I hear every day that this or that person is back working in the company’s offices two or three times a week. The word “weaning” often accompanies this news; some companies seem keen to get everyone back in the fold, into the morning traffic, to give them back the stress they’d learnt to bury while working from home. To replace the slow life they’d come to take for granted with the old rat race that used to be the norm.

Have we learnt nothing from the enforced lockdown that had us making all sorts of discoveries about ourselves, about life and the living of it, and of the value of simple things? The value of kicking your shoes off for comfort in your home work space, being able to water the garden or knock up a quick marinade for tonight’s supper when you need a screen break, or being part of the school run and not having to rely on the largesse of other kids’ parents. Would everyone be buying a house in the country and planning to move there one day? Perhaps it’s not as big a trend as we had thought it might be. Or maybe it’s just a slow burn, with some city people having a mind’s eye on a future life somewhere in the Karoo. We’ll do that; we’ll go there one day.

All of this went through my head one night last week when I was seeing a friend off at the front gate. We said goodnight, he drove off, and when he’d driven around the corner and his headlights were no longer visible, I looked up, gasped, and instantly turned off the solar lamp I’d been carrying to light our way. The heavens were ablaze with stars, the Milky Way floating above my head so brilliantly it felt like you could almost reach out and touch it. A rolling blackout gift of glory in the sky. It’s the only power cut gift I can think of.

We were lucky in that we’d moved to the Karoo five years before the pandemic struck and were well settled in our new home. We’d pulled up horrid 1970s wall-to-wall carpeting that had been glued to beautiful old wooden floorboards and had the Oregon varnished, renovated a kitchen and bathroom, built a little dam pool in the back and, just one week before we first heard the term Covid-19, had finished building a roof over the backyard braai patio. I’d strung up pretty fairy lights too. Then: rug, pulled.

But we all coped, didn’t we? We made plans, we adapted, we learnt to distance, and we learnt to cook in new ways. The old ways, in recipes at least, trickled back into our lives somewhat.

Beyond starter dough and soda bread

Over time we’ve moved, those of us lucky to have survived, far from the temporary norm that required masks and sanitising at every turn. Not everyone still makes soda bread. You don’t hear the phrase starter dough nearly as often any more. We’ve quickly found our old patterns and resumed life the way it used to be.

And even though there’d been rolling blackouts even in the early 2000s when we returned from the UK to find bizarre things going on (but mostly off) because of Eskom needing to “load shed”, whatever that was, only in these nascent post-pandemic years has it seemed as though rolling blackouts have become almost as big a calamity as the runaway virus had been (not that it has truly left yet, of course; I’m talking about relative perspectives). Now, whether and when the power will be off pervades our every waking moment. It’s in our dreams and our nightmares. We’re a nation wounded, frightened and we carry the tension and anxiety that goes with trauma and fear of the unknown.

Which is why I turned back from that glorious Karoo night sky and felt a delicious wave of relief crash through my psyche when I remembered that, as with the pandemic, at least we’re in a quiet place, a gentler space than the city we left. And, luckily, we’ve learnt to cope with cooking when the power’s off. By gas and by fire. Like the ancestors used to do. We found that it comes easily, that it’s instinctive. We light candles for night light and it’s gentle and kind. At least for now, while the weather’s warm.

But, like so many other things when the lights go out, cooking is a challenge. I used to regret having bought an oven that was entirely gas, both the plates on top and the oven itself. Now I’m relieved, as it means that I can cook a slow roast on a Saturday during a four-hour-plus period of the power being off. Which, when this dreaded winter of 2023 arrives, is likely to be even more important, if our worst fears materialise.

Switch to gas before the cold sets in

We might consider switching to gas before the cold sets in, accompanied by even higher stages of rolling blackouts, because shivering in the dark with all electrical appliances out of action is not going to be fun. I might finally get that indoor braai installed in the front room as it will be a threefold win, providing warmth, food, and even light, while the fire is burning. We’d be able to braai and make potjies and even cook soup on the primitive heat of fire, and laugh in the face of Eskom and its attendant mafiosi.

In the meantime, last Saturday I put a lamb shoulder in that gas oven at 11am and let it cook at barely 150℃ for a full seven hours.

This recipe and others like it are worth storing up for when the chill reaches us. If the direst of fears and predictions were to materialise, and the power were to go off for six or more hours at a stretch, you’d still be able to cook my eight-hour shoulder of lamb. On gas. (Find the recipe for it here.) DM/TGIFood