You Had Me at Bean Soup

Wednesday night we enjoyed yet another delicious homemade Puccini House dinner. This makes the third dinner indulgence for Brooke and I, and enough of a feast to deserve its own blog entry.

Homemade bean soup had been on the menu board in the dining room for two days. Earlier in the week, the owners toyed with the idea of doing a small dinner (for like N$40 - $5 USD) of just fresh baked bread and soup. Though they decided not to do the bean soup dinner, they left it on the chalk board, and visions of a steaming bowl of warm soup and fresh bread was a huge tease ever y time I passed through the common room. Nights have been quite cold this week and there’s nothing better on a cold night than a big bowl of soup. Mmmm. It’s been surprisingly hard to find canned soup in the supermarket, lots of dry mixes and fresh and frozen soup and stew vegetables, but no cans. Weird.

There is a happy ending to the bean soup saga since they served it as an appetizer for Wednesday’s dinner. It was everything I imagined it would be – hearty and delicious – the broth was fairly thick and slightly spicy with chunks of game meat mixed in. Also on the menu was grilled oryx steak, a mushroom-barley bake (I don’t like mushrooms, but I tried it and it was still quite tasty even with the hint of fungus), and the wonderful huge salad that they’ve had the past few weeks. And, of course, red wine. Dessert this week was a “Roly Poly” – a baked cake that has spirals on the top filled with apricot jam. Baked fresh for us while we were eating dinner, the Roly Poly was served with warmed cream.

Our dinner companions were two men from South Africa, a couple from the Netherlands, the owners, and Christelle and her husband (the previous owners and relatives of the current owners). One of the men from South Africa was involved with meteorological equipment; from what I understand he works with weather stations and surveys all over the world installing specialized forecasting equipment. The other man spoke only Afrikaans, so we didn’t get to chat with him at all. The couple from the Netherlands was young and fun. They’d just finished a 3-week safari across Namibia and had some travel stories to share. Funny thing – the girl had actually been to Scottsville, New York. What?! When she asked where in New York I was from, I said, “near Buffalo,” expecting a vague nod. My jaw dropped when she said she’d been in Rochester for two weeks last year. She works as the European marketing manager for a heating and cooling company based in Scottsville – I can’t remember the name (Mom and Dad do you know?). Crazy! She remembered going to High Falls and drinking Honey Brown Lager. She thought the city was small but “very nice.” It’s a small world after all…

I look like a disaster in these photos (it was cold out!), but I haven’t posted many pictures lately so I’ll put it up anyway. Brooke and I love our desserts, so we though it’d be cute to get a photo of us happily together with our Roly Poly. The last photo is a botched attempt of us spoon-feeding one another cake. Good times!