Greetings and salutations fabulous People

Happy spring Puddings!

This is feeling like a long newsy, newsy newsletter so please make yourself comfortable before you begin reading.

Thank you for the incredible turnout on Saturday 20^th August  for the talk by McIntosh Polela. The talk was fantastic and the audience, well you rocked. Give yourselves a round of applause.

So happy spring, finally the air outside begins to warm up, the sun is coming up earlier,  blossoms are showing up on trees all over the place, birds are building nests and love is in the air. Okay, I am getting a little carried away now so let me get down to business.

September is National Arbor Month and I thought as a really nice gesture we could attempt to raise some money to buy  some indigenous trees to donate to the city to a community project of some sort. My friend Malcolm works for City Parks and can point us in the right direction as well as ensure the trees get purchased and planted in the correct place. I am very keen to do this and hope that you are as well. If anyone has any ideas about how we should go about this please let me know and I can get the ball rolling!! (ASAP)

It is starting to warm up nicely and I still have quite a bit of soup in the freezer so I was wondering if anyone wants to purchase any at half price. The usual price is R40/R45 per liter but for the month of September I will be selling it off at R20 a bucket! I really need to do this so I can clear some space in the freezer for ice-cream! Yip, we are going to be making our own delicious full cream full sugar ice cream for the summer and if there enough time some sorbet as well! So please take some of the soup off my hands, it really is incredibly good value and  you can always  eat it cold in summer (well some of it at least)

Lollipops Catering also got a nice little mention in the online EatIn magazine this past week, so I am quite chuffed about that! The link below will take you there, just look at the article on caterers

http://newsletters.newmediapub.co.za/display.php?M=735496&C=6b3f61e09d1689f9e4e9c069a34c572a&S=4622&L=1094&N=1658

@Indulgence this month:

Secretaries day

Secretaries day falls on the 7^{th  of}  September  so bring your secretary for breakfast to Indulgence, we are open for business from 7.30am. We are not making a huge fancy breakfast so just order off our regular menu. You are welcome to pre-order breakfast as well if it speeds your morning along. Alternatively order her/him a dozen of our incredibly gorgeous  cupcakes and we will deliver them to the office for youJ

AuthorTalks

In September we have two AuthorTalks booked, one for the regular Saturday afternoon on the 10^th of September and a second for the Heritage Day holiday on the 24^th of September.

I am hoping to bring you a double bill for the 10^th, two fabulous authors for the price of two books. Not a bad deal me thinks. As yet the second author remains unconfirmed so let me just give you a little info on our first author for the 10^th, Hamilton Wende

Hamilton Wende is a freelance writer and television producer based in Johannesburg.  He is a regular contributor to From Our Own Correspondent on Radio 4 on the BBC.  He has also contributed to the BBC World Service programme Letter.  He is a columnist for The Star in Johannesburg and his articles have appeared in many international and South African newspapers and magazines, including National Geographic Traveler, The Chicago Tribune, GQ, Maclean’s Magazine in Canada, TravelAfrica in the UK, The New Zealand Herald, The Buffalo News in the US, The Sunday Times, Business Day, The Sunday Independent in Johannesburg and many others.

He has been a guest on The Editors on the SABC, and has been a guest lecturer at the Department of Journalism at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, the  English Department at The University of Cape Town and at The University of the Witwatersrand, at the Durban Institute of Technology and at the Cape Town Press Club, and the Muthaiga Club in Nairobi.  He has also appeared on a number of radio and television programmes including MSNBC, SABC TV,  AM Live and on Radio 702.

In television he has worked for a number of international networks including CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC (Australia), SBS (Australia), NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) Al Jazeera English and a number of others.  He has covered fifteen different wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  The countries he has worked in include Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Rwanda, Congo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan, Eritrea, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan.

Journey Into Darkness, a documentary on the genocide in Rwanda he worked on for the BBC with producer David Harrison and correspondent Fergal Keane won the 1994 Royal Television Society’s International Current Affairs Award.  A Life Less Fortunate, a film on children in South African prisons he worked on with Belinda Hawkins of SBS won the 1999 United Nations Association of Australia Media Award.

           He has written six books the one being featured is:

House of War A love story and thriller about searching for the lost diaries of Alexander the Great in the badlands of northern Afghanistan while being hunted by Al Qaeda. published by Penguin in 2009.  It was long-listed for the Sunday Times Fiction Award in 2010.

Doesn’t that just sound fabulous and girls he has that sort of James Bondy look……well that’s my opinion at least! As soon as I have some clarity on the possible second author for the same day I will let you know! Table bookings worked really well for the last AuthorTalk so I would like to continue the trend into the future, please book a table for all future AuthorTalksJ

Then on the 24^th of September we are having a second AuthorTalk with author Craig Higginson and his book The Landscape Painter. Below is information about the book and the author.

It is winter in London in 1947. When Arthur Bailey, an elderly painter who lives alone, catches sight of a young woman, Felicity, about to move into the neighbouring bed-sit, he is stirred to recall in haunting detail a long-suppressed narrative. The Landscape Painter is a double tale of obsession, betrayed trust and irrepressible hope, which emerges as Arthur’s story unfolds. As a young, brilliant landscape painter he travelled to South Africa in 1898 in pursuit of his best friend’s sister, the beautiful and mysterious Carwyn Hamilton. Carwyn’s subsequent shocking betrayal led Arthur down a dark path of humiliation and haunted him for the next fifty years. As Arthur delves ever deeper into his most intimate thoughts and desires, the past and present come together in a series of surprising turns and parallels and we meet a range of memorable characters – from the malevolent German governess, Miss Klimt, to Carwyn’s flirtatious and increasingly senile grandmother, Mutti. Finally, Arthur is forced to confront Felicity with the irreducible damage done to him. From the gold-crazed streets of early Johannesburg to the epic battlefields of the Anglo-Boer War, and the austerity of post-Second World War Britain, The Landscape Painter is a spectacular historical novel packed with wit and insight and crafted in Higginson’s lyrical and sinuous but surgical prose.

Craig Higginson is the Literary Manager of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and teaches creative writing at the University of the Witwatersrand. In February 2010, Craig’s novel Last Summer was released to critical and popular acclaim. He is also well known as a playwright. The Girl in the Yellow Dress has had sold-out seasons at the Grahamstown Arts Festival, the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. It is currently on at the Market Theatre. His first play, Dream of the Dog, appeared at the Trafalgar Studios in London’s West End in a sold-out production featuring Janet Suzman.

What an incredible double bill we have lined up for the month of September and I promise to let you know soonest if it is to be a triple bill!

As always please bring along two lekker books, one to swap and one to donate! The cause is a good one I promise. Please note that authors now start at 2.15pm promptly!

All events are posted on Facebook as well

Jewish new year

Then finally for September’s newsletter it is the first night of the Jewish New Year on the night of the 28^th. If anyone would like the price list for all the yummy foods we make for this holiday please let me know and I will forward it to  you! Herrings, Tzimmes, kichel etc, etc

Let me take this opportunity to wish all our Jewish clients and friends a very happy New Year, Chag Sameach and well over the fast.

A last little favour to Mandi. Lollipops Catering and Indulgence Café please would you, when you get a gap, go onto our Facebook pages and “LIKE” them, the links are posted below. Pretty please and very pretty thank you.

Indulgence Café http://www.facebook.com/pages/Indulgence-Cafe/136482686444382?ref=ts

Lollipops Catering http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lollipops-Catering/6174591596

Have a fabulous September, a wonderful spring and remember to come and visit us @Indulgence real soon!

Love ‘n Lollipops

Mandi Friedman

Lollipops Catering

“Food, Passion, Life”

Tel: 011 782 5063  Fax: 0866 33 9331 Cell: 082 895 3698

Indulgence Coffee Cafe, 1 Mount Dev, 225 Beyers Naude Drive, Northcliff ext 5

Rest in peace…… and quiet

your heart is beating wildly in your chest, you can’t breathe properly, you can’t get warm. Three blankets and a 47 kilo dog on top of you are just not doing the job. Then suddenly you are so hot that  the dog gets booted off your chest, the blankets hit the floor and you use your toe to nudge your thick hiking socks off your feet.  You’re dying! You’re positive you’re dying! It is not possible to feel this bad and still be alive, it’s time to phone a friend. Help! I need to get to casualty, I’m dying you say. All the time you are thinking please hurry I really don’t want to die alone at home………….who will feed the dog?

Your knight in shining armor arrives and drives you to the door of Casualty while he heads off to park his trusty petrol stead. You amble your way in through the door past the tired looking security guard who merely looks at you and cocks his head in the direction of Casualty. Just as well you know the way, you’ve been here before to bring in a friend with malaria.  After walking 900 miles of corridor you stumble upon the reception desk (wo)manned by 3 somewhat bulky nurses who look at you blankly, apparently mystified at your arrival, it is after all 21h30 at night. I’m dying you mumble as you bang your head down onto the reception counter. The nurses continue to look at you with glazed expressions on their faces. Where is the sense of urgency here, don’t they realize I’m dying you think to yourself. Eventually one discovers the gift of speech, can we help you, she says. Yes please, I’m dying you say. Still no sense of urgency. The consultation will cost you anything from R550 upwards she says, they appear to want the money before they will help too prevent your  imminent death.

I leave my knight in shining armor to fill in forms and get lead into the consultation room, all I want to do is fall onto the very high gurney but the nurse says boots off, jacket off, jersey off. Enough already I can barely stand, I am dying after all y0u say. Finally a doctor comes in, thank you, thank you thank , whisper to the gods above. Doctor I’m dying, I have never felt so bad in my entire life, I’m hot, I’m cold, my body aches all over, I am nauseous, my throat is sore and my heart is beating up a storm in my chest. Sounds like flu she says, you’ll live and  proceeds to shove a needle in your arm. You now have a drip attached with blessed pain killers to reduce the aches in your body, relief is almost instant. They take enough blood to resuscitate a starving vampire. Your bp starts to drop your heart is no longer playing the drums in your chest and your temperature is starting to come down from 39.3 degrees. Y0u’re being booked in for the next few nights, you have bronchial pneumonia.

The doctor herself pushes you up to the ward, where are the  porters, the orderlies, the nurses. Maybe you have seen too many Hollywood productions ER was never like this and where hell is George Clooney when you need him. She hands you over to the kind of waiting nurse, relief you think, now maybe I can get some sleep and start to feel better but you are wrong because the fun is only just beginning.

You’ve lost count of how many times they have asked if you are allergic to anything, the nurse brings along the blood pressure machine to take another reading. The machine sounds like it is from the dark ages as it cranks up. Does no one know how to do manual BP readings anymore? It is almost 11pm by  now. You have sent your knight in shining armor home, some one needs to dog-sit The ward is still brightly lit. Only 3 of the 6 beds are occupied you will fill the fourth.

Imagine the 3 Stooges arriving at your bedside with an ECG machine, the doctor on call has requested your heart gets checked. All these three trained professionals have to do is apply the 12 odd pads to  the skin on your chest and abdomen, connect the plugs to the pads, press start and voila the machine will do the rest. Alas the machine can only do this if it is connected up properly so Moe, Larry and Curly spent the next 20 minutes re-arranging the plugs and printing out results that reflected exactly how you were feeling at the time………..dead. Flat-lined. Caput. Of course you would think that the Sister in Charge would come charging to the rescue and put the plus in the right place, except that she didn’t appear to know which plugs go with which pads either………..this scene is best imagined in black and white, in keeping with Moe, Larry and Curly, that way you won’t notice that the plugs are colour coded and labeled R and L. Finally the 4 Stooges manage to determine that you are alive with a regular heartbeat and they toddle off and then of course the nurse with the paperwork arrives. Forms. No I don’t suffer from an entire list if illnesses that I have never heard of. Midnight.

The doctor on call has just been to see you, listened to your chest,  your chest hasn’t had this much attention since you first grew boobs at 14. Bronchitis he says, possible pneumonia. You need to stay here for a couple of nights to recover, massive doses of anti-biotics and you will be fine, the cough will last about a week he says. He is an older guy, a little portly, smelling of smokes and Old Spice, he makes you feel a lot happier about how lousy you are feeling. Already you are feeling better. A couple of nights in hospital to rest and recuperate will do you the world of good he says. He will see you again in the morning  he says.

The ward is hot. You look around at your fellow roomies. There is a little bird in the bed nearest the bathroom, she is tiny, she looks pretty old. The sign above her head says she must be turned every 30 minutes and no solid foods. The lady opposite me is very regal looking, very dignified. It turns out she has leukemia, was in remission but it has come back with a vengeance. The medication is giving her grief and she is struggling with diarrhea. The last filled bed is a lady from an old aged home with serious bed sores, there are nurses working on her even at 1am in the morning; making notes of the lesions and sores she has, cleaning them up. You feel sorry for her at the time.

They have asked for a urine specimen so you take your drip stand on a walk to the bathroom, getting a glimpse of a big white bottom through the gap in the curtains. You catch sight of the sores,  not pretty. Finally 1.30am they put the lights out you manage to get an hour or two of sleep, it is hard because every half hour you hear them turn the fragile bird over. You are coughing and chesty, and you know you coughed during the night  possibly keeping everyone awake except the regal lady, she had  sleeping tablet. Until 4am that is when a vampire swooped in to take blood from her. The urine sample is still on your bedside table.

The lights go on, 4.30am. The lady with the bedsores complained very loudly that she hasn’t slept at all because of all the coughing. You know she slept, she snores.You feel a moments guilt, you cannot help coughing, you were dying. By 5am she has started to chant an ongoing manta ow ow ow ow ow, no no no no no no, omg omg omg the pain, omg omg omg the pain, oy oy oy oy. It isn’t even 7am yet and you are wondering if it is okay to put a pillow over her head. You no longer feel guilty about the coughing. Bathroom break, you take the drip stand for another stroll. The bird looks at you and very politely asks you what page we were on, you smile at her, ask her if she remembers what page, she says 18. That’s right you say, carry on reading love. Ow ow ow, oy oy oy, omg omg omg. You cannot shut it out, it follows you to the bathroom.

The shift is changing so all the nurses are busy, ow ow ow, oy oy oy, omg omg omg, the regal lady in the bed opposite is in trouble her stomach is running and she hasn’t made it out if bed or to the bathroom on time. She is standing distraught but with refined dignity next to her bed, her PJ bottoms covered in watery shit waiting for a nurse to come and help. The shift is changing we will be along  just now, one says. For 30 minutes she stands next to her fouled bed waiting for assistance to the background sound of ow ow ow, oy oy oy, omg omg omg the pain. You marvel at her stoicism. She eventually ends up cleaned and in an adult nappy. The urine sample is still on your bedside table.

The birds husband has arrived, he kisses her tenderly on the cheek, he hugs her delicately. He is amazing. she has no idea who he is. he spends the whole day with her the regal lady says to you. he feeds her, holds her hand and talks to her. He is even more amazing. The ward is abuzz with doctors, nurses, cleaners, the tea lady pops in, breakfast arrives, noise, noise, noise, visitors for the regal queen, eight of them! ow ow ow, oy oy oy, omg omg omg, finally they put something in her drip there is a brief respite blessed silence from that side of the ward. 10am, doctor arrives, smelling of smoke and Old Spice again. Doctor can I please go home today you ask, you should be here another night he says. I can’t stay here you say, ow ow ow, oy oy oy, no no no, omg omg omg starts again, there is no way to rest here you say, looking pointedly in the other direction, just as they starting drilling and hammering in the offices next door. He nods, go home today he says with a sad smile, he understands. Spend a few days in bed he says.

Just after 12 your  lift arrives and you walk out the ward carrying your plastic shopping bag with toothbrush and paste , it so frenetic that you don’t think anyone has actually noticed until the sister comes charging after you with a pink discharge slip, don’t forget to pick up your meds at the dispensary she says and races away. Ow ow, oy oy oy, omg omg  omg falls away behind you, you go home to sleep and curl up with a 47 kilo dog.  The urine sample is still on the bedside table.

Celebrate August 2011

Greetings and salutations Puddings

Happy August tidings!

It is official we have passed the half way mark for the year and now the downhill run to the end of the year and year-end functions start………….start thinking about yours soon!

We wish all our Muslim clients well over Ramadan which begins today, hope the fast goes well.

The weather seems to be warming up very nicely, I hope I am not speaking too soon. So maybe summer is on its merry way back to warm the cockles of the heart. In any event the patio at Indulgence is always warm and friendly and ready to welcome you always

This past Saturday author Mike Nicol was at Indulgence for the second of the July AuthorTalks and I have to say yet again that he is fabulous! What a marvelous speaker and great all round guy to listen to. He held his audience in the palm of his hand as we happily lapped up everything he had to say! What an absolute pleasure thank you so much Mike and everyone who joined us as usual!

 

So what is happening @Indulgence this month:

 

August 9^th Woman’s Day

Celebrate being a magnificent and magical being,  WOMAN, on this very special day that is just for us! Everyday should be Women’s Day but being such magnanimous wonderful creatures we settle for one day of the year! Join us at Indulgence and revel in your womanhood in elaborate style! Dress up to the nines, glamorous, glitzy and blingy, the more you shine the better and then come down and have breakfast with us! Eat whatever your heart desires off the menu, there are no calories in food on public holidays as far as I know. This special will run from 9am to 12 O’clock even though we DO serve breakfast ALL day!  And then the kicker of the day is that any man who comes dressed as a woman will get a surprise discount off his bill! Adventurous men, cross-dressers and transvestites this is your chance to shine as well and you will fit in 175% if not a little more!  There will be a couple of stalls for you to peruse as well with some jewellery and a few other odds and ends……………..we are not laying on a special menu, we think our breakfast menu will rock you just the way it is! Looking forward to seeing you in your finest

 

August 20^th AuthorTalk

This month’s author is a mystery author at this point in time………….I promise to get back to you as soon as I have locked him/her down! Whomever it turns out to be will, I promise be just as fabulous and fascinating as all our previous authors. I am shifting the AuthorTalk time back an hour so in future the author will begin at 2pm instead of 3pm. I hope that this will not cause you any inconvenience. Thank you everyone for bringing your books with you, we are starting to get some really nice books in, and also to everyone who has dropped boxes of books here in the past few weeks, thank you as well. On behalf of Animals in Distress I thank you. In the meantime watch this space for our next exciting author!

The August AuthorTalk will also take place on the 3^rd Saturday instead of the second, so please make a note in your diary that it will happen on 2pm on the 20^th

 

I still have loads of soup on hand with winter starting to wind down, so I am marking it down by 20% for anyone who fancies picking up a few liters. There is a nice variety available still, pop in and take a peek in the freezer……..it is waiting just for you!

If you are having a birthday in August I hope it is happy and your year incredible, have a look at our FB group for some pictures of cakes to help make your event a whole bunch more memorable!

Wishing you a wonderful August, be good to your neighbours (I love one of mine, he moved out his house) and don’t kick the dog!!

 

Calendar:

August 9^th Women’s Day Breakfast

August 20^th AuthorTalk

 

Please feel free to follow us on any of the following:

 

Indulgence Coffee Café http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=5962325892

 

Lollipops Catering http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Lollipops-Catering/6174591596

 

Cakes by Lollipops http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=13189496459

 

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