One of my favourite places in my home town, Cape Town, is the Old Biscuit Mill. It’s a renovated building with a market full of some of the most delicious foods the city has to offer. There are vendors selling leather bags, there is the same old lady with the shoulder length grey hair making red juice, there is a higgledy piggledy mix of people getting breakfast or lunch. It’s a sensory heaven. Every time I go there I am reminded of how unique, creative and diverse this city and its inhabitants are. It’s like staring into a brightly coloured marble and seeing different shapes and hues each time.
It was my last Saturday with my best friend in town, so we had to, we had to, go to the Old Biscuit Mill. It would not have been right to do anything else. We woke up early, tied our hair in dirty top knots, found some lipstick in the bottom of our bags and made our way to the mill. The mill never disappoints, each time I go there I find something new which I want to try and face the internal struggle of try something new or get my old favourite. Of course, when you go with your best friend this struggle is solved. Split it and you get both!
So we did. We got our firm favourite, the hash brown, egg and bacon pancake. Oh my goodness, it is heaven. I feel sick if I eat one, but half is just perfect. And that bacon. I could never be vegetarian. Then there was this smoothie bowl made of all sorts of frozen yoghurt and chopped nuts and banana chips. That was to start the morning.
We wandered through the stalls, picking up vintage shirts and shifting through rails of designer T-shirts. After a while we stumbled upon the Honest Chocolate table. Now I am not a chocolate kind of girl. Well, let me clarify, I’m a very occasional chocolate kind of girl. I can have a slab in my cupboard and leave it there for months. However, I do like dark chocolate. And Honest Chocolate has dark chocolate. It also mixes it with the right amount of chill, salt, peppermint, tea, which I like very much. This Saturday I tried something new. I tried their chocolate and cashew nut spread. It’s like the home made version of Nutella and honest (meaning no nasty preservatives etc). It’s the difference between Grandma’s fudge brownies and the pack with the wrapper on from your local grocery. Let me tell you this chocolate spread is close-your-eyes-and-dream-of-far-away-places good. There is only one thing you can do when you put your cracker full of gooey goodness into your mouth – savour it.
Savour. I truly believe that life was not created to be chewed but to be savoured. I believe God gives us each lives of rich abundance, but we get distracted by what people want or what we want and rush through it – like downing a jar of chocolate instead of eating it spoon by spoon. Half the time we trade our delicious crafted jar of home made honest chocolate for a Kit Kat or a Twix. Why? We do not appreciate time and craft, we want results and we want them now. Instead of buying expensive quality ingredients, we compromise and the end result is less beautiful and less tasty.
When I get the feeling that I need to rush through life instead of savouring all its rich beauty I am going to buy myself a jar of Honest chocolate spread. I’m going to eat a spoonful a day, and every time I have that spoon I’m going to thank God for his goodness and savour the day or the moment that I am living in right then.