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An exploration of food as a storyteller, from meeting microorganisms and living food through synesthetic experience.

12/11/2024

On November 3rd, after brunch with my girls and a full belly, I gave birth to our youngest son after a three hour labour that crept up, no waters breaking, no obvious mucus plug just a whisper of bleeding and contractions that started coming full force quite quickly after arriving home. A day birth after two middle of the night births was something I did not expect. Birth at 36wks was something I did not expect but this baby was ready and so are we. Labour was a lot but relatively manageable and thanks gods for three hours only. We birthed home, I needed to be alone, the smell and sounds and sensory stimulation was too much too much. It is sunnah to announce the birth of the baby so here in our corner of this app, please welcome Hakeem Ebrahim Allie, named by my father and my husband. He was born en caul with umbilical wrapped around twice, born so protected and so empowered. Birthing mahrams seems to be my duty as a mother and InshaAllah we remain in sweet graces.

Pregnancy and birth in a time of geopolitical necropolitics, I kept having visions of mother's birthing under excruciating occupation, I spent my labour in deep prayer, disbelief that these two realities could coexist in the same world.

We are in the post partum blissness business nest and will remain here recovering, surrounded by prayers and angels and some softness but a lot of toddler thunder in the background (big brothers are enamoured with their tiny brother). Triangles really are the strongest shape 🔻🔻🔻.

30/07/2024

What these birds know, our delicate sunbirds who have seen mass extinction and ecocide at the hands of colonial regimes. These people really just arrived here and took and killed and tortured people and land and animals. It was ecocide, but really waves of genocide, epistemicide of all of us who live, no matter the animal. We cannot negate the knowledge these tiny knowledge keepers carry. We know of accounts of these birds flocking in their huge numbers, now we are lucky if we see three or four, I was blessed to witness six males and two females gaaning aan in our garden at once 🎶. But imagine them in their hundreds. I wonder if they sing across the world to the P*lestine sunbirds, if they rejoice through their song and colour. This one was perched in the green curtain outside our window, I was invisible and the necessity to bite leaves was a joy to witness as morning school routine chaos carried on behind me. I imagine what these birds know, what their memories keep, what forgiveness they must carry too. The weight of the world is crushing but our resilience is the strongest of thing. We are not afraid of death.

26/12/2023

A Practice In Light and Death

Hosting and programming organisation by , held , Green Point Urban Park

An exhibition that creeps along building as we go, gathering moss as we roll, art as a collective making and Death as a beckoning in light.

1. What fermented apple and fennel do to paper when kissed by the sun, so romantic. This is viewed through the blue tinted window.

2. Naartjies and carrots, the orange of the Light and Death fermented colour spectrum lineup

3. Kaffang through the veils, contextualising the m*rtyrs and what we go through when our loved ones die, considering it all through the veils. The suspended kaffang is made to my size, facing qibla, filled with camphor and rose petals.

4. cabbage, dissected and flavouring a brine I can't wait to play with.

5. Dusting salt off of seaweed, specific flavour profiles of the deepest umami. Watched over by a 3yr old Oxalis blossom in vinegar, made for dye

6. A moment from the Emmenagogue Garden, for sharing the moments that death arrives around fertility, pregnancy, birth, sometimes by choice. Death does not discriminate.
Agapanthus was invaluable for me in my last pregnancy and birthing.
Kelp Lexicon 1 in the background, If Ocean Could Write

7. Reclaiming blue: for the river and the sea; Cyanotype veils, this one we see was printed at our group show Umhlaba Wolahleko in Gqeberha, using the installation and theatre props from .hlongwane's uMqombothi, uBhokweni neJuba and the 1908 Beer Act. With thanks to .hlongwane, , .peacock & Clare Craighead

8. Cyanotype printed blue bottles, rightfully got stung by the deceased doing this piece. Decomposing bluebottles also have much more evocative print than when they are freshly deceased but wow the stink is unmatched. Unmatched. Why? How? Is it because of the air inside that builds up when they die?

9. Salt Mountain, to honour all the ways salt is a most important tool, time keeper, cleanser and survival ingredient.

📸 extraordinaire, thank you

Supported by & the Presidential Employment Stimulus Fund

13/09/2023

Aunty Meisie, a whole one year ago you left us, and it took me so long to fully comprehend the size of the tumour you were carrying, the way you suffered in the last months. And for years I said, don't leave it up to me, your passing, I am not made for that decision. But in the extreme suffering, the fits you had for hours, finally the biggest fit yet, so quickly after the last one, I asked you, what do you need me to do, how can I help you. And you told me you never wanted to experience this again. This was excruciating. So then we knew. We knew the time would come, of course that time always does, but when the time is anytime from right now, you have to be awake to the truth of death at any moment. A means of being more alive than usual, more ready for big trauma, the big goodbye to someone else. And this time it is the one who has witnessed my most intimate moments, who has slept with me almost every night, who dreamt with me and witnessed so much of my life, and mine of hers. Meisie who whispered loud WAKE UP, when I fell asleep for a brief second, driving slowly along that road to Calvinia at 4 in the foggy morning with great ditches either side of the road. Meisie who scared a chicken to death and who inspired me and JW to cook tulbaghia with that chicken, inspiring Roushanna to move on to savoury indigenous foods come now 😁 lol love you Shanna. Meisie who understood you need to buckle up if you're gna sit shotgun. Meisie who understood food sanitation and wore a hairnet to work. Meisie who understood if you had wudhu and was the hardest working mahram, but also always down to party 😏.

In the end, the final weeks, Meisie got old incredibly fast, the way she was fitting meant she deteriorated at each moment, and she didn't deserve as many as she had but we had to be sure sure. We ate like kings those final days, and said all the important goodbyes. It was a beautiful janaazah, she passed so peacefully and her Meisiemango tree is blooming ferociously. Meisie is sooo free that side, making friends (I even met Just Nuisance IMAGINE) and never far away. This pic is early days of motherhood, Qadr a few days old, if that. Love you forever Meisie moo xx

27/10/2022

Hallie haaaa and you thought it was over 😩 look these ADULTS

19/09/2022

Please join us THIS SUNDAY SEPT 25th at the to learn about fermentation for health, joy and, honestly, what it can teach us about the diversity within our dunyah.

06/09/2022

Some years ago I dreamt I had to make flower sherbert on some Dubai mission I was on. This flower sherbert idea lived in my head for a long time and I eventually made v.01 with baobab as the sour POP but then sacrificed colour from the petals bcos baobab is so fine it just takes over and covers everything. So I tried again with yellow suurangs, Oxalis that's errrrwhere rn. Then I tried again again but fermented the flowers first then dehydrated em as part of this notion of lifedeathlife, life into death for flowers, life into death for bacteria but then life again when they meet our mouths and rehydrate in our saliva.

I need more time to get back to microscopes without babies to test it again but so far 2 weeks dehydration looks promising. This sherbert will go into the Tramakassie to live forever (maybe).

27/07/2022

Tomorrows group show opens in Woodstock, CT.

Years of snakes slithering outta me and wood from the sea meet together as AncientFutures ArteFacts, salts from around the world, smoke and fire through DeathLife presented for you to consider.

For more on these snake stories, please read the DeathLife article commissioned by at link in my bayou.

Thank you to and Thobile Ndenze for gracious curation.

22/11/2021

A Gastronauts Adventure!
I got some tinnngs to sell ON SALE bcoz things must just go and I am raising funds to fix my studio roof (which has been without insulation for 3years) and thus mama gotta work!

BRING YOUR OWN JARS

1) STINK 💣:
KN Bravo Purple daikon + 🍏 + 🍐 + rosemary brine, fermented a whole year and all that purple became the ponlest pink. Proper stink bombs as all good Brassicas are, if you're new to fermentables it's good to know this from the get go 😁 but such good richhh umami goodness. Shops sell these as Gut Shots for exorbitant prices but they're going for R60 for 250ml.

2 & 3) DANK BREW BITTERS:
2 versions of a whole batch of bitters I made I think 2016, they sat on our green roof for a year absorbing the sun, literal sun love vrystukkies. There was apricot versions and all kinds citrus versions, these are the last 2 and I'm selling em for R1/ml, a STEAL. So that lil bottle next to the big bottle is a 50ml = R50.
2 = orange, fennel pollen & Buchu, 3 = orange, cinnamon, Buchu

4) SUPERSOUT crazy fermented plants then laid and sun kissed in salt and ground to be fine finishing salt. This s**t is crazy and I think most suitable for tru salt headz, which I know is not everyone. That 125ml jar (empty) is going for R70 but can buy whatever qty. Versions: curry leaf, tamarind, smoked pepper, Brinjal, mushroom all diff prices around R70. Use as finishing salt, good options for salt-sensitive folk as the actual salt is around 45% and the fermenty flavours balance to make up the rest of saltiness so good option for diabetics, hypertension sufferers etc.

5) FLAVOURED SALTS, not fermented:

R0,60/g
Just dope. I got 🥕 and beet, and then a profound jar of preserved 🍊 salt (actually is fermented but wanted to stand in this lineup oops). I really love sweet salty so I eat a lot fruit with salt, citrus, apples, pineapple, strawberry etc - this be a great salt for that kinda thang, also salads and cocktails etc.

6) NO KAK VEG STOCK POWDER is back, prob for th last time. Also to say all these products made with no kak. Anyways, dry stock powder for your soups, stews, broths but also your popcorn. R1,20/g, the empty jar on top holds 60ish g.

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