About

”Please eat your spinach. Trust me, it will make you strong as Popeye!” My mother’s pleas would fall on deaf ears. “But I don’t want to be strong!” She would insist that I wasn’t allowed to get up the table before I haven’t finished my plate. Cream spinach. I fought the urge to gag!

I hated Popeye!

An old Sotho lady once taught me a recipe that changed my opinion about spinach. She cooked the vegetable in a cast iron pot over the open fire in front of her house in the middle of nowhere, 2 hours away from Johannesburg. I was lying in front of her stone-house in the shade on top of a blanket watching her peel a butternut with a blunt knife. She served dumplings with gravy, Morogo, mashed sweet butternut, fried cabbage and braaied meat. I was totally in love with her food and her Morogo had absolutely nothing in common with frozen cream spinach from “Iglo”.

Maria Sesane - A true African “Open Air Kitchen Goddess”. Forget about Popeye and his ugly girlfriend!