To Live and Braai in SA or Ain't Nothing but a G(rill) Thing Baby

So the braai (pronounced Br-eye, or Bri as in Unkie Briii (somewhat inside joke, sorry outsiders)) is the best way to eat in South Africa. It’s essentially a barbecue but using special wood and lasting over several hours thus being a social event. Basically you get your wood and get it lit; everyone hangs out around the fire having wine and beer. This lasts an hour or two till the fire has turned to hot coals and those coals are then cool enough to cook over. You then chuck your meats of choice on the grill be it pork, beef, chicken, hippo, ostrich or whatever. Two guaranteed entrees are boerewors and briaabroodjies. Boerewors is a giant length of what is somewhat similar to a spiced sausage (see below).

Mmmmmmm, spiraled meat

 Briaabroodjies (not even gonna try to spell it phonetically) are the greatest thing invented by man (South African man anyway). It is kinda like a grilled cheese sandwich but a) cooked over a wood grill and b) containing onion and chutney. They are delicious and I will definitely be bringing them home with me.

As delicious as they are hard to spell

So I think I’m averaging about 3-4 braiis a week; so my pork intake is doing quite well (as well as my lager consumption….since all the beer here is the same. The new leading candidate is Tafel Lager: a Namibian brew that is crisp and refreshing but still a run of the mill lager).

Tafel Lager: Namibian for beer

My “apartment” doesn’t have a couch so in honor of this I present my list of stuff I miss from the states:

1)a couch

2)a tv

3)a couch and a tv working in unison

4)march madness (the first couple round anyway)

5)chik-fil-a (just randomly popped  into my head, but I love it)

6)readily available internet

7)gluttony

8)california

9)and of course friends and fam

And in honor of my blog title: 

"The Mullet is Alive and Well and Living in South Africa" or "The long awaited 5th post"

Been pretty busy and wifi hasn't seemed to have sprouted here like it has in the states so posts are few and far between I'm afraid.

This post is dedicated to all those wild south africans with business going on in the front and a party raging in the back i.e. The Mullet. (see below). Once "popular" in the 80's in the US (as seen below), the trend seems to have finally reached Cape Town. How many photos like this are currently being generated here only to be horribly regretted in 5 years?

Looking good Doug. Does Billy Ray Cyrus know how much he influenced a generation?

I've seen countless mullets during my travels around. They are often found to be inhabiting young male adults, often of a quasi hipster or rugby variety. Unfortunately, I have been without a camera during all of my encounters. I plan to stage a mullet hunting expedition to capture images of them in their native habitat: often lowbrow bars with high levels of Castle beer in the air. Pictures are soon to come.

Anywho, work is going well. Today we bottled the first 2012 red wine in all of South Africa. It is a Beaujolais nouveau style wine, I won't get into anymore detail other than it is a young wine, released basically 2-3 weeks after harvesting and is drunk soon after without any aging potential.

Some of the newly released wine. It was such a joy getting to stack all these all day.

Yesterday was a full moon and I got some pretty good pics. Would have been better if my camera was decent. Anyway here's one. Enjoy.

Click to see full size.

 Anyway, that's all for now; too tired to keep thinking of stuff to type. Till the next episode: "To Live and Braai in SA"