Food
Easter Christmas Shopping
We’re home! and we have unpacked. Precious luggage included 3 kilos of honey (manuka, rewa rewa and tawiri flowers) from The Honey Centre and a bottle of Field of Grace chardonnay from Mahurangi River Winery which is now owned by a good friend of mine. Oh and also Christmas shopping for the US side of […]
Outdoor Pursuits
If you know just where to look, you can find old fashioned quince trees on the side of a country road in New Zealand. The laundry king and I gathered some up and I made some quince paste. I stirred the mixture for too long so it turned out more like quince jerky but the […]
Holiday Kitchen Catch Up
The Christmas cake was a little dry but none the worse for the addition of chilli powder. This strawberry and lemon pannacotta (made from a recipe in a magazine my sister Chantel sent us) was a refreshing dessert for both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve: But the biggest hit of all was the stupendous […]
Christmas Menu
It occurs to me that Christmas is only three days away and we should really work out what we are going to eat and stock up. I expect it will be a low-key affair. Seafood will definitely feature, although we will be skipping the traditional southern Italian Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes. And […]
A dash of serendipity?
When I was making my Christmas cake this year, I decided to be more adventurous with the spices and reached for the Chinese Five Spice. What I actually picked up and poured into the dry ingredients was Hot Chilli pepper. Ahem. I managed to scoop most of the chilli out but some remained inextricably mixed. […]