Oscar's Pleasure

some image — Having fun, writing about the stuff I like

In praise of cast iron

Oscar Foulkes March 5, 2026 Uncategorized No comments

Julie & Julia is a lovely movie that tells the story of Julie Powell’s year of cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julie blogged her way through the year, which was the basis of the movie. In this respect, Julie was way ahead of the rest of us, who own so many cookbooks that we cannot hope to cook our way through any of them. Huge kudos to her for going cover to cover.

I’d go so far as to say that (almost) all compulsive buyers of cookbooks have books from which they have never cooked.

From observation, a book may be used a little soon after purchase, or when a particular type of dish has been researched. A few get used frequently, until the novelty wears off. Most just sit there, silently waiting as an ignored council of elders.

I should mention that I read Tim Hayward’s Steak from cover to cover. It’s a super informative book by my favourite food writer, and it’s guaranteed to make you hungry.

Even the pickiest users of published recipes will have a handful of cookbooks that get used more often than others.

I think this is missing a point. What if, instead of preferred cookbooks, we had kitchen utensils that we lean towards? It may even happen that we choose our dishes based on our favoured cooking methods. I didn’t have air fryers in mind, but yes, that’s certainly an option.

Mine is a cast-iron skillet that suggests centuries-old cooking methods, but has probably not been in the family for more than 30-odd years. It will be doing just as good a job in 100 years. There’s no Teflon coating that will start failing, nor enamel that will chip. This thing is pretty much bullet proof.

It fits into my farm life perfectly. I use it for cooking dinner on a Sunday night when I get here and it will sit on the hob until we leave on Thursday morning. Some part of dinner (for two) on the intervening nights will be cooked in it.

I use it for frying my eggs every morning. The residue of whatever was cooked for dinner the night before just adds to the flavour of breakfast. It’s another version of ‘the ghosts of meals past’.

Of course, the best evening meals to ‘pay it forward’ are those that leave a few tablespoons of fat. I’m thinking of things like bacon, steak or sausage.

The skillet is very heavy, holding – and distributing – heat brilliantly. I have also used it in the oven (because I can) to do a dish that we call Neglected Potatoes. Basically, this comprises cubes of unpeeled potato tossed with olive oil, salt and onion/garlic, roasted for ages until it all goes wonderfully caramelised. In my experience, the skillet does a far better job of this than any regular oven tray.

After all this time, the skillet is extremely well seasoned, so it’s pretty much non-stick.

Mostly, I’ll run hot water over it before I leave on a Thursday, wiping it clean with some kitchen roll. If too resistant a residue builds up, I’ll give it a light wash and then coat it with a smear of olive oil.

In terms of modern living, it’s not something that fits into a dishwasher, although technically it’s not something that gets washed anyway.

On Sunday evening, the cycle starts again. I do it all without ever opening a cookbook, because the skillet sets the direction.

Julie Powell’s book references “1 tiny apartment kitchen”, which suggests that no clutter would have been possible. Neither of cookbooks nor of pans.

Powell may have been appreciative of me simplifying my cooking options, although the lack of adventure in my repertoire could have raised an eyebrow. Before anyone suggests that I take a leaf out of her book and do the reverse project, no, the world does not need 365 Days with a Skillet.

A Cult of Cru

Oscar Foulkes February 28, 2026 Uncategorized No comments

I prefer to write with a fresh, rested mind. A state in which phrases flow freely, fingers doing their best to dance across the keyboard.

It feels perverse to be forcing myself, in this morning’s fuzzy state, to describe the circumstances that brought me to this place. Dragging words out of foggy corners of my brain; wrestling them into order.

It began yesterday morning with a call from Andrea, “Please would you take my place at tonight’s Bordeaux tasting.” It was more instruction than request.

With a tasting line-up consisting of eight wines from the 2001 vintage, followed by more of the same to accompany a fabulous dinner at Beyond restaurant (on Buitenverwachting), how could I refuse?

Meekly, I proffered, “I’ll have a hangover tomorrow.” Ever since dropping wine for half the week, midway through 2024, and moderating my consumption on the days that I do imbibe, to a couple of glasses, I’ve turned into a lightweight. My body just doesn’t metabolise alcohol the way it used to.

“Yes, but it will be worth it.”

Knowing that there would be two First Growths in the line-up, I resigned myself to a pleasurable path that would have unpleasant consequences.

I moved onto the logistics of the rest of the afternoon and evening.

The first order of business was leaving Ashton around midday to drive to Paarl where I’d be attending the viewing of two Thoroughbred stallions. In retrospect, this gathering had much in common with the Bordeaux tasting that would follow later.

In the case of the equine gathering, professionals look at the stallions with a view to deciding whether to send their mares to be covered by those stallions. While there may be overlap in their opinions, it remains subjective. There is no empirical measurement of a horse’s good looks, nor any way of knowing for sure whether the stallion will imbue his progeny with any excellence. Difference of opinion is the order of the day.

From the time a stallion covers his first mares, it’s over three years before the first foals start racing. It’s at least five to seven years before a fair assessment can be made of his ability as a stallion. This is not that dissimilar to en primeur purchases of Bordeaux, in that the true quality will only be known years hence.

However, this part of the afternoon took much longer than expected. I was going to be under major time pressure to get to the tasting on time.

I arrived home at the time that I would have to leave. Having spent all afternoon driving, I liked the idea of relaxing in the back of an Uber on the way to Beyond.

Fortunately, the Uber was quick in arriving; I was doing up the buttons on a fresh shirt as I ran down the driveway, jacket flapping in the wind.

By the time the Uber drove onto Buitenverwachting, evening sun setting on the vineyards, I’d put four hours of driving behind me. I was ready for great wine.

Before I get to the wine, I need to give full kudos to the organisers/hosts of the evening, Wine Cellar, as well as the venue and its staff. All of this was excellent. So too, Johan Malan’s presentation that accompanied the tasting.

After welcome glasses of Champagne, the group of 20 was seated around one large table. Each place was set with two rows of four tasting glasses, the gleaming expanse of the table unsullied by the placement of spittoons. Interestingly, there were two fathers and sons, the youngest of whom was born after 2001. We all must do our bit to develop the wine lovers of the future!

The balance of the group comprised knowledgeable amateurs, at least one WSET student, as well as my friends Dave and John. Dave has certainly tasted more wine than any of the other attendees, whilst John has the most years of enjoying fine wine.

I’m the ex-professional, but with a palate that jumps into action any time I have wine in my glass. A bit like muscle memory, I suppose.

It was a treat and a privilege to taste this line-up of generally excellent 25-year-old wines. I loved the combination of elegance and fruit concentration in the best of them. I think we need these types of reference points, even if they come at cost that is many multiples of what we drink on a regular basis.

Few wines get to 25 years of age while still delivering this much joy.

Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed by the Haut-Brion, which was not only overshadowed by the other First Growth that followed (Latour), but also by some of the smaller wines. To my taste, it was unbalanced, with very dry tannins and finishing short.

When comments were called for, I felt the need to express my opinion. If there is a First Amendment that applies to wine tastings, I would hope that alcohol is regarded as a mitigating factor. However, I’m not sure that the other tasters were appreciative of having a Grinch in their midst.

John and Dave, sitting beside me, were also dissenters on some of the wines. I imagined the three of us sitting in a version of Graham Norton’s red chair, getting pitched into the darkness in retribution for not being in lockstep adulation for these vaunted wines.

The Latour was an obvious high point, delivering on its promise as a First Growth. Ticking a bunch of boxes, the Léoville Las Cases didn’t taste like a wine that’s a third of the price. Similarly, the Clerc Milon, which is less than a quarter of the price of Latour. Both of these punched way above their price points.

‘Drinking wine’ during dinner flowed liberally and included a surprise addition: the 2001 Kanonkop Cabernet Sauvignon, which was remarkably fresh for its age.

I could have had several more glasses of the Canon (from magnum) that was generously poured with main course, but I would have been in even worse condition today if I had.

In the latter part of the evening, I got chatting to the fund manager to my left. As so often happens, when he heard of my involvement in horse racing, he made a pointed reference to Markus Jooste, with a little chuckle. He said something about the many people in the investment community who were taken in by him.

I strayed into some name dropping, mentioning friends in the industry who had been Steinhoff sceptics. Calling bullshit is tough at the best of times, and even harder when there’s a cult involved, as there was around Jooste.

The very high prices attached to the world’s most in-demand wines suggest that there are cultish effects at play.

For a glass of Clerc Milon (by way of example), I’ll happily declare myself a member of that cult, but allow me to call bullshit when required. Just because a wine has a particular denomination or heritage doesn’t mean one is obliged to either admire or like what is in the glass. Sometimes it just doesn’t live up to either status or expectation. Unfortunately, it’s occasionally a single bottle that’s not in pristine condition.

I’m one of many people around the world who is drinking less. Time will tell what impact this has on the production of top tier wines. Perhaps being the focal point of a cult – even in an informal sense – will protect that heritage.

Wine appreciation is beyond the reaches of AI, which is a further reason to protect it.

Wine drinking doesn’t often comprise a blow-out evening like last night. Indeed, my preference is to save myself for measured drinking experiences that I can cherish. I’m here to do my bit to support the industry, even if it means that occasionally, I – literally – put my body on the line, as I have in the past 24 hours.

By tomorrow I’ll have forgotten how I felt today, but the unique expression of Cabernet Sauvignon & Co. as grown in the best parts of Bordeaux and aged for 25 years will remain a treasured memory.

(It seems appropriate to share one of my favourite pieces of writing about wine, Cal Fussman’s article that was published in Esquire: Cocktails Before the Collapse)

The tasting line-up:
Branaire Ducru, Saint-Julien 2001 (4e Cru Classé)
Haut Bailly, Pessac-Léognan Rouge 2001 (Cru Classé de Graves)
Rauzan Ségla, Margaux 2001 (2e Cru Classé)
Clerc Milon, Pauillac 2001 (5e Cru Classé)
Pichon Comtesse, Pauillac 2001 (2e Cru Classé)
Léoville-Las Cases, Saint-Julien 2001 (2e Cru Classé)
Haut-Brion, Pessac-Léognan 2001 (1er Cru Classé)
Latour, Pauillac 2001 (1er Cru Classé)

With dinner:
Canon, Saint-Émilion 2001 (magnum) (Premier Grand Cru Classé “B”)
Pavillon Rouge du Château Margaux, Margaux 2001 (3 litre)
Doisy Védrines, Barsac 2001 (2e Cru Classé)

Solace in wine experiences

Oscar Foulkes December 23, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

During a training ride in preparation for the 2019 Cape Epic, we rode from Grabouw, through the Elgin Valley, and up to Iona on Highlands Road. It’s a gravel road, so the traction of our tyres spoke volumes for the soil and rocks that make up this landscape. I could show you pictures, but there’s nothing like pedalling a mountain bike up a hill (or mountain) to bring that topography to life.

Terroir cannot be a theoretical or academic concept when your entire body is wrestling against gravity, heat, wind and soil.

Iona is at the top of a ridge that runs roughly east-west. To the south is the Bot River estuary and the Atlantic Ocean. To the north is the Elgin Valley. The attraction for making wine here is that summer’s prevailing southerly wind brings cool air off the ocean, sending it soaring to nearly 500m above sea level, where it chills the vineyards.

The vineyards occupy a block of land that a previous landowner managed to keep in private ownership when the majority of the farm was expropriated for the Kogelberg Nature Reserve.

These cool-climate vineyards – mostly chardonnay and sauvignon blanc – produce fruit with restrained fruitiness and firm acidity. Iona is famous for these wines.

However, they also own vineyards on the north-facing slopes inside the valley. This is the source of the syrah (shiraz) grapes for a wine they call Solace. It’s an elegant, finely structured wine and one can’t really understand it until you’ve experienced the physical difference between this vineyard and the ones that deliver the estate’s flagship whites.

There is also a story to be told about the difference between syrahs grown all around the Western Cape and, indeed, between the various red varieties grown in Elgin.

It takes years of drinking/tasting to develop the ‘palate’ and points of reference that enable us to tune into those stories, especially when we climb the ladder from regional to international excellence. Can we make sense of a R400 syrah that is already a leap from the sub-R100 supermarket bottle? What of the jump to a R2000 example from the Northern Rhône, or a rare single vineyard wine at many multiples of that.

I’m one of many people worldwide who are drinking less, which is cumulatively leading to a big financial hit for the large drinks companies. If alcopops and other drinks that are associated with mindless inebriation are the ones that bear the brunt, good riddance.

It would be a shame, though, if reduced consumption were to impact on the production of delicious wines that tell unique stories. The same could be said for a variety of non-industrial drinks, whether they are whisky, brandy, sherry or others.

It’s all very well for me to dip in moderately when it suits me. After all, my knowledge has been built. What of young people who drink so little that they may never reach a state of sentient sipping?

The 2021 Iona Solace I opened last night was quite oxidative, the result of a faulty cork (not the same as the TCA taint that is randomly caused by corks). The second bottle I opened was in perfect condition and we thoroughly enjoyed sipping our way through most of it.

Unfortunately, faulty corks – and their effect on wine – are part of the wine story. It’s a shame that wine knowledge has to be applied in spotting faulty bottles.

MTB trails crisscross the Western Cape, generally in close proximity to vineyards. During each of our three Cape Epics, as we wound down in preparation for dinner, we drank our way through a wine list representing some of our favourite wines made along each day’s route. I’m not sure if the wine makes the route, or vice versa, but doing it this way was a great way of maximising the experience.

It certainly made it physical on multiple levels. Wine is a direct expression of the landscape and climate in which it is grown. It cannot be made to formula in a laboratory or, God forbid, 3-D printed by AI. Engaging with wine roots us in values and attitudes that are centuries old.

Cheers to that!

How we eat vs What we eat

Oscar Foulkes October 6, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

The culinary world is fixated on what to eat, or how to cook it. We’re all about ingredients, dishes and who’s doing the cooking. Oh, and the presentation of the dish. Food porn is a multi-layered thing.

How we eat it gets significantly less attention.

Tim Hayward wrote about the “dark secret but no shame [of] eating off the board”, giving voice to the need amongst some food lovers of shortening the distance between food preparation and eating.

It was as if Tim had reached into the pleasure centres of my brain to retrieve some of my best food memories. The most delicious pieces of steak are the ones I eat straight off the board while slicing. Carving a crispy-skinned, juicy-fleshed chicken is incomplete without popping something into my mouth before the platter is taken to the table.

It’s not as if the forkfuls that I raise to my mouth at table are not delicious, but something has been lost between board and table. There is also the consideration that some ‘treat’ parts of the chicken cannot be accessed any other way than by hand.

The toasted sourdough construction we make for lunch, having raided the fridge for assorted leftovers and jars, must be eaten straight off the board. Done solo, it’s the human version of rumination, an almost spiritual experience.

Food touches us to the core, including parts of us outside our consciousness. After all, our earliest food experiences predate our ability to remember stuff. We record early memories of flavours, textures and colours largely without remembering any of the situations in which we experienced them. What gets laid down is often on an emotional level, which means that our adult likes/dislikes can be strongly felt, generally without the ability to rationalise our feelings.

Could it be significant that much of this happens at a time of our lives when we’re very oral? As toddlers we’re constantly putting things into our mouths.

Let’s just say that taste, or personal preference, is complicated.

The way we eat puts layers of rules and convention between ‘the food’ and ourselves. We sit at tables, with food on plates, intermediated by cutlery and the length of our arms. Adding to the disnature of our eating experiences are the hard, straight edges of the table.

Eating off a board takes us only so far in the process of disintermediation. A bowl is part of a sphere, rounded in three dimensions, a vessel which accommodates a diversity of dishes. Many of these can be eaten with spoon, which is my preferred implement for transferring food to mouth.

Picture the scene; someone is sitting on couch or perhaps even standing. Bowl is held in left hand, spoon (or fork or chopsticks) in right, putting the food into a kind of embrace, more-or-less at heart level. This feels to me to be much more natural than being sat at table with knife and fork.

The bowl versus plate preference also mimics nature, where curves are far more prevalent than straight lines. I may be a little obsessed about bowls; the ones in the image above were custom made as a family birthday present.

The slivers of steak we pop into our mouths while slicing represent just one food that we eat by hand. Ribs, chicken wings and others are much more efficiently eaten by hand. I’m wondering if part of the supposedly aphrodisiac properties of oysters is the method of eating, when they are slid straight from shell into expectantly opened mouth, juices perhaps spilling over chin.

Am I getting ahead of myself in suggesting that a shared platter of prawns, shelled and eaten by hand, is a shortcut to other intimacies?

Of course, I’m presupposing Western norms. I have no experience of scooping up food in a piece of torn-off naan or flatbread. However, I do think we are leaving pleasure on the … um … table if we never deviate from the knife and fork defaults.

In Praise of Retail

Oscar Foulkes August 20, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

The liquidation of my wine shops in 2002 was a massively stressful experience that affected me on a deeply emotional level for years to come. When I eventually was able to step back to look at the destruction, I could make a list of several basic business principles that I had ignored.

However, I’ve come to realise that what I learned from working in retail was much greater than the obvious ones.

I started in retail by selling a cancelled export order out of my garage. This bootleg operation eventually needed to become legitimate, in the form of a license to sell alcohol. This required premises, and if you’re paying rent, you may as well have a full-service drinks offering.

There were many things that I didn’t know that I needed to know, but I had worked out that I needed to learn more about wine. So was set in process an ongoing process of properly understanding wine, especially in a way that could enable me to take others on the journey.

Discover. Experience. Learn. Understand. Share.

This has been a pattern I’ve repeated many times in my life. I should mention that this process is front-loaded with a high level of curiosity as well as a willingness to embrace the unknown (not always with happy outcomes, as I discovered in 2002).

But, while wine has been a lifelong pleasure, this still wasn’t the most important lesson from being a wine merchant.

The thing about retail, especially when it comes to a product as subjective as wine, and when the product range is purposely comprising a large number of unfamiliar labels, is that the person on the floor – the sales assistant – has a very important job to do.

My most rewarding times in the shops were assisting customers in assembling mixed cases of wines for them to try. Armed with just a few minutes of chat, I had to intuit what their tastes and preferences were, as well as how to accommodate that as best possible within their budget. The exchanges may not have qualified as intimate, but they were certainly personal.

All my interactions with clients/customers since then have benefited from my retail experience of best matching their expectations. I am socially awkward in some settings, but the purpose or structure of the shop floor interaction helped to overcome the worst of it.

Having customers come back for cases of recommendations (rather than individual bottles) was hugely rewarding.

In terms of ‘rewarding’, nothing comes close to the upsell. This is the crack cocaine of being a sales assistant. Possibly my most successful upsell was converting someone from the purchase of a bottle of Pongracz (local méthode champenoise with a current retail value of about R200) to Salon, a Champagne that was then selling at a multiple of over ten times the price. Its current price is eyewatering; the multiple remains around ten, but in Sterling (taking it to a more than 200-fold multiple of the local fizz).

There was also the customer who wanted a chardonnay recommendation. At this time, I was doing direct imports and the price of Burgundy hadn’t yet exploded. Even so, there would have been a multiple of between five and ten times the price for the bottle of Premier Cru he took to a special dinner over the weekend. When he returned the following week we shared commiserations that very nearly were teary, because the bottle had slipped out of his hand and smashed as he walked into the restaurant.

Of course, not every customer who walks in the door is open to spending a few pleasant minutes putting together a selection of bottles to try. Some are just plain rude or are having a bad day. It’s not the sales assistant’s fault, but one must learn to charm or dance around the prickliness as best possible.

There are also the occasional times when one has cocked up. Service recovery is another valuable skill to learn.

A lot of time, though, shops can be depressingly quiet, when an hour can pass without any customers. If it’s a slow time of year, this effect is even worse.

Rather than standing around, getting more and more depressed, we’d move things around or build a new display. You might say that it’s no different to moving the metaphorical deck chairs, but it’s amazing what a little bit of proactivity can do to how one feels. It also ensures a more interesting store for the customers who do walk in.

Without diminishing the different forms of mental health issues, I’ve often applied a different version of starting a proactive or creative activity when I’m feeling down (for the record, the impetus for writing this piece wasn’t one of those; this is an idea that’s been rattling around in my head for a while).

Online retail has its own requirements for specialised knowledge – traffic, click-through rates, fulfillment and more – but none of them bring us face to face with human beings.

The internet is full of laments about people being unable to conduct basic social interactions because of all the time they spend online (or because of the ways in which they spend their online time). Of course, the more online shopping we do, the less retail employment is on offer, and therefore fewer opportunities like the one I had.

Even for people who have no intention of working in retail all their lives – or especially for them – it’s a great place to start.

A Rare Sighting

Oscar Foulkes June 12, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

The caracal appeared on the trail ahead of me, stopped to look at me for a moment, then walked on calmly. I briefly saw it again on the adjacent Kloof Road, closed to traffic since storms in 2023. Before I could retrieve my phone to take a picture, as suddenly as it appeared on the trail, the caracal disappeared.

The entire experience lasted no longer than a few seconds, but it was loaded with magic; the soundless, effortless movement of the sleek cat, the self-assured way it looked at me, and the way it just vanished again.

I have spent thousands of hours on my bike on Table Mountain. This was the first time I’d seen a caracal; best of all, it was no more than five metres away from me.

But, for over five hours, I forgot about the sighting. This may illustrate something about my short-term memory, but it perhaps has more to say about the way that our minds work. Maybe the most surprising aspect of this forgetting is that I am usually awed by interactions with the natural world.

My day started on our stud farm in Ashton. After my cocoa drink, I did my usual 20-minute meditation. I left the house at 7:30 – before sunrise – dressed warmly against the low single-digit temperature. I was in a good place to start the day.

I felt awe and wonder seeing the setting full moon low in the sky above the arid hills in the direction of McGregor while young horses crowded around me for attention. I scratched a few of them behind their ears or on their wither, their winter coats furry to the touch. The boldest of them nudged me for more when I stopped.

This twice-daily walk through all the horses is one of my favourite parts of the day.

Later, I saw a group of weanlings cantering together, their ears pricked. I got up to see what was holding their attention and saw a jackal dashing out of the paddock. I’ve previously seen what I’m assuming is the same jackal. Unlike the caracal, the jackal made its presence obvious by dashing out of tall growth. No calm or silent movement for this creature.

The further difference is that the stud is surrounded by vineyards. The closest veld is several kilometres away; the jackal has no business being here.

On my drive back to Cape Town I started getting messages about mountain bikers riding on a muddy section of trail we’re busy repairing, just above Kloof Road in The Glen. I was on my bike within minutes of getting home, to do an assessment of the damage.

The ride around Lion’s Head, descending on the newly maintained trail, was magnificent. As I started climbing again, I reached a man and his son who let me pass. It was gratifying to see them riding together on this upgraded trail. I felt less gratified by the ebiker who raced past me soon after, but once again it felt good to see cyclists using the trail.

I got off my bike when I reached the muddy section, pushing/carrying it the rest of the way to avoid damaging the trail. The final section, down some steep steps, is where I saw the caracal. I’m sure the sighting was only possible because I was on foot.

Seeing as I had my phone out, when I reached the bottom, I started typing a message to post on my various mountain biking WhatsApp groups, with a request to please not ride this final section. Before I could finish, the lad – demonstrating phenomenal skills – came riding down the steps.

His father followed soon after, when I had already started explaining why, for all his amazing technical skills, he shouldn’t have been riding the final section. It was polite, but it remained a telling-off.

I was in full class captain mode, simmering in a mist of indignation at their lack of consideration for riding on a muddy trail that is in the middle of maintenance (and marked with danger tape).

I was polite and measured throughout, but as I soon as they went on their way, I felt regret at the way I handled the situation. Fortunately, I have the father’s contact details, so I was able to send an apology.

Just one of the ways I could have done it better would have been to share my wonder at the caracal sighting that happened minutes before their arrival. However, the caracal had left my brain almost immediately after it disappeared off the trail.

There was further WhatsApp group chatter about inconsiderate mountain bikers. Outrage stayed high.

Not even the time spent cooking supper with my daughter, Sophie, who works on conservation-focused documentaries, could unlock my memories of the rare caracal sighting.

I was lying in bed, lights off, when I eventually remembered seeing the caracal. I was instantly in a state of regret. In that moment, and for hours after, I couldn’t have been further away from my early morning post-meditation state of mind.

Barring my own poor short-term memory, I am left with the role played by the way that indignation messes with our brains. We know that social media is toxic, especially when it is used to weaponise outrage. This was a personal experience of its impact.

Outrage is sometimes necessary, but it eclipsed my experience of awe and wonder. I lost something in the process.

The Rhythm of Bread

Oscar Foulkes May 24, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

In lives mediated by screens, or cerebral in other ways, doing stuff with our hands is highly underrated. I’d go further, we need to get our hands onto/into things, whether it’s gardening, cooking or some form of craft or art.

My thing is bread. However, it would be more accurate to refer to the dough side of things, because what happens before it goes into the oven is almost all of what determines the quality of the outcome. And, while there is something particularly satisfying about holding a crusty loaf with the ‘spring’ that comes from a good rise, it’s the dough I get my hands onto.

For over 20 years, nearly all the bread we eat has been home baked sourdough. The progenitor of our starter was a bunch of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes that I crushed between my fingers and then left to begin fermenting spontaneously. When it started bubbling, I added some flour. This culture still lives in our fridge, although now many generations away from its vinous origin. It’s like a pet, quietly sitting there, providing emotional support via proxy, in the form of the bread we bake weekly. And, yes, like a pet, it needs to be fed on cue.

We once had house sitters who threw out the starter, thinking it was leftovers gone very bad. Fortunately, I had a backup in the freezer, so we could start again.

Aedan, my son, adopted the culture during lockdown. He took our sourdough game to another level, making so many practice loaves that he was forced to start a side hustle selling them. He also made extraordinary sourdough doughnuts and English muffins.

Armed with his improved techniques, the weekly bake became my domestic responsibility a few years ago, although to be honest, it’s more therapy than chore. Each batch happens over the course of three days, with key activities required on the two days leading up to baking. No step is very time consuming, but it must happen on schedule, so I kind of build my weekend (or days leading up to it) around the dough and baking process.

The magic that makes it happen is the yeast, a single-celled fungus that – literally – gives its life to every loaf of bread. In converting carbohydrates to carbon dioxide, it causes the dough to rise. Its metabolism is temperature sensitive, so I need to adjust the timing depending upon ambient temperature. The fermentation that is specific to sourdough both enhances the flavour of the bread and makes it more nutritious.

There was a time that I used a mixer, but I find that doing everything by hand is quicker and yields a better result. Plus, it’s a whole lot more satisfying.

Every motion of my hands is circular, whether on the horizontal or vertical plane.

The evening before I’m going to be mixing dough – roughly 36 hours before putting the loaves into the oven – I bulk up my starter, by feeding it equal weights of flour and water. Regular baking keeps the starter active, which results in a better fermentation.

The starter will go back into the fridge for the night, unless we’re in the middle of a cold spell. Then it may stay out. If it’s been in the fridge, I’ll take it out early in the morning. As it warms, the starter increases in volume. There are so many CO2 bubbles it almost looks like foam.

When it’s ready, I mix the starter with flour and water. The flour is carefully selected, artisanal produce.

After the first mix I leave it for the autolyse. During this roughly 45-minute resting period, the flour hydrates and the gluten starts to develop.

Next I add salt, mixing it through well. Again the dough is left for an hour or so.

Then the folds start. Every 20-30 minutes the dough is lifted, stretched and then folded on itself. It becomes more elastic as the gluten builds up. After four or five folds the dough is once again left. For these two to three hours, I’m housebound. I can run all the errands I want, but they cannot take longer than 30 minutes.

All these manual actions are a kind of communion with the dough as it becomes a living thing. I am guiding it through its life cycle, to the point where it has risen, while also building a structure that will retain its integrity when it’s baked.

The final step, and this depends on how quickly fermentation has proceeded, is the shaping of the loaves prior to placing them in the proving baskets. It can happen mid-afternoon, or early evening, depending upon temperature.

After many years of doing this, every manual step has a kind of rhythm to it, with the hands ‘listening’ to the dough communicating its texture and stage of fermentation.

The proving baskets go into the fridge overnight. On the third day, the bread is baked.

Everything takes as long as it takes. I am obliged to follow the lead of a unicellular organism doing what it’s programmed to do. I have to be in tune with the rhythm.

The pay-off is having delicious bread to eat and share, as well as the reward of the time spent with my hands on the dough.

A Whole Lotta Love

Oscar Foulkes May 15, 2025 Uncategorized 1 comment

It all started when I wanted to use the title of one of my favourite Rock songs as the name for a yearling filly. I thought she’d be good, so I wanted her to be appropriately named. However, before I proceeded, I thought I should check the lyrics, to see whether this name might come with inappropriate connotations.

The sound of Whole Lotta Love is Led Zeppelin at the top of their genre. It’s an absolute banger of a track (although in this context “bang” is perhaps an unfortunate reference). The song’s lyric, sung by Robert Plant, “I’m going to give you every inch of my love”, is not an attempt to give love a unit of measurement. It’s clear what love means in this context.

I immediately shelved the idea of calling my filly Whole Lotta Love.

Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines, released 44 years later, pairs similar suggestions with a catchy tune and a NSFW music video. His lyrics just don’t bother to use the word “love”.

It’s a particular male fantasy of women with passive, suppressed or unspoken desires being fulfilled thanks to the physical attentions of a man. In this illusion, a woman is incomplete without being at the receiving end of a virile phallus.

Society does a crappy job when it comes positive depictions of sexuality and desire, so it’s not a surprise that the spokesmen – literally – are men (see above). Media attention is given to men with aberrant behaviour, like Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and others. Positive role models are the guys who quietly go about living good lives. No-one is going to write about them, and nor would they want to be written about. Plus, advertising has still not let go of the dictum, “sex sells”.

I had been sitting with this version of Whole Lotta Love for some time when my friend, Piet Viljoen, introduced me to a version sung by Tori Amos in 1992. She takes an anthem of male conquest and makes it her own. She is at once vulnerable, sensuous and assertive, perched on the corner of the piano stool as she turns to deliver the song to the audience.

In the genre of hold-my-beer, she takes ownership of the song, demonstrating that the women’s version can have equal power. It should be said that she makes use of just one instrument, rather than an entire rock band. She metaphorically grabs hold of the mic, giving a woman’s voice to the expression of desire. She does a ‘right back at you’ with the male-written lyrics (although without the use of “every inch of my love”).

Tina Turner was another woman to bring her own interpretation to Whole Lotta Love. Ironically with her abusive ex-husband Ike, she released a funk version that oozes sensuality.

Of course, Whole Lotta Love drew heavily on Willie Dixon’s You Need Love. Following legal action, the royalties are now shared. By comparison, Dixon’s version comes across as a piece of musical courtship, perhaps because of its blues treatment that is so wholesome you could almost smell the plate of fried chicken.

For a “right back at ya”, along with a resounding “hell, yeah!” we turn to the Highwomen’s If She Ever Leaves Me. Described by co-writer, Jason Isbell, as the first gay Country song, the lyrics depict the cowboy version of the male protagonist in Whole Lotta Love or Blurred Lines. He is described as “dancing her home in your mind”. The thing is that “she likes perfume”.

The object of his desire is not off-limits because of her suppressed or unspoken desires, but because masculine is not what she wants. It’s a proper reversal.

By their very existence, the Highwomen make a powerful statement, which they reinforce with their lyrically clever Redesigning Women.

Decades later, Robert Plant collaborated with country singer Alison Krauss on a couple of albums many degrees mellower than his Led Zeppelin years. The songs – some of them anyway – talk of loss and regret. It’s not an unexpected place for a duo of 70-year-old man and middle-aged woman to end up.

Another legendary British rock musician, Mark Knopfler, also collaborated with a country singer, the similarly legendary Emmylou Harris. In the track This is Us, they are looking through a photo album that records key moments in their relationship, together singing the chorus, “You and me and our memories, this is us.” There is warmth, poignancy and togetherness.

For all the lust and desire that may characterise match-ups earlier in life, perhaps the kind of love we need when we are old is that kind of gentle companionship, a height we can only reach when the foundations are built on decades of mutual respect and shared life. We grow together, perhaps a little like the way trees do, in a process called inosculation. Parts of trees – even from different species – literally fuse together as if they’ve been grafted.

Inosculation derives from the Latin, osculare, meaning “to kiss”. This is appropriate, seeing as a kiss is generally the first step to forming a bond. For the most part, it’s a moment of purity, the meeting of equals.

It’s a shame that our depictions of the love (or its proxies) that may follow the first kiss are so one-sided. Until, of course, we’ve been together so long that none of that matters anymore. That’s a whole lotta love worth having.

Mountains to climb

Oscar Foulkes April 16, 2025 Uncategorized No comments

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but by accident I ended up making a kind-of resolution.

I was going to write a post about the new training plan I’ve put in place this year. In the past, I’ve written extensively about my Cape Epic journey. I also took readers on my hypertension self-medication. In that sense, writing about the cycling I’m doing would not be unusual.

I started typing, but I was bored after the first paragraph. And if I was bored, I couldn’t imagine anyone reading with delight. So, I left the idea for a few weeks.

However, a set of events can hold multiple stories, depending upon how deep we dive, or the perspectives we hold.

I reached the first Sunday in January and realised that I had achieved 2000m in elevation gained in three rides. Something got the arithmetic cogs going in my brain, leading to the thought that maybe I could do 10 000m per month. All this coincided with Strava’s release of the previous year’s data. I saw that my total for 2024 was 67 000m of elevation gain. My retired friend, who rides a lot, came in at 104 000m, suggesting that 2000m per week would be more realistic than 10 000m per month.

With one quarter, plus two weeks, of the year completed, my elevation gain so far in 2025 is approximately 50% of the total for all of 2024. I am 2500m ahead of target, which leaves me with bit of a buffer should I have to take time out for illness or horribly adverse weather.

As a basic, rule of thumb, approach to training without a coach it’s not a bad one. High intensity intervals can be incorporated, as well as easy recovery rides. Most importantly, I’m feeling great on it.

So, what is the story outside the achievement of a higher level of fitness?

In my chosen occupation as a racehorse breeder (some would say passion project rather than occupation), almost every step involves chance and uncertainty. What percentage of my broodmares will conceive? How many will carry their foals to full term? Will they be born with everything in the right place? Will they grow up to be athletes? What will the crop’s split be between colts and fillies (colts are more valuable)?

The time lag between the making of mating decisions and the sale of yearlings is approximately three years, which requires more than a crystal ball. I have no idea whether the decisions I make now will still be good ones in three years’ time.

Assuming I get the yearlings to auction in one piece, I have very little control over the selling price achieved. That’s just the way auctions work. Yes, if one gets lucky, two determined bidders can push a price way beyond expectation, but that has not been my experience for some years.

What I’m getting at, is that I have an element of control over day-to-day management of the stud. However, when it comes to the big and important things that can happen (i.e. how much income I will get, and whether the horses will be any good on the racecourse) these are largely outside my control.

I think you can spot the attraction of setting myself a target of what I’m going to do on the bike every week. It’s 100% under my control. In terms of time commitment, it’s between seven and eight hours per week, spread over four rides. The longest day out could get up to three hours. Regardless of adverse weather or conflicting social commitments, I’ve gone out and climbed the metres.

Apart from the exercise of control, I have a weekly sense of achievement. When it comes to the horses I breed, the highs resulting from wins are extraordinary, but their occurrence is both irregular and unpredictable.

It’s not as if I wasn’t already getting out several times per week, but there were no measurables linked to the effort. No fixed parameters other than riding three or four times per week. No requirement to reach some target.

Having a measured target changes the picture.

Improved fitness has a linkage with my management of hypertension, so I have daily empirical guardrails.

There is another angle. Living with a constant simmer of uncertainty is so much more manageable if one can achieve a Zen or Stoic state. A long bike ride takes the body to a special place, both as a result of the endurance and the rhythmic pedalling.

Riding up and over mountains is a reminder that the goal is reached by keeping the cranks turning; by staying the course. Pain is temporary.

The final takeaway is that commitment to daily/weekly measurable and achievable actions is the best we can do when it comes to New Year’s resolutions (assuming one does that kind of thing, of course!).

The Right Trousers

Oscar Foulkes November 1, 2024 Uncategorized No comments

Our children have been saved from the types of clothing choices that were imposed on us by our parents. If anything, the roles are now reversed, in that our kids impose their choices on us. They are brand conscious in ways we never were, or for which we never had the opportunity.

If a hoodie was bought for us, it would have been because our parents deemed this to be an article of clothing we needed. Conversely, I’ve lost track of the number of premium-priced hoodies we’ve bought for our children because the brands were desired.

In truth, I can’t recall hoodies being a clothing option in the 70s, certainly not in South Africa.

I grew up with home-knitted jerseys made up of whatever wool happened to be in the house, wearing jeans bought in a size that allowed for growth. They were purchased, taken in, and then let out as growth required. Inevitably, the old hems would leave faded lines on the legs of the jeans, much like the growth rings on a tree. If the limit of ‘letting out’ had been reached, the jeans could be worn for a while with legs finishing comically high above the ankles.

Completing the ensemble would have been a home haircut (and it’s not as if my mother worked in a Vidal Sassoon salon). Somehow, we survived.

Fast fashion is not my thing. It should be no surprise that Uniqlo is my favourite ‘brand’, selected not because of the label, but because of the utility and comfort that comes at the price. Uniqlo is a brand in the sense of a delivered experience rather than the flaunting of a label.

Around 25 years ago I went through a period of wearing R.M. Williams trousers. Technically, given that I still wear one of them, the period has not yet come to an end. The others, literally, got worn to death, but this pair of brown moleskin jeans is still going strong something like a quarter of a century later.

They have shaped themselves to my body in ways that stretch fabric never could. Every time I pull them on, I marvel at their longevity; at the value of making things to last. Yes, they are faded, but they carry the signs of wear with pride (if clothing could have pride, of course).

Conceptually, my long-wearing R.M. Williams jeans aren’t greatly different to the taken-in and let-out jeans of my childhood, but at least they don’t have successive hemlines across the legs between ankle and knee.

At the time I bought these jeans, my daughter was watching Wallace & Gromit movies. In theory, these could have been made with similar animation technology as Pixar’s Toy Story, which came out at a similar time. Instead, Wallace & Gromit makes use of old-school stop motion, with the characters made of Plasticine, and it’s all the better for it. In fact, the creator, Nick Park, said: “Gromit was born out of clay, really. If he’d been designed by computer, I’d never have arrived at him.”

Don’t be fooled by the cutesy origin story. Actual labour – thousands of hours of it – goes into the making of these movies.

All of it is a piece of multi-dimensional genius, and that’s not just the 3-D of the characters. Take a look at the train chase in The Wrong Trousers, which has all the tension and excitement of a filmed action movie. I have to remind myself that it was shot in stop motion.

There are easy (or easier) ways of making animated movies. Similarly, clothing can be made to standards of much lower durability.

I don’t recall the cost of that first visit to R.M. Williams some 25 years ago, but I do remember it being what felt like an eyewatering amount at the time. However, it’s turned out to be a good value purchase.

We owe it to our future selves to continue supporting businesses that make things of enduring quality, even if our current selves baulk at the higher initial cost.

Having fun, writing about the stuff I like