Article: Marleen van Eeden from Eat-In
Image: Overberg

With more than 30 farm stalls, arts and crafts stops and restaurants enticing you, you'll be spoilt for choice. You don't have to be a card-carrying gourmet to enjoy the Overberg's culinary delights. It does not matter whether you know your macadamias from your macaroons or sorrel from sage. The food here is still real- direct, simple and tasty.,

The recipes take their cue from the flavours, textures, colours of whatever is seasonally available in backyard gardens or on pantry shelves. In Stanford Marianna, of Marianna's Bistro and Deli, pounds and pummels bread dough on a scrubbed kitchen table . "The old- fashioned ways still work for us here. But lately I've been getting quite bold- I'm even considering a gas oven, " she teases, adding with an air of mystery: "Dough has such a wonderful alchemy…"

For her famous chicken pies Marianna "imports" chickens from George. But everything else id home- grown and home cooked, using her grandmothers' original recipe. Don't leave Stanford without at least a dozen chicken pies.

People in the Overberg don't mind sharing anything and everything. And they do it with abandon - their laughter and jokes, family secrets, tales and stories. Even their granny's recipes. So when passing through Elgin, do remember to ask Norma Bridgman, of Clifford's cottage (turn off the N2 at Elgin) for the recipe for her extravagant apple tart. And don't forget the pecan nut pie at the Peregrine farm stall outside Grabouw - definite more pecan than pie!

At Antoinette's farm restaurant (on the N2 outside Caledon on the way to Riviersonderend), the aromatic waterblommetjiebredie comes with the recipe on the back of the container. On the way there, stop at the Dassiesfontein farm stall (between Bot river and Caledon) where you can buy anything from a Dover stove (a coal stove) to organically produced jams, droewors and bokkems. Traditional boerekos is served on tin plates. And to ad to the novelty, you can have boerekos takeaway!

Sandwiches and snacks are made from bread baked in a traditional wood burning oven. You can even braai your own chops or sosaties to eat with traditional farm vegetables. Order your farm loaf well in advance. Better still, buy a bag of the locally milled flour (the recipe comes with the flour…) and bake your own.

If you plan to go as far a Struisbaai, get to the harbour at no later than 7am to net a Cap salmon caught that morning. On the way back, stop at the Bodorp-Huisie farm stall in Napier and stock up on farm butter, locally made feta and cottage cheeses, a variety of home-baked breads, pies to die for, milk tart and cakes, as well as big, big bottles of bright yellow pickled lemons, or bottled quinces, guavas and figs.

If you're lucky, you might bump into Petro of Blue Crane Country lodge. Petro calls her cows by their names. "You know, my cows are actually proud of the milk they yield for our feta and cream cheeses. I see it in their eyes," she says with conviction. And you have to believe her. The cheeses are all homemade and in great demand, so order well in advance. Bring empty containers in all the flavours of the region: fynbos, bluegum, ,and honeybush.

Enormous pieces of honeycomb are stored in big tin baths on the stoep. Chomp off the piece of you like the comb or simply fill your container with the liquid gold. If Petro and husband Torr are not at home, don't despair - the door is always open and there's always an honesty box: take what you want off the shelves and simply leave the money in the box.

And just when you thought that was all Napier had to offer, you'll pass a big black sign next to the road that warns: "Moerse pies, moerse lekker, moerse mistake not to stop!" Olive oils, ostrich eggs, organic produce, locally-produced cheeses, and cherries, breads, bredies and biltong, homemade dark chocolate truffles and bright red turnips…throughout the overberg we were spoilt for choice. Our round-about took just under 37 well-fed hours, but the unique aftertaste still lingers.