Recipes for Love and Murder, by Sally Andrew

Recipes for Love and Murder, by Sally Andrew. Umuzi, Penguin Random House South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa 2015. ISBN 9781415207574 / ISBN 978-1-41-520757-4

Enjoy this read provided for you from the the South African crime novel Recipes for Love and Murder by Sally Andrew.

Sally Andrew  

“The next two days I went to the the gazette, and replied to my other letters and emails. For lunch on both days I went to the Route 62 Café and ate two chicken pies. I sat on the bench in the umbrella shade and looked up at the mountain. Tannie Kuruman came and sat down beside me. Tannie Kuruman smells of the kitchen. It’s a nice smell. She’s a coloured lady in her sixties, and even shorter and rounder than me. She wears a doek over her head to tidy her hair away. Her skin’s a bit browner than mine, and her hair more frizzy. But coloureds and whites do not look so different from each other out here in the country. “It’s so dark up there,” I said, when I had finished chewing, “in those mountain gorges.” “Ja,” she said, “it’s where the tall trees grow. When it rains there are lovely waterfalls over the rocks.” That night I struggled to sleep. I was worried about those two women. I knew too well what could happen to them, and I tried not to remember what had happened to me. But sometimes these flashes just come to me as if it all happened only yesterday instead of years ago. I calmed myself down by reciting my mother’s muesli buttermilk rusk recipe. Butter, flour, sunflower seeds, dried apples … I had run out of rusks at home and at the office. And rusks should dry out overnight. So I got up and made a big batch and put them into two baking trays in the oven. I let the warm sweet smell fill my lungs, and somehow it helped fight away the memories, and the worry. Maybe duck lady’s husband was not as bad as my husband. And even my husband didn’t kill me … When the dough was baked and had cooled a little, I cut it into rusk-sized pieces and put them into the warming drawer. I ate two of the biggest pieces while they were still soft, with a cup of tea. They were like buttery cake. I went back to bed and kept my mind on the sweet bread that was becoming rusks, all safe and warm and dry, and I finally managed to fall asleep. I woke early, just before the birds, and sat on the stoep in my nightie and looked on the dark shapes of the veld and hills and drank coffee and ate two of the golden-brown beskuit. I put on my veldskoene, walked around to the side of the house and opened up the chicken hok. I checked all five hens were in there, and listened to their sleepy chicken noises. I always close the hokkie door at night, because you never know when a jackal or rooikat is in the area. I threw some crushed mielie corn on the lawn and called kik kik kik and they woke up fast. The flashbacks were gone with the morning light, but the worries were still there, and my mind wouldn’t settle. So I made my farm bread with oats, sunflower seeds and molasses. I put the dough into a cast-iron pot and took it outside onto my stoep where the sun was now shining. I phoned the Gazette but there was no reply. [...]

This is an excerpt from Recipes for Love and Murder, by Sally Andrew.

Title: Recipes for Love and Murder
Subtitle: A Tannie Maria Mystery
Author: Sally Andrew
Genre: Crime Novel South Africa
Imprint: Umuzi
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa 2015
ISBN 9781415207574 / ISBN 978-1-41-520757-4
Softcover, 13 x 21 cm, 394 pages