Nirvana

I found my bliss today. We were walking along Dorp St., looking for Oom Samie se Winkel, an old general store from the 1800s. The sun, per usual, was not letting up, we'd probably walked a couple of miles already and had nearly gone through our water bottle supply, when we saw MELISSA'S: The Food Shop on the side of the road. It was air conditioned, a definite plus, and it had free samples of lemonade (they call it lemon syrup)! And oh my god, it's like Central Market only ten times better because it isn't a chain and it's small and the floors are old-fashioned black-and-white linoleum and the workers wear little chefs' hats and wow.

Gelato is a big deal here, and it's challenging to find real ice cream, but there they had iced coffee, raspberry/rose and chocolate/orange flavors. They had potato crisps flavored with red onion, black olive and roasted garlic (I grabbed a bag before we left), fresh salsa, chocolate ganache, South African cheeses and so many different kinds of pesto!

In short, I'm pretty sure I know where all my money's going to go here (yeah, so, the food's a little pricey). Even if I gain like 30 pounds (which I inevitably will, as we all know tasty food must be unhealthy), I can kind of counterbalance it by walking around a lot and sweating (which is just about all I do when I'm not eating).

Yumm-o!