Slashfood

• Rooibos 101 - South Africa's red tea
  

  Filed under: Teas, South Africa, Did you know?

  
  
  

  There are a lot of ways that tea blenders use rooibos (sometimes called "red tea") these days, whether it's in a straight herbal tea (tisane) or blended with real teas to add flavor to the blend. A quick glance at Wikipedia shows that one common way to describe its flavor is "sweet (without sugar added) and slightly nutty" and I find this to be true. Sometimes I find myself mistaking a rooibos flavor for adding vanilla in a blend, only slightest earthier.
  
  What is rooibos? When I started



• Tea espresso: all the class without all the caffeine
  

  Filed under: Teas, South Africa, New Products

  If it walks like espresso and talks like espresso...
  
  Okay, fine: if it's not made from coffee beans, it's not technically espresso. But it's still a fun alternative for the tea drinkers amongst us: Cape Town, South Africa's Red Espresso is rooibos tea (a sweet red) ground especially for use in an espresso machine.
  
  The resulting shot is a gorgeous deep red tea with a deep yellow crema on top, and the taste is a strong, nutty flavor - all of the presentation, just without the caffeinated edge.
  
  The idea seems to take away from one of the...
  



• Recycle tea bags, make art
  

  Filed under: Teas, Newspapers, South Africa

  We've been seeing a lot of stories lately about art made from recycled packaging. We've also seen a few posts about food art and a lot about tea.
  In this yesterday's New York Times, I found an article to tie them all together.
  
  Oh how I love my tea, but this group of artists in Capetown, South Africa would rather have the tea bags, thank you. The group, called Original T-bag Designs, collects used tea bags, which turn dry and brown. The artists can then paint them and turn them into any number of things from...
  



• Kraft will help fight intestinal worms
  

  Filed under: South America, Business, Asia, Culinary Kids, South Africa, Northern Africa, Health & Medical

  The idea of worms is not something I'd normally want to bring up on a food blog, but in the case of mega-ginormous food conglomerate Kraft, worms are driving the development of a new food line.
  
  Wait...what?!?!
  
  Yes, worms, but don't worry about finding the creepy crawly things in your next blue box of macaroni and cheese. Kraft is developing a new food that is supposed to taste good, and also kill intestinal worms, which is a major problem...
  



• South Africa whips up world's largest pumpkin pie
  

  Filed under: Dessert, Baking, South Africa, Fall Flavors, Super Size Me

  I've never given much thought as to whether South Africans celebrate Thanksgiving. However, when I read that a team of bakers created what they're calling the the world's largest pumpkin pie last weekend, I'm beginning to think folks in Pretoria might just have their own version Thanksgiving.
  
  The 1.15 ton treat took two days to make and bake and measured some 3 feet deep. It's worth noting that the pie's other dimensions were 28 feet long and 7 feet wide. While I'm all for the South Africans trying to break a record...
  



• Liquor Cabinet: Dessert Wines- The Basics
  

  Filed under: Wine, South America, Australia, South Africa, America, Europe, Liquor Cabinet

  Dessert wines are fascinating to me, not only for their scrumptious sweet tastes, but also for the many complicated and unusual ways in which they are made. Most, but not all dessert wines tend to be higher in alcohol than regular wines. This is due to the large amount of sugars in the fresh juice, the more sugar, the greater the final alcohol levels produced during fermentation.
  
  In taste these wines have a bold array of flavors like honey, apricot, peach, tropical fruit, caramel, dates, raisins, citrus, berries,...
  



• Peppadews aren't just tasty, they're socially responsible
  

  Filed under: Farming, Business, Vegetables, South Africa, Did you know?, Condiments

  Peppadews, those tasty little sweet hot peppers from South Africa are grown and made by a socially responsible company, one who cares for their fellow country folk. Peppadew International, whose head office is located in Johannesburg, is committed to the uplifting of the communities in which it is located and a quarter of its contracted farmers come from previously disadvantaged communities. The company is dedicated to training and development of its employees to uplift and empower them so they can better support themselves and their families.
  
  Peppadew Internationals main factory...
  



• South African grows gigantic onion
  

  Filed under: Vegetables, Food Oddities, South Africa, Super Size Me

  When I was a kid I was told to eat my vegetables so I'd grow up to be nice and strong. Apparently feeding vegetables to veggies makes them, too, quite robust. Or so a South African chap found when he used organic fertilizer that he makes from vegetable peelings to help grow a ginormous onion.
  
  At just under 3 pounds the onion weighs 10 times more than the, er, garden variety. Henry Carr of Port Elizabeth has been growing vegetables for almost 40 years. When asked what he planned to do with his humongous onion, Carr said...
  



• Little darlings of the pineapple world
  

  Filed under: Snacks, Fruit, Food Oddities, Raves & Reviews, How To, South Africa, America

  A few years ago I was in South Africa and stopped by the local Woolworths. Woolworths in South Africa is not the same as the US stores. It is a high end department store affiliated to Marks and Spencer in the United Kingdom, with an amazing food store inside. One of the first things I saw were these tiny little pineapples the size of large baseballs. I bought a dozen since they were both inexpensive by local rates, and with the incredible exchange rate of dollars for rand...
  




• How cool is that zeer pot?
  

  Filed under: Science, Farming, South Africa, Northern Africa

  Of all the households in the US, 99.5% have refrigerators. About the same percentage have some way of heating food. We've seen some great gadgets for keeping things hot and cold here on Slashfood, but I want to show you an ancient technique for keeping food cool. It's called a zeer pot. The vessel itself may be third world, but it's playing a timely role in the continuing recovery of northern Darfur and other African nations. Science in Africa magazine states that a zeer can keep tomatoes edible for 20 days, as opposed to two, and...