I’ve been using CBD products for around three years now. I’ve mainly taken it in the form of tea, water, and gummies, so when I came across the Mostra di Cafe brand on Takealot, I had to try it. Let’s just say I’m on my second bag of coffee.
I bought the ground coffee but they are sold as whole coffee beans as well. You can either get it direct from Mostra di Cafe or through Takealot. The price is basically the same. Both Takealot and Mostra di Cafe have minimum orders to receive free shipping. Takealot’s minimum shipping is R450 and Mostra di Cafe’s is R399.
The taste of the coffee is very appealing to me. I’m no coffee connoisseur; I just enjoy coffee that tastes and smells good and this coffee is amazing. I love it. As for the CBD, I don’t feel any effects when I drink the coffee. I don’t notice that I feel any calmer than normal, nor do I feel particularly agitated. That is until I ran out of coffee a few months ago. I didn’t notice anything initially, but one day I realised that I was starting to get irritated with the house people again in the morning. Which is when I bought my next bag of CBD coffee.
Price-wise, I paid R135 for a 500g bag of CBD coffee on Takealot. It costs R140 on the Mostra di Cafe website. I bought other stuff as well, which made the shipping free. As I said before, I love the taste of the coffee, and to be honest, even if there wasn’t CBD infused into it, I’d still like the coffee.
Checkers Food Services is one of the best-kept secrets of online shopping in South Africa, I think. I’d heard about it a few years ago and signed up for an online account, but then was just too intimated to use it. And I’m an experienced, enthusiastic online shopper. When Checkers Sixty60 came along, I used that but when I needed to order dog food for delivery on the Cape Flats, well that was a disaster. They took the order but then later phoned to say that they don’t deliver in that area, which is about 2 KMs from where they are very willing to deliver. I was upset, man. Mess with human food, but don’t mess with food for animals that I feed! That’s when I looked online for different options.
None of the other big food retailers, like Pick n Pay, deliver there either so I needed a plan B. Plan B, it turned out, was hiding in plain sight. I logged into the CFS website – you need to log in to be able to browse and of course, make purchases – and tentatively messaged them via the chatbot. I asked when they would deliver if I placed an order that day. They said the next day. I didn’t say that I wanted delivery to the Athlone area on the Cape Flats.
The stock is not the same variety you might get when going to a Checkers store or even on the Sixty60 app, which can be somewhat frustrating, but also helps to make choices. For instance, there are just two brands of dog food, one of which the dogs I feed refuse to eat. Fortunately, they love the brand that is in stock, so it’s not a problem for me. One of the advantages is that there are items that you don’t normally find in a Checkers store or on the Sixty60 app, like Coimbra baked goods and bulk catering supplies for functions.
When I placed my first order, it said that there was no delivery fee for orders over R1000 and R100 delivery fee for less than R1000. Subsequently, it changed to no delivery fee for orders of R450 or more.
I chose to have my purchases delivered the following day to the address on the Cape Flats. CFS sent an email confirmation of the order and gave a delivery time within a 2-hour window. They sent another email the next morning as a reminder that delivery would take place. A huge delivery truck with friendly delivery people arrived the next day within the timeframe mentioned and delivered my order without any problems.
I’ve used Checkers Food Services many times in the last year or so and the process was pretty much the same each time. The prices are the same as in-store and on the app. You can link your X-tra Savings card and get the same discounts as in-store and on the app. CFS only delivers in the Western Cape and Gauteng though.
CFS is probably in my top 5 favourite online websites to shop from so, of course, I highly recommend it.
*Disclaimer: This is not an advert or a paid post. It is 100% my personal experience and views.
I found Just Fruit & Veg while searching for, I think, celery or something similar online a few weeks ago. I will pretty much do anything to not go to a physical store: one because I work from home and am nearly always working and two, I hate going to a shop filled with people. It’s not even a phobia, just pure loathing of doing something that’s supposed to be normal but isn’t really.
Anyway, so after scrolling around on their website, I discovered that they’re based in Epping, which is close enough to where I need groceries to be delivered, usually in the southern suburbs of Cape Town or in the Athlone area. Just Fruit & Veg already gets one star just for delivering to the Cape Flats. And their minimum order to get free delivery is R250! I’ve not yet successfully ordered for R250. There are just too many convenient groceries that I seem to ‘need’.
Stock photo
From there, it was pretty easy. I chose the items I wanted, which included some fruit, vegetables, bread, and parathas/rotis, amongst other things. There was some stuff that I wanted to try, like the pasteis de nata to compare it (yeah, right!) with the Coimbra ones I buy at Checkers’ CFS website. I was really tempted, I have to say, but my waistline reminded me that winter clothes hide nothing.
I placed the order on a Thursday morning around 10:00 AM and paid through EFT. They don’t have automatic card payments, which I don’t mind. Since they use the same bank as I do, FNB, the payment was immediate and I received an email that my shopping would be delivered THAT SAME DAY! I’d expected delivery to take place the following day. That was a pleasant surprise. I have made sure that I place my order the night before I wanted delivery to take place in subsequent orders though. Oh, yes, there’ve been subsequent orders.
The only downside I’ve found with ordering from Just Fruit & Veg is the fact that they state that delivery will take place between 8:30 AM and 6:00 PM, instead of giving SMS notice when they’re close to delivering. It’s no different to many of the couriers or large online retailers like Takealot, so I sort of understand. All three orders I’ve placed so far arrived around lunchtime.
Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of my delivered goods. But take my word for it, the products looked amazingly fresh and delicious. None of those Checkers or Pick n Pay stuff that looks like it was dragged around the store before being displayed for purchase. All three orders, over three weeks, looked straight up out of a magazine. Fresh, beautiful fruit and vegetables. Delicious looking and tasting bread. I bought lentils and mushrooms patties last week and it was the best-tasting (as far as I can remember) non-meat burgers I’ve eaten. I might try the beetroot ones next.
So all in all, a four-and-a-half star experience, with the only downside being delivery times.
*Oh, and this is not an ad or a paid post. It’s 100% my nonpaid experience and opinion.
I was a bit surprised but happy to find Anne with an E, Season2, back on Netflix and immediately clicked on the first episode and stuck. In these times we can all do with a bit of Anne of Green Gables to sweeten up a few hours. And, yes, she’s still an excitable dreamer that we got to know in Season 1. Although 2 years or so had passed since the end of Season 1.
I started watching the first four episodes and had to stop or might’ve watched the entire series in one night!
Anyway, when we last saw Anne, she and Jerry had returned from a visit to Aunt Josephine with two grifters in tow. At the start of Season 2 the grifters, Nathaniel (Nate) and Mr Dunlop, are settled into life at Green Gables and have started putting their plans into place in order to benefit financially at the expense of the good people of Avonlea. Of course, busybody Anne won’t let them have it all their own way.
Gilbert meanwhile is working on a steamer ship, travelling the world and has befriended a Jamaican man.
I don’t want to give away too much about the first few episodes, except to say that although Anne, Diana, Gilbert and the rest of their schoolmates have all grown a few centimetres since Season 1. Other than that, Anne with an E moves seamlessly between the seasons. There’s still the same charm. Anne is still Anne. Matthew and Marilla are still themselves. Which is pretty much all I can ask from a series whose first season I loved.
It’s been a long, long week. Deadlines and only about 2 hours of TV time this week, so hopefully I can fit in some movies this weekend. Last weekend I had the American version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo on my watch list but didn’t get time to watch it so it’s back on my list for the weekend. I watched the Swedish adaptations previously and was looking fo
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Showmax
This adaption of the first novel in the Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series stars Rooney Mara as a hacker, Lisbeth Salander and Daniel Craig as journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Blomkvist is asked by a rich businessman to investigate the disappearance of his niece Harriet. Salander, who’s already been hacking Blomkvist’s computer, secretly helps him uncover clues. Salander meanwhile has her own problem with a sadistic legal guardian.
The movie is directed by David Fincher and is 158 minutes long.
Trainwreck
Stars Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in what I assume to be a typical Judd Apatow film. A raunchy romantic comedy is what I’m expecting. Schumer plays Amy a magazine writer who loves to party and is who is sent to do an interview with a sports doctor named Aaron (Bill Hader).
The film is 125 minutes long and is directed by Judd Apatow.
American Hustle
Inspired by true events American Hustle is about two con artists played by Amy Adams and Christian Bale who is forced by an FBI agent, Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), to help with a sting operation involving corrupt politicians.
The movie is directed by David O. Russell and is 138 minutes long.
Irreplaceable You is a Netflix movie about a woman named Abbie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who is in her early 30s and had just become engaged to her long-time boyfriend. She thinks she might be pregnant, but her doctor diagnosis with stage IV cancer instead.
Abbie’s a Type-A personality, a total control freak, so she tries to arrange a partner for her fiancee, Sam (Mikiel Huisman), for after she dies. From the first scene in the movie, we’re told that this is Abbie’s story. Which needed to be said, because we have no idea how Sam feels about his fiancee’s imminent death. He does get upset when he finds out that he’s planning for life after her death. Although he never gives the impression that he would have a tough time moving on. He actually never gives the impression that’s he’s madly in love with her either.
Abbie’s best scenes are with the Dominic (Timothy Simons), a nurse who sits with her through chemotherapy and Myron (Christopher Walker), a fellow cancer sufferer she meets at a support group for cancer patients.
I only found the Irreplaceable You emotional in the last 20 minutes or so and started tearing up after Abbie died. All the emotion of the movie is kept until the last few minutes.
It was the first time I’ve seen Gugu Mbatha-Raw onscreen and she’s beautiful to look at. I believe she has three more projects on Netflix which I’ll check out. However, I didn’t like either Abbie or Sam. Sam was almost a nonperson throughout the movie and Abbie was so shallow or up her own ass as Myron described her to his wife.
It was also kind of weird that Abbie showed little anger at the disease that was taking away her life or anger for the future she’ll never have. Other than obsessing over a partner for Sam, she seemed to have nothing left on her bucket list.
I would recommend this if you like chick flicks and tearjerkers on a Friday night. It’s a pretty harmless movie,
So for this weekend, I’m recommending the Millenium trilogy – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest. I streamed it from Showmax over the past two weekends and thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Millenium series – which I’ve read – is by deceased Swedish writer Stieg Larsson and is about a hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) and journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist). The first film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has a mystery, a suspected murder. It introduces us to Lisbeth and her dark present and past. The other two were more of a political nature, also linked to Lisbeth’s past.
The films are filmed in Swedish with English subtitles and with Swedish actors. I don’t normally watch movies with subtitles, however, these movies were action-packed, fast-paced and engaging. I was not in the least bothered with the subtitles.
Each movie is just over two hours long.
There’s also an American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander and Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist which I think I’ll catch over the weekend to compare. It’s also available on Showmax.
So last night I watched Chris Rock’s new standup comedy show called Tamborine on Netflix. If you don’t like swearing in a show, then this one definitely is not for you. Chris Rock swears constantly. Apparently, Black middle-aged American men are angry, very angry. And according to Chris Rock, the reason for his anger is 50% his fault and 50% American society.
As a Black South African woman the level of anger towards American society, especially towards the police and White America, in general, is pretty shocking. You kind of wonder why a rich American with lots of choices puts his children through living with such anger when he can just live someplace else with them.
In the first part of Tamborine, Chris Rocks talks about the police and Trump and teaching his children to be suspicious of the colour white.
And Rock moves onto his private life, the fact that he’s divorced and was a custody battle. Listening to Chris Rock, you kind of get why the courts make it difficult for men, especially Black men to get custody of their children. From the way he described his lifestyle before the divorce, the impression I got was that if he had got custody of his daughters he would probably have just continued being an arsehole indefinitely. Having to fight for his girls seemed to have made him a better father. It also makes for funny comedy. Certainly my favourite part of the show.
The tamborine in the title of the show was in reference to marriage, and I guess life in general, where he says that sometimes everyone has to play the tamborine at some stage. Be the person who doesn’t do the glamour stuff.
Chris Rock tells men not to mess up their marriages, tells us he cheated on his wife, behaved in whatever way he wanted to, then gives us an hour of angry comedy and says women, children and dogs are more loved than men are. I wonder why?
Would I recommend the show? Look, if you like Chris Rock, and you like angry comedy and you have an hour to spare, I’d say yes. There’s some great insight into what middle-aged divorced men are thinking. There’s some insight into what it’s like being male and Black in America. There’s even some insight on dating on Tinder. Which made me think, “Wow. I’d never want to date someone like him.”
Late last week I noticed Queer Eye on the featured lineup on Netflix. I’d just read about it earlier in the day on Twitter so was keen to check it out. I knew about its predecessor, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but had never watched an episode before.
So this last week I watched all eight episodes of Queer Guy over about 4 days.
The premise.
If you don’t know what Queer Eye is about, it’s five gay guys who make over the life of a guy at the request of someone close to him. They go in and redo his wardrobe, teach him to cook a meal/mix drinks, makeover his home, help him groom and teach him some life skills. This series of eight episodes is set in Atlanta in the US. Seven of the men are straight and one was still gay, but not completely out at the time the five guys arrived.
Who are hosts?
I’d never heard of any of the Queer Eye hosts before. They are: Tan France (fashion), Jonathan Van Ness (grooming), Bobby Berk (interior design), Karamo Brown (culture), and Antoni Porowski (food and wine). As per the title of the show, they’re all gay and throughout the episodes, we get to know bits of their coming out stories. Some of the best parts of the show is seeing how at least of the guys identify with aspects of the men they are making over.
Who are the makeover candidates?
The men makeover candidates all have issues with their self-confidence which manifests in the how messy their homes are, their dress sense (or lack of it) and the way most of them keep people at arm’s length. By the end of the show, they experience some sort of emotional breakthrough. I do wonder how long it lasts though. I hope there’s some sort of follow-up show.
Would I recommend Queer Eye?
I would most certainly recommend Queer Eye. I enjoyed seeing the transformation especially the personal makeovers. A haircut and personal grooming can make a huge difference! I like all five of the fab five. They’re likable and real, if sometimes a bit hyper. I already can’t wait for the next season. I could never stand watching the makeover shows on TV before because of all the breaks and advertisement. The best thing about Netflix? Not one single ad break!
For the past two years or so I’ve been streaming my TV series and movies via Apple TV first from Netflix and then later both Showmax and Netflix. My TV viewing has completely changed in that time. I’ve watched very little ‘normal’ TV in that time. Who in their right mind would use ‘normal’ TV with all those advertising breaks above streaming? Not me! That’s for sure. I tried to sign up for Amazon as well, but they wanted a credit card number and I didn’t want to give that information, so no Amazon for me. If Amazon accepts Paypal in the future, I will likely sign up there too. I love having access to as much TV as possible!
The difference between Netflix and Showmax
There are a few TV series and movies that are on both streaming services: like Suits, The Affair, Friends, etc. The difference is on Showmax you’ll find South African movies and series which of course is not available on Netflix. I haven’t yet watched any SA movies or series on Showmax. Showmax does have some exclusive streams to US TV shows. Showmax has Game of Thrones, which was a huge plus for me. GOT Season 7 was online almost immediately after the series ended in the US. Mr Robot season 3 was streaming on Showmax pretty much as the episodes concluded in the US.
Netflix has original programming like Stranger Things and Stranger Things 2, 13 Reasons Why, The Queen, Dynasty, etc. Unfortunately, some of their original programmes were sold to DSTV before Netflix arrived in South Africa, so House of Cards, for example, is far behind on Netflix. HOC season 4 arrived last year and HOC 5 hasn’t even arrived yet.
Which do I use most?
It’s hard to say. I go through phases of watching Netflix almost exclusively, but then a few weeks later I’m back with Showmax for a few series. Fortunately, I don’t have to choose at the moment. But if I had to, I’d probably choose Netflix. Mainly because some of their original programmes are amazing. It’s a close thing though.
Let me know if the comments below if you have a favourite or if traditional TV is still your thing.
