Bachelordom strikes again

Every time Caron goes away we play out this little game where she does the dutiful wife thingy and makes sure that there is enough in the refrigerator to keep me hale and hearty until she returns. The problem is that I don't really know how to cook outside of braaing and even worse, after a day at work, I have absolutely no inclination to start learning. So, while I have a refrigerator full or raw ingredients, I have no skills to convert this into edible food so I tend to do what all intelligent people do when faced with something they don't know how to do - they outsource it. In this context this means that I have been out to a restaurant every night this weekend except thursday when I went for supper at Kim and Laurels. As a result of this I am feeling like I have put on a couple of kilograms, actually I have put on a couple of kilograms so I think that I need to get back to exercising. In addition to not eating very well I haven't managed to cycle or run once this week principally due to work committments.

On friday I went out for lunch to the Ocean Basket which is a chain of fish centric restaurants and when I asked what the line fish was I was told that it was a "Cardinal" which I promptly looked up on FISHMS (+27 79 499 8795) only to be told that there is no such thing as a "Cardinal" fish. When challenged on the actual origins of the fish because it could possibly be imported the waiter and then the manager got vaguer and vaguer assuring us that "it was like Kablejou" and the real clanger for the conversation was when we were told that it comes from the west coast of Mozambique. A cardinal error since Mozambique does not have a west coast. In the end the manager brought up his fish list which didn't have it on it and even a search on the internet by the manager didn't locate the elusive fish. Must be very rare, we're so lucky to actually have the opportunity of eating it. Not.

Back at the office we contacted SASSI who knew of a "Cardinal" but it is an aquarium fish which means that we would need about 20 of them to make a decent meal. It is looking highly probable that the Ocean Basket has just unilaterally renamed a fish, problably with the express purpose of avoiding awkward questions as to why they are serving fish that isn't on the approved green list of fish which can be caught in a sustainable and renewable manner. Definitely smells a bit fishy to me. :-) More on this when a response from Ocean Basket is received.