An Ode to the Stove
Six degrees of separation in South Africa means that everyone is connected, in some way, to a farmer or some sort of farm life. Whether it›s via some distant family or just your eggs and toast for breakfast.
In the Karoo, this is obvious; it›s the endemic range where farmers naturally occur. But even in the big cities, people love to reminisce about holidays spent on their grandparents› farm, or on a distant uncle›s Karoo ranch in some cold corner of the Tankwa. More often than not, these stories involve nostalgic memories of good farm food. Simple food, shared around a wooden table in a busy kitchen, with a large, coal-burning stove at its heart.
In my parents› farm kitchen, our beloved, pale-green AGA is case-in-point. The heat it radiates, physically, is like a
