? Crazy.

So now today I feel a bit hung-over, and more prone to going low than usual. And much as some days I love the freedom of being able to eat more sugary foods (which I can do when I’m low), I also love the joy of eating well, and feeling healthy.

If diabetes has taught me anything, though, it’s to listen to my body. So instead of pushing through this feeling, I’m going about my day in a calm and peaceful way, chipping away at the mountain of work I have to do, drinking lots of tea, and quietly grateful for all the other days I have, the days when I feel wonderful.

How does your breath smell in the morning?

// August 12th, 2008 // Comments Off // Decisions, Life (and the living of it)

Yes, it’s a serious question.

I went to a talk last week that was all about preservatives in food and beauty products, and how they’re the devil, and then in the middle of the talk she says, almost as an ‘of course, everyone knows this!’ that your body detoxes overnight. So if you wake up with bad breath it’s because you’re detoxing from whatever you ate the day before.

This is fascinating! Was she right? Does everyone except me know this?

The reason I find it so interesting is not that I have a bad breath problem (I promise!) but that it means you can monitor your body’s response to food by how you feel when you wake up the next morning. That sounds obvious, but I don’t think it is. Think back to what you ate yesterday, and how you felt this morning. Think back to a day you gorged on junk food, and how you felt (and smelt) the next morning. I think there’s a direct correlation here…

I suppose what I like about this idea is that it’s another tool to tap into attaining wellness. There are all the obvious things, like exercising and monitoring how your body looks, trying to drink enough water and monitoring how your skin looks, but here’s a no-nonsense approach that says, ‘Hey, I don’t like what you ate yesterday. I’m spewing it out while you sleep.’

And I think that’s pretty cool.

What’s so funny about eating right is that we all know what to do. We all know the fruit, vegetables, water, not a lot of red meat or carbs or saturated fat shtick. But, like cigarette smokers ignoring their lungs, we go back for more of the delicious bad stuff… I think it’s a habit that needs some exploration, what about you?

Until then, eat well! Be well! Smell well.