The Amerikaner Boermeisie...

A direct translation is the american farm girl...that's me!!!  And just when I thought I'd seen everything Bertie Botha invited Salome and I over to make skilpadtjies.  A skilpadtjies is a small tortoise in the Afrikaans language and what we were making is named after the skilpadtjie.  It is liver wrapped in the fat which lines the outside of the stomach.  To quote Bertie, it isn't exactly low cholesterol!  Upon arriving, Bertie proudly displayed the contents of a cast iron pot cooking on a wood fire...it was the biggest tongue I'd ever seen.

First little background on Bertie...he owned and lived on a farm for years.  His son runs the farm now and we will spend the first night of our trip at Bertie's farm.  Farms in Namibia are different from the farms in the US.  Most of them are very large in terms of acerage and they have animals...typically cows and/or sheep...but also game.  By game I mean different types of buck such as oryx (gemsbok), springbok, red hartebeest, elan, etc.  They also sometimes have giraffe, leopard, zebra, and a myriad of other animals depending on where the farm is located.

Sooo...back to the tongue...it was from a giraffe and they have really big tongues...just look at their neck!!  Apparently there was a helicopter animal count done at Bertie's farm a few months back and 58 giraffe were counted.  That's alot.  Practicing good animal management technique, one of the giraffe was culled.  It weighed 7,000 kilograms (dressed) and was sold for 7,000 Namibian dollars, which is about 1,300 US dollars.  That's how Bertie ended up with the tongue.  I asked how long you need to cook a giraffe tongue and Bertie said until tender...I think it takes awhile.  I asked Salome how to eat it and she said, "like normal tongue...you slice it and eat it as cold meat!"  So at least I now know how to eat all kinds of tongue.

Now back to the skilpadtjies...after getting a good look at the simmering giraffe tongue, we went inside and I saw the biggest liver I'd ever seen...it was enormous!  Of course my first thoughts were it must be from the giraffe!  It wasn't, however, it was from an oryx!  For those who haven't actually seen an oryx, here's a picture of one on the dunes at Soussus Vlei:

We will see oryx on our trip.  If we are lucky, we will see large herds...maybe a hunderd or so.

Before making our skilpadtjies, Bertie shared with me another culinary treat...one that was a first for me...curried lamb tripe!  This isn't something I would ever order at a restaurant, but I must say, for tripe it wasn't bad!!!