I had pancakes on the brain for the past week but I’d been holding out for Sunday brunch to curb the craving. So, knowing that the breakfast carb was most definitely on the menu, I went into the shopping spree with more of a game plan than usual.

I had a package of Bo’s Best gingerbread pancake mix waiting at home. Bo’s Best is like the gourmet version of Bisquick – just add eggs and water. It is absolutely brilliant! (Bo’s Best comes in a number of flavors and I’ve really liked all that I’ve tried.) I knew I wanted to do a bacon and mushroom something to pair with my pancakes, as well as a fruit compote since I love summer fruit much more than I care for pancake syrup.

I also couldn’t resist the heirloom tomatoes and the delicate white corn which are both coming into their prime season. (I grabbed a few non-brunch items for myself, including yellow pluots and those French fingerling potatoes with which I’ve become obsessed.)

At the forager’s stand I found an absolute treat: chantarelles! At $2/oz, they are a bit of a splurge but having hunted for the golden mushrooms myself, I found the price more than fair. Then I added to the basket some Japanese dandelion greens to make a little salty/bitter saute. (The Japanese greens are a little more bitter than I would expected and I think I’ll stick to the milder, garden variety in future.)

Chanterelles with Dandelions and Crispy Veggie Bacon
1 sm garlic clove, minced
1 shallot, minced
2 oz fresh chanterelles
1 bunch dandelion greens (about 2 handfuls)
6 strips veggie bacon, cooked, cooled and crumbled*

In a non-stick pan, saute the garlic and shallot in a splash of grapeseed or canola oil for 30 seconds (just enough to soften) then add the mushrooms. Cook until the mushrooms are soft, about 3 more minutes, then add the greens and saute until the greens have wilted. Stir in the bacon and remove from heat. Season with salt if necessary.

*You can use the real deal, but having been shot in the eye with flying bacon grease, I’ve developed a real distaste for frying bacon. (Thank goodness I wear contacts, huh?) In this application I think the facon works just as well and requires about 1/4 the cleanup.

After buying my greens, I then asked a farmer with some particularly sexy, velvet-skinned apricots if he had any bruised fruit for a compote. He pointed me to a bin of discards at 60 cents/lb. I picked out a selection of apricots as well as a few yellow peaches that were ripe to the point of drooling.

Peach-Apricot Ginger Compote (serves 6-8 as a pancake topping)
2 tbsp water
8 very ripe apricots, roughly chopped
2 very ripe peaches, roughly chopped
1 tsp ginger, minced
1-2 tsp stevia
lemon juice to taste

In a small sauce pan, heat the water to a simmer then toss in the fruit and stir. Let the fruit simmer for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the fruit doesn’t have a liquidy, compote texture yet, cook for another 3-4 minutes. Sweeten with stevia, starting with 1 tsp and adding up to 2 (yes, you can use regular sugar), stirring until it is dissolved. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice to brighten flavor to your taste.

I finished off the buffet with those heirloom tomatoes sliced and served with raw, sweet corn kernels, Persian cucumber rounds, avocado slices and little quenelles I made of the Soybean Dip from The Love Diet.

The wine, of course, flowed freely.

I was determined to find a beverage that would both quench thirst and add to the festivities of the morning. Right away I smelled mint and I thought: white wine Mojitos! Why not? But then I spotted my favorite juice stand. And a bottle of strawberry, pineapple gingerade also made its way into my market basket. Two drinks are always better than one!

Then on to the food. This week I was feeling traditional, so I picked up eggs and my favorite French fingerling potatoes to go with the chicken breakfast sausages I had at home. I added pretzel bread bites and delicious, fresh roasted, garlic peanuts for appetizers. Since summer is in full swing, I couldn’t leave without fruit so a mixture of berries and stone fruit loaded me to capacity.

Feeling like a pack horse, I made my way back to the car and much-needed AC. Once home, I said a silent thanks for central air before cranking up the oven to 425.

Roasted French Fingerlings with Breakfast Sausages
5 french fingering potatoes, cut into 1/2″ wedges
1 large shallot
1/2 c chard, roughly chopped
2 tbsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh oregano leaves
6 chicken breakfast sausages

(I also added an ingredient that was a new find for me: parsley root, but it is an optional addition like a carrot or parsnip. The roots, in fact, taste a bit like parsnip but looks more like gnarled, white, miniature carrots.)

I coated a 9×9 pan with cooking spray and tossed together the potatoes through oregano. Then I topped the whole things with the breakfast sausages, covered with foil and cooked for 15. Then I turned the temp down to 375 and cooked for another 20. I uncovered the pan and let everything get golden, baking for a last 20.

While the potatoes cooked, I made a berry sauce by crushing raspberries and blueberries in a strainer, pushing the juice through, into a bowl, with a spoon. I seasoned the sauce with lemon juice and agave nectar and put in the refrigerator to chill.

Then I made this sauce to serve with heirloom tomato slices and arugula:

Herbed Yogurt Sauce

1 tbsp fresh chives, roughly chopped
1 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 tsp fresh parsley, roughly chopped
1 tbsp fresh Italian basil, roughly chopped
1 c plain, Greek yogurt
the zest of 1 small lemon
lemon juice to taste
salt to taste

I threw all the herbs and the yogurt into the blender and blending on low until the sauce was smooth and green. I seasoned to taste with the lemon zest, juice and a pinch of salt.

Then I scrambled some eggs with fresh chives and poured the berry sauce over a platter of white peach and apricot slices. Lastly, I made some parmesan cookies, taking advantage of the already hot oven.

Parmesan “Lace Cookies”
1/2 c freshly grated Parmesan

On a baking sheet topped by Silpat or other non-stick sheet, sprinkle the parmesan into 6 or 8 cookie-sized circles. Bake in an oven at 375 for 6-8 minutes. Let the crisps cool and remove from pan. (Parmesan will become hard disks.)

Before the guests arrived I put out a bowl of garlic roasted peanuts and the pretzel rolls with a side of honey butter and coarse salt for dipping the bread. Then I set to work on the cocktails-the highlight of the mid-summer meal.

Muscat Mojitos
1/2 bottle Muscat Canelli
3 sprigs fresh mint
club soda
ice

In a cocktail shaker, I muddled the mint with the Muscat then poured it into a glass with ice to about 2/3 full, topping with a splash of club soda.

Strawberry, Pineapple Gingerade Spritzer
1 bottle strawberry, pineappple gingerade
ice-cold vodka (optional)
club soda
ice

I added 1/2 oz vodka to a glass of ice. Then I filled with gingerade to about 2/3 full, topping with a splash of club soda.

For those of you who don’t know Chateau Montelena, it is the Napa Valley winery whose Chardonnay won a blind tasting in Paris in the 1970’s and in doing so changed the American wine industry forever. You may know the tasting as The Judgment of Paris. (It was the subject of a Hollywood film released in 2008, Bottle Shock.)

So for me, the opportunity to taste 10 vintages of Montelena Chardonnay was reason enough to make the trip to Napa but throw in 25 vintages of Cabernet? Wow.

It is very rare for an American winery to have enough wine to revisit 25 vintages. (The practice of cellaring wines for decades is more common in Europe but then, the Europeans seem to have much more respect for and interest in anything of a historic nature than we do in the New World.) And lets face it, there really aren’t that many American wineries with a history of producing wine for more than thirty consecutive years under the same ownership, so to be able to taste one family’s Chardonnay all the way back to 1979 is almost an impossibility in this country.

What brought home the significance of the event for me was the admission of Montelena founder Jim Barrett that the winery will never be able to do a tasting of this scope ever again because the wine being served to the 140 invited guests, (the winery offered three tasting sessions over 2 days), pretty much cleaned out the cellar.

My tasting began at 9am, (considered by many experts the best time of day to taste wine as both the brain and taste buds are fresh). Our group, which consisted of members of the trade, a few other journalists and Montelena’s marketing team, was led by Montelena’s Master Winemaker, Bo Barrett. Should you ever get the opportunity to taste with Bo, do it. This guy is fun!

We began with a delicious breakfast of Chardonnay. Ten goblets filled with about an oz of wine awaited each taster. The oldest of the Chards was, as I mentioned, a 1979-only 6 vintages later than the wine that single-handedly created a place for American whites on the international market.

If you’re wondering what a 30 year old Chardonnay tastes like, you’re not alone. I couldn’t wait to roll that orange elixir, aged to the color of great Sauternes, across my tongue.

Surprisingly, it still had attractive fruit flavors, although more nutty, yeasty notes dominated. The wine was only faintly oxidized and still had almost zippy acid. It lingered long on the tongue with a toasty, (almost toasted marshmallow) flavor. Next came 1982 and 1985 Chardonnays before we reached the wines of the 1990’s and 200’s.

I won’t bore you with all of the tasting notes, (though I wrote lengthy descriptions of every taste sensation). But I will say that the Montelena Chards were consistently vineyard-driven, meaning that they were made in such a way that the winemaker added as little influence as possible over the flavors provided by the fruit itself. The wines were deliciously subtle and all faintly earthy but clearly, from a chemistry standpoint properly and precisely made since the wines from the 1980’s were still quite deliciously drinkable today.

The Cabs were even more exciting to taste, since we were experiencing every single vintage ever made, beginning with 1984. Again, I won’t bore you with the blow-by-blow account but I will say that the wines all showed a distinct house style, marrying earthy, masculine notes with hints of espresso, tart acid and berries (mostly blackberries but sometimes it was more cranberry and/or black currant or raspberry). What was interesting, and I’m sure gratifying to note for the Barrett family is that the wines steadily climbed in quality to the most recent release which was both mine and many of the other tasters’ favorite of the entire 25 wine tasting.

Since you can still easily purchase it, I will share with you the 2006’s style. On the nose it offered a beautiful balance of feminine, floral notes mixed with black plum, blackberry and an underlying sweaty, sensual, masculine something. Its sweet, fruit flavors hit the tip of the tongue with blackberry and black currant. Further back in the mouth the wine evolved to offer gamy, earthy notes and just a hint of cocoa on the lingering finish. If you like Napa Cabernet, I promise you, it is like… sex in a bottle.

Normally, try to finish a blog entry with some sort of nice little summary. But I just called Chateau Montelena wine sex in a bottle. I’m struggling to find something more to say but I’m truly spent from mentally revisiting such a salacious wine.

The 4th of July was a particularly special Sunday for me because Chrysta Wilson, owner/creator of Kiss My Bundt Bakery chose to spend her first day off in 7 months accompanying me to the market.

First stop was the fish monger, who had a special on red snapper, (one of my favorite fish), at $7.99/lb. It was clearly a little reward for those who took time out on the annual party day to do the weekly shopping. Hooray for us!

Then there were fun little treasures like the season’s last morels, giant daikon radishes, fuzzy little Asian cucumbers, pluots and peaches galore. One priority stop was at the potato stand for my new addiction: French fingerlings with their soft, pink skin. I also went after my favorite breakfast radishes but, alas, they were sold out! Even on a holiday.

What is far more fun about Sundays is not my shopping abilities but what my guests and I decide to do with our booty. This week’s meal was not only influenced by the ingredients but also a recent trip to Chef Rick Bayless Red O. Ever since that meal, I have had Mexican on the brain.

In honor of the 4th I decided to hack into the baby watermelon I purchased a few days before and drizzle the slices with lemon juice and freshly chopped mint.

Then we took the fresh snapper and diced it for ceviche, tossing it in a bowl with heirloom sweet onion slices, avocado and bite-sized morsels of slipper mango. The whole thing was tossed with a tablespoon of lemon juice and seasoned with salt before we put it in the refrigerator to “cook.”

While the snapper did its thing, we sliced the thin-skinned potatoes in half lengthwise, lightly coated them with oil, sprinkled with onions and roasted in the oven for 45 minutes. The potatoes are so creamy and flavorful that they don’t even need seasoning with salt.

Avocado mash was blended with lemon juice, onions, mandolin-sliced radish and cucumber. We added grilled sweet, white corn kernels, tossed the mixture and spooned it in baby, red bibb lettuce leaves to make a salad.

For dessert, we made The Love Diet blue cheese walnut brittle, one of the most addictive foods on the planet! (The entire 12-serving batch was gone before you could say “fireworks.”)

Since it was a special day for Chrysta (yes, we are at the point when a day off is something special), I popped the cork on a bottle of Bagrationi 2007 Brut, a sparkling wine from Georgia, (the country, not the state).

The entire meal took less than 40 minutes to prepare and provided enough leftovers for dinner the next day. Farmers’ Market Sundays are officially a tradition to keep.

First there was Flipping Out with show star Jeff Lewis’s food neuroses and peculiarities. There was laughing with his mouth full, a double dip or two, stealing from others’ plates. But heck, I can let it go–we all can, since this guy would be the first to tell you not to make him your role model.

But then there was the Countess. Yes, I’m talking Real Housewives. I fell in love with this show when I watched the New Yorker who claims both Native American heritage and an European title shovel food into her mouth while discussing her new book on etiquette. That’s right, the self-proclaimed etiquette guru talks with her mouth full.

I could have forgotten the incidents, after all the perps did not claim culinary genius (although I still wonder when it became acceptable etiquette to flash your dining partner your half masticated gruel), if it hadn’t been for Kelly Choi, the lollipop-shaped host of Top Chef Masters.

On an early episode of Season II, Choi committed a culinary foul so far out of the ballpark that I very nearly gave up on the season entirely. If it weren’t for the fact that the producers stopped showing the girl eating after the incident, I would have banned the series from my DVR list. In the episode in question, Choi carefully cut her food with knife and fork into a bite suitable for her baby bird-like maw. Then she proceeded to pile the bite onto her knife with her fork and shoved the knife in her mouth. Yes, the knife. Not the fork, the knife.

Oh Bravo, how you have wronged us. I can forgive you for airing those women in Atlanta pulling out one another’s weaves, Jeff Lewis’s searing insults and Kathy Griffin’s well, Kathy Griffin. But please, I beg of you to stop stripping America of its table manners. The world already thinks we are barbarians. Please, let us still be able to break bread with other cultures with our heads held high.

The first copies of the book arrived on my doorstep last Thursday, just in time for a private book release party in my Los Angeles test kitchen. We chose to hold the party on schedule despite the fact that my co-author, Juan-Carlos Cruz sat in the Los Angeles men’s central prison held on $2,000,000 bail.

The party was lovely, thanks to my friends Annette and Anne who prepared enough food for an army from recipes in the book. (I actually stuck them with the work of not 2 cooks but 5(!) because I had broken my foot and could barely lurch my way around the kitchen and the two culinary students I’d booked for the event to assist were no-shows.)

I am proud to say I only cried once, although I waited until the last minute to put on mascara because I found myself feeling weepy in the hours leading up to the big event. As I put on my little, red, Calvin Klein dress I remembered trying it on in the store two months ago thinking how perfect it will look not only with my coloring but standing beside Juan-Carlos’ white linen suit.

(I was also feeling the disappointment of having to lug around a clunky medical boot on my left foot instead of the saucy stilettos I’d paired with my dress. Not only did I have to lurch in my none too sexy footwear but I knew I was also inviting the unwanted attention of having to explain that I klutzed myself into a broken foot by stubbing my toe on a chair. Yes, I am vain and clumsy.)

As the guests arrived, I laced the boot with red turkey feathers in a ditch effort to make myself feel a little Love Diet lovely and they did add a little much-needed charm to my mood and my ensemble.

The evening, of course, invited the series of awkward questions to which I’m becoming accustomed. I get it. I would be dying to get the skinny if a friend or colleague was in my situation. The whole Juan-Carlos scandal is unbelievable. You can read the most extensive commentary at TMZ if you’ve been living in a blissfully gossip free world since May 13.

As you may have noticed, my blog has remained conspicuously un-updated in the past few weeks because my recent experiences have been more than a little difficult to share with my readers.

Many of you have reached out to me to lend your support and I so much appreciate you. I especially appreciate the fact that those of you who caught me on the Today Show chose to compliment me on my new hairdo rather than ask questions about my near-melt down on live television. (The dress I wore on the morning show, since many of you asked, was actually my great aunt’s and was, indeed, a vintage number.)

Once I recovered from the initial shock of learning of JC’s arrest (I was notified long before the mainstream media picked up the story), I became consumed by the public interest in the scandal. I am still baffled as to why people were so fascinated by what became the number one celebrity scandal in the country(!) for a brief time. I was hounded by the media for about ten days.

It was difficult for me to make the decision to speak to the media. After about three days of saying no, I finally agreed to speak with Nightline. I felt comfortable with the show’s integrity and their plans for how they would present the story. Then, when I was asked to do the Today Show before Nightline aired, I realized that I wanted to speak out to mainstream America and ask them not to dismiss my friend and celebrity chef as a closet psychopath.

I was grateful that Today was going to give me the opportunity to help humanize JC and talk about his talent, his giving nature and his apparent happiness with his present and future. I’m not going to deny it, I was also going on that show to help save The Love Diet, whose imminent release was becoming overshadowed by an ugly scandal. Not only was I the book’s co-author but also the publisher. So yes, I wasn’t going on the show just for JC but also for both my own peace of mind and, frankly, to help protect my investment. (Keep in mind that JC benefits nearly as much as I will from book sales, so as far as the financial reasons for going on the show went, that was for us both.)

After the two shows I also agreed to an interview with the AP in which I had the opportunity to explain why I thought the whole story was insane by sharing what I know of JC’s relationship with his wife Jennifer. Juan-Carlos has been my friend for almost six years. I do not really know Jennifer–we only met in person one time. But I do know her in that way you know friend’s spouses and was so glad to have the chance to tell the AP reporter how lovingly they acted as a couple, how dependent on one another and how secure they were together.

I thought perhaps a few media outlets that had been covering the story closely, like TMZ and the Huffington Post might pick up bits of my AP interview. But I was shocked and appalled to wake up the next morning to see quotes from the story printed in nearly every major newspaper in the country from the Boston Globe to Washington Post to the LA Times blog. How could the nation care that much about my interpretation of my friend’s horrendous situation?

This brush with fame has been a freakish and soul-draining experience. The worst part is knowing that through it all, my friend and colleague sits in jail while I rest in the comfort of my home office allowing the media to use my perspective to make sense of this crazy, alleged crime. The guilt of throwing a party without him threatened to overtake my pleasure in the experience but my core needed to toast our hard work with our friends, colleagues and a glass of Champagne Perrier Jouet.

I haven’t yet visited Juan-Carlos in lockup. I did arrange to have money put on my phone so that he could call me, though I haven’t heard from him yet. I plan to visit him this Friday but don’t be surprised if I don’t blog on the experience. Although I did allow the media into my life for a short time, I still believe that some moments should be kept private.

Although the safari was a-m-a-z-i-n-g and the opportunity to try all the wild game was a food lover’s dream (see previous post) it was South Africa’s ever-improving wine industry that inspired me to travel 2 days each way to get to what is basically the other side of the world.

It may surprise those of you who know something about South African wine to hear that I only tasted two pinotages (a South African hybrid grape) and one chenin blanc (the white for which the rest of the world knows South Africa). And this is a fact of which I (and I suspect a lot of South Africa’s young winemakers) am extremely proud.

What most of us in the US don’t know is that there is a heck of a lot happening in the South African wine world beyond a gimmick grape or simple summer white wines. And now is the time to get to know South African wine! I sincerely believe it is an industry on the verge.

What is it that’s changed in a wine country that’s been consistently producing wines decades longer than California? (Pretty dessert wines were big business in South Africa as far back as the 1800’s when Sauternes-style wines were exported to feed the British sweet tooth.) The latest generation of South African winemakers have benefited from the nation’s growing global perspective. Now that their country has been invited back into the Commonwealth, South African winemakers have the opportunity to study in New Zealand, swap jobs with the Aussies. They’re also heading off to study in Germany and France and spend a season in the cellars of Chile, Italy and America. (I met two different winemakers who spent a harvest in Healdsburg, my mom’s home town in Northern California.)

This new generation is learning how to use their soils and climates to the best advantage, focusing more than ever before on cool climates to produce sexy chardonnays and some elegant pinot noirs. I even met one winemaker who is really trying to bring out something special in pinotage by experimenting with ripening times and blending.

And the South Africans are starting to figure out how to use the wine country as a tourist destination. What I did not expect when I drove out from Cape Town, (its about an hour by car from the Cape Town airport to the heart of the wine country), was to feast my eyes on some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. It is breathtaking. Even my mother, who, as I mentioned, lives in Healdsburg, conceded that the landscapes were, “prettier than home.”

The hotels and dining options in South Africa’s wine country are also getting more and more impressive. I stayed at Le Quartier Francais. It is a delightful, boutique hotel in the heart of the town of Fanschhoek. The room was adorable, the service pretty much flawless and what made the place even better was the restaurant. Chef Margot Janse has made a name for herself internationally for making some of the most unique and finest food in all of South Africa. And in addition to Janse’s Tasting Room at Le Quartier, Franschhoek boasts multiple fine restaurants with a local wine focus including Mon Plaisir, Reubens and the restaurant at Grande Provence. Yes, I dined well!

As for the wines, there were many highlights and all of them excellent buys as compared with their American counterparts. You can find the tasting notes on some of my favorites that are imported into the U.S. in my monthly column, Woman on Wine.

If you want to plan a trip to see this “its prettier than Healdsburg” wine country, three of my must-visits are Chamonix (home of that pinotage experimenter I mentioned earlier), Cape Point (closer to Cape Town and home of the best lineup of white wines collectively that I tasted on the trip), and Thelema, which is perched on a mountain top with some of the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen.

Oh, and if you’re driving, watch out for the baboons. I nearly wrecked my rental the first time one of these South African vineyard pests ran out in front of my car!

the spectacular vineyards of Thelema

For this reason, it is unfortunate that my mother and I chose a Sunday to drive to travel through the country towns of South Africa’s Western Cape.

After a morning of driving through towns shut up like the Mississippi coast during a hurricane watch, the notion ran through my head that lunch might be impossibility. (A more pressing need my increasingly urgent longing for a public bathroom.) So when we saw a building, perched on the side of a cliff in the middle of absolutely nowhere, boasting a bookshop, restaurant, wine tasting room and pub—and the doors were wide open—I brought the car to a screeching halt.

There was a small shop with a takeout menu off the side of the restaurant. We sized up the options. It was either a toasted sandwich and a Coke on the run from the shop or sit down for an hour in a restaurant that looked as though it was decorated by Heidi. We went for the sandwich—only instead of selecting from one of the usual suspects like ham and cheese, we decided to split something called a “chicken and mayonnaise” on brown bread. To round out the meal we grabbed a couple of the local apples we’d seen growing for miles on either side of the road, (remember that although the trip was in April, it was the middle of the South African autumn).

When the sandwich was ready, we piled back into the car and my mother set to work splitting the sandwich while I navigated the twisting roads while driving on the left-hand side, a feat that took pretty much all of my attention.

Because I couldn’t take my eyes off of the road, I ate my lunch by feel. The first feeling was bread that was slick with butter; it was so slick with butter, in fact, that it nearly slid right out of my hand and under the accelerator. I took a bite, which tasted… like butter. Another bite, more butter. The third bite I pressed against the roof of my mouth and flicked my tongue between the sliced of bread. A fourth bite smeared a little blob of mayo on my lips. As I continued to eat, my mother was uncharacteristically silent. Finally, when my piece was nearly gone I ventured to comment. “This is a butter and mayonnaise sandwich!”

My mother broke her silence with peels of laughter. She said she thought there was a little chicken in there somewhere, (she did have the advantage of being able to visually examine this strange creation). I asked for another napkin before I imprinted the entire steering wheel with my butter-soaked mitts and commented, “Thank goodness for the apple!,” grateful that it, at least, was a food I could recognize.

at least it was a food I recognized

I’m writing this blog from an airplane somewhere over South Africa, where I just indulged in a few days of exotic animal tracking. (I hope you’re visualizing me in a Jane costume swinging through the trees next to Tarzan. In truth I was bumping along in the back of a Land Rover—and the guide and I were both wearing pants.)

Actually, the animal odyssey began in a Chevrolet, in South Afirca’s Wine Country. My first animal encounter happened on my very first morning when I drove the car out of the town of Franschhoek and a baby baboon raced out in the road in front of me. What a shock!

Next came ostrich, a steenbok (a relative of the antelope) and jackrabbits, lots of jackrabbits. I drove my Chevrolet to the town of Oudtshoorn to track meerkats, an obsession of mine since the premiere of Meerkat Manor. I joined leading meerkat expert Grant McIlrath on his afternoon study session, a three-hour tour of a meerkat tribe’s territory after which I felt as though I had a college education. As for the meerkats, from his hide, (a beat up white BMW), Grant whispered that he’d spotted one. But as we walked toward the burrow, Grant sighed. It looked as though what he’d spotted was a rogue, not his tribe returning for the night. He pointed out a fresh track and proved that yes, indeed, there had been a meerkat scrambling along only moments before but my meerkat spotting was not meant to be.

From there, it was on to the Eastern Cape for some serious animal spotting at a private reserve called Kwandwe. Here I traded in the Chevy for that Land Rover and guide. But before I could even surrender my car, I encountered a herd of zebras blocking the road. These were the very first of Africa’s signature beasts I’d ever seen. I immediately slowed the car and insisted that my mother, who was traveling with me, snap photos of me driving with the zebras. (Mingled among the zebras were a collection of sprinkbok and a wildebeest, (which you’ll know if you read my previous Africa blog is my new favorite game meat).

Kwandwe boasts Africa’s “Big 5” but also has dozens of other beautiful animals as well as a fascinating variety of plant life. I won’t bore you with a play-by-play but suffice it to say that in less than 48 hours at Kwandwe, I laid eyes upon:
warthogs; elephants; buffalo; black rhino; a white rhino attempting to hide behind a 4’ tree; giraffe; a cheetah and cub; kudu; eland; hyenas; an ardwolf; black backed jackals; tock tock beetles; more baboons; 4 young male lions and a lioness and her cubs feasting on a warthog.

As if that wasn’t enough, I left Kwandwe for Addo, a national park that was established to help save elephants. If you like elephants, you must go to Addo.

In Addo, I checked into a gracious inn called Riverbend Lodge, that looked like a quiet estate in Sonoma or Provence—until you realize the animals scuttling in the trees aren’t squirrels but vervet monkeys! Our guide had been tracking a herd of elephants earlier in the day and suggested that we go straight out join them. That guide read me like a cheap novel. Elephant is my favorite animal.

Not only did we see a herd of 50 or more elephants but watched them stroll right past our open jeep, parting to pass on either side of the vehicle. One elephant got so close I thought it was coming to join my mother for a tea party! After the crazy parade, (which also included one elephant so young its feet were still pink), the guide drove us to an overlook where we watched the family continue on their journey while we enjoyed sundowners. What wine do you pair with elephant? That would be Brut Rosé! (Knew I could slip a wine reference in somewhere.)

In addition to elephants, Addo offered:
2-month old lion cubs; a porcupine; a puff adder; terrapin and turtles; more kudu and eland; a very handsome lion; dung beetles and—finally—meerkats! They were the last spotting of the entire safari.

I thought the animal experience would end with my departure from Riverbend, but back in Cape Town, there were more baboons, a rock hyrax (the African version of a groundhog) and—those of you who know my fiancé will understand my excitement for the last one—jackass penguins!

In fact, South Africa is so full of fantastic, exotic wildlife that I saw new and enthralling things right up to this very plane ride, home to the chickadees and squirrels.

For me, a 10-day trip through South Africa’s Cape region was highlighted by the seamlessly never-ending variety of game meats to eat. On my first day, there was springbok—it was a meat I was expecting to see on a menu and one I was looking forward to trying. But on the second night when I opened the menu at the highly touted Tasting Room in Franschhoek to see both warthog and wildebeest on the menu, I was in hog heaven!

Anyone who knows me well knows that I absolutely love game meats, be it rabbit or venison. But a wildebeest?! (Frankly, I wasn’t even positive that was a real creature. I actually thought it was something invented to protect the sorcerer’s castle in fairy tales.) I’ve now seen one roaming the planes of Kwandwe, a private game reserve in the Eastern Cape, so I can confirm its existence.

The wildebeest was as delicious as its name is fantastical. Tender and lean with a faint gamy flavor, it reminded me of the kangaroo tail I loved to eat when I lived in South Australia. (Of course, I had the privilege of tasting my first wildebeest prepared by one of the finest chefs in South Africa.) The warthog’s flavor was more familiar. This much paler meat was like hearty pork loin. It is quite tender with a slightly more delicate flavor—no wonder it is a favorite food of lions.

The third night of my trip took me to another Franschhoek restaurant, Grande Provence, where the springbok shank was vacuum-sealed and steamed overnight on the steam table then lacquered with a rich sauce. I preferred the tender, seared fillet but then, I’m not particularly fond of shank in general. However I thought the cooking method was merit worthy, producing an almost confit-like texture from a nearly fat-less cut of meat.

Next there was ostrich in Oudtshoorn. If you know much about South African history will know the town as “The Ostrich Capital of the World.” In the 1800’s, the ostrich here were prized for their feathers, which garnered prices as high per pound as gold. Today there are still plenty of feathers in Oudshoorn but you can’t really set foot in a restaurant without an expectation that you will order ostrich in some form. Ostrich has been familiar meat to me since the strange, American ostrich meat craze in the 1980’s. In fact, there was even an ostrich farm in my small town in Pennsylvania! At Jemima’s the meat, which I know from experience can be difficult to cook, was simply grilled to medium rare, brilliantly tender, and served with a side of steamed vegetables.

On to the Eastern Cape, I was excited to head to the game reserves where game meats abound. In America, you wouldn’t expect to find bear on the menu in Yellowstone, but in Africa, it seems to be the tradition to see an animal by day, taste it by night. No, we did not nosh on lightly roasted lion cub but we were served impala, kudu and more springbok, this time lightly smoked and served cold like smoked trout. The kudu, a member of the deer family with extraordinary, curly horns, was ground into a spicy sausage. The impala, the least of my favorite African game meats, was seared and served medium rare. I found the impala tough compared to the other game and slightly less interesting in flavor than the others. It was sort of like a fillet of old cow.

Although I tried my best to taste every game meat common in the southernmost tip of Africa, I still missed a few. Since I’m writing this from Cape Town, I still hold out the hope that I can hit the airport shops for a few tins of Eland and Steenbok paté for the road.