When it rains I want everything

Someone suggested I write a blog post about having a dress made. I really like this person. I am also very grateful to this person for the Top Gear Festival tickets. She says I am the most random person she has ever met. But I still want her to find a great dress maker in Johannesburg. Recommendations will be accepted into the comments on this post. I did not take the accusation of being random too seriously.

So instead about writing something of value I will tell the world about how I feel today and write about the weather and the consequences it has on my life.

Rain is depressing

It’s raining. And I was monumentally stupid this morning. I had two qualified doctors in my house and I could have asked for a doctor’s note saying I contracted Foot and Mouth disease over the weekend. But I am too honest to even think about this until I am sulking at the office and daydreaming about how I could be at home faking illness.

The real problem right now is that when it rains I want everything. If I saw a cake right now I would want it. If I saw a rack of ribs, I would want that too. If I see food, I will want it. And I wouldn’t even want to eat most of it. I would just want to surround myself and look at it. Or I could ignore the food mountain completely. I just want that options. And only on days that it rains.

I want a food mountain

I want the two minute noodles my colleague made, I want the cheese sandwich the other one ate. I have no idea what the third one is eating for lunch, but I want that too. I want whatever is being served for lunch at the restaurants in the area and the cookies that may or may not exist in the building next door.

Once the weather becomes nice again I am happy to go back to planning meals three days in advance and not deviating from the menu at all.

Steak

I am currently hanging out in the Free State. Farm country; and the only thing people here talk about is the price of lamb, how much rain there has been, when the next rain will come and whether or not they should spray Round Up on those invader trees down by the river. It’s fantastic fun.

The best place to spend summer?

The Free State is also the place where a lot of meat comes from. The perfect place for a carnivorous young woman to spend her vacation? Not really and here is why:

Just because steak can be grown in the Free State does not mean you will find good steak in the Free State. The meat is here is cheaper than in the city, because of transport costs and, a little secret, all the good steak goes to Johannesburg. And once it’s there, it’s tricky to get hold of, but always worth the effort. For obvious reasons, you can’t grow good steak in Johannesburg. It’s not a great place to raise a good piece of meat – too much noise and pollution and no room for the steak to mature. This makes places outside of Johannesburg necessary and very important for the enjoyment of steak.

Meat looking happy as it gets ready to move to the city

It’s too bad really. The Free State has the potential to produce good steak, but it fails miserably. There isn’t that much to do, so from a very young age everyone eats a whole lot of meat, but it’s not good meat. It’s really boring, talentless meat. But because the locals don’t know any better, they spend their lives indulging in low grade beef and often relish in its toughness. So everyone goes about their daily lives without knowing what a great steak tastes like. And this makes me very sad for the average Free State dweller.

It looks so good I just want to hang it on my wall.

I’ve been here for just over a week now and I find myself missing steak. I dream about steak at night sometimes, I think about it during the day… All of this even though I can have as much meat as I want. It’s easy to find and requires little effort to prepare. But it’s just not the same. Once you have had good steak, you just want more of it.