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Showing posts from April, 2025

Pickled Fish

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My wife reminded me of another Easter tradition I had almost forgotten and something she grew up as a child. Pickled fish is a sweet and spicy dish made from pan-fried white fish, marinated in onions and raisins. The dish has its origins in the cape-malay community (people whose ancestors came from what is today Malaysia and Indonesia) in Cape Town, many of whom were fishermen. Rather than letting unsold go to waste, the wives would pickle the fish in this way so it could keep for months. The recipe became famous throughout the country, even inland where fresh fish was not available until refrigeration became common place. The recipe calls for hake (Merluccius capensis) but Hechtdorsch (Merluccius merluccius) Seehecht, Kabeljau or Heilbut can be used instead. You can serve it warm but, in my opinion, it's nicer when at room temperature. Here is a good recipe but it uses imperial measurements so you'll need to convert. The important step is the marinating - this is ...

Let me put that date in my diary ...

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Now is the winter of our discontent

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“Now is the winter of our discontent” is the opening line of William Shakespeare's play Richard III. It's one of Shakespeare's most famous lines. Certainly one of the most famous reniditions is by Lord (Baron) Laurence Olivier from the movie of the same name. Note that the above excerpt was done in a single shot so he must have really learned his lines. Here is the text with a translation into modern English on the right.

Friedrich Wilhelm Marsberg

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Lyra-Feier auf dem Marktplatz zum 1. Mai, links der Maibaum, 2023. Von Foto: Axel Hindemith, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147929376 The full document (from which we read an excerpt) with an almost complete family history can be found  here . I've decided to continue updating the document with new information and scanned documents.