7 years today

{via weheartit}

THEN a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.  And he answered:

A blooming great meal: Fleur's Place, Moeraki

While in New Zealand I hope to do two things - visit Fleur's Place in Moeraki and eat Bluff Oysters. ~ Rick Stein

Once in a while you have a meal that's so good it makes your toes crinkle under the table.  That makes you salivate just thinking about it even weeks later.

On our fruitful trip to Moeraki a couple of weekends ago, we were lucky enough to have lunch at famous Fleur's Place.  I say lucky because you usually have to book in advance and we just rocked up and managed to nab ourselves a table with only an hour waiting time - just enough time to check out the Moeraki Boulders up the road.

{moeraki boulders: rocked my world}

My blackberry is not working: Rhubarb & Wild Blackberry Crumble Bars

Ronnie: I bought something from you last week and I'm very disappointed.
Shopkeeper: Oh yeah? What's the problem?
Ronnie: Yeah, well, my blackberry is not working.
Shopkeeper: What's the matter, it run out of juice?
Ronnie: No, no it's completely frozen!
~ BBC One, The One Ronnie 

It's a sign of the times when you tell people 'we got free blackberries last weekend' and they think you scored a new mobile phone.

I remember going fruit picking all the time as a kid: getting scruffy knees from kneeling down in strawberry fields in the height of summer, getting prickled by boysenberry brambles when bush walking and coming home with ice cream containers filled with ruby gems and purple fingers.  A whole day of entertainment for us kids.  Free child labour for our parents.  Wins all round. 

Nowadays, all the strawberry fields in Albany have turned into subdivided suburbia and most of us get our berries in clear plastic punnets and our veges all hygienically dirt free from the vege aisle in a fluorescent lit supermarket.  So what an absolute treat it was to find wild blackberries growing on the side of the road on our way home from a trip out to Moeraki Boulders last weekend.

Remembering Sendai: Sakura Cherry Blossom & Lemon Palmiers

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I've always wanted to make palmiers.

These crispy buttery heart shaped cookies are oh so chic and call to my inner francophile.  So when it came time for our Baking for Hospice Summertime Round I knew I had to make Sakura Cherry Blossom & Lemon Palmiers.  Although technically the arrival of the blooming gorgeous cherry blossoms herald the start of spring rather than summer, it was the perfect excuse to use the bottle of Sakura or Cherry Blossom sugar that my brother's lovely girlfriend brought back for me from Japan.  Merci beaucoup!

I sat down this evening to post about these pretty palmiers and was just about to put fingers to keyboard when I heard over the news what day today was.  March 11, the one year anniversary of the devastating Sendai earthquake and tsunami.

{sakura sugar}

I remember the evening vividly.  It was the eve before my grandma's funeral and we were at the funeral home when we received news about the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami just the coast of Sendai.  An earthquake so powerful it shifted the earth off its axis and created a tsunami over 30m high.  It floored us, my brother especially.  My brother's girlfriend was living and teaching English in Sendai, the city that got the brunt of the tsunami.  Try as he might he couldn't get in touch with her.  My brother texted and called late into the night, his eyes never leaving the devastating footage on TV.  He stayed up all night watching the carnage unfold and eventually, in the early hours of the morning, he got finally through to Winsy.  She was safe.  Thank God.

But not everyone was so lucky.  So my heart, thoughts and prayers tonight go out to all those who one year on are still, recovering, grieving, and remembering.

{massive thank you to my cousin-in-law susy for these pretty as a picture cupcake wrappers xox}

You say Sweet Potato, I say Kumara Salad with Coriander Lime Dressing

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. ~Voltaire

If there's one lesson I keep having to reminding myself time and time again is that you simply can't please everyone.  Like the famous scene in Anchorman sometimes you just have to agree to disagree.

Even on subjects far less contentious than the meaning of San Diego.

Like for instance, in the weekend I had a discussion with my husband about the definition of "ice block".
For me an ice block is any frozen dessert in the shape of a block on a stick.  C reckons if it's made of dairy then it's an ice cream regardless of whether it's on a stick or not.  But "ice block" is descriptive, I implored.  It's about substance, C counters.  For the sake of an harmonious marriage we agreed to disagree.

Tomato, tomato.

Which brings me to this pot-luck-fav of a recipe: Kumara Salad with Coriander Lime Dressing.   While the rest of the world calls these delectably sugary root veges "Sweet Potatoes",  in New Zealand they're known by their Maori name Kumara.  Which, in my humble opinion, is an altogether sexier name.

A week in para para paradise: The Piha Cafe, Piha

We'll get there fast and then we'll take it slow ~ The Beach Boys, Kokomo

Ahh Dunedin.  I've been back down south for a whole week now and already it feels like I'd never left.

Not without the initial adjustment pains mind you: adjusting to going to lectures, adjusting to the freezing cold, adjusting to doing the whole long distance relationship thing again.  It's been like getting back into a pair of jeans that have just gone through the dryer.  A bit tight and uncomfortable to start off with but comfy again with a bit of wearing.

It definitely helped that we hit the ground running.  Lectures, labs, and miserable weather galore.  In fact, it was just our second day back and we were already performing our first craniotomies.  I was literally holding someone's brain in my hands.  Once the centre of their personality, all their thoughts, hopes, and dreams.  Incredible, awe-inspiring, just wow.

Despite all that excitement, I couldn't help but long for the balmy summer days back in Auckland.

Just before I headed back south, C and I took a week vacation at his family bach in Piha.  It was the one week over the entire summer when Auckland had amazing weather.  Score.  A whole glorious week of lazy mornings, nana naps in the arvo, and strolls through the beautiful Waitakere Ranges.  It was our little place like Kokomo.

The boys came and stayed for a couple of the days and since some of them were heading back to the UK and Australia, for their last morning in Piha we treated ourselves to brunch at The Piha Cafe.

Originally, there was a bit of controversy over the opening of the cafe.   Local Piharians are staunchly protective about keeping their slice of paradise pristine and uncommercialized.  Awesome for us visitors wanting to admire the scenery, not so awesome for businesses wanting to get a foot in the door.  After years of wrangling with resource consent shenanigans, fast-forward to 2012 and The Piha Cafe is a firm fixture on the Piha scene, offering some of the best views a cafe can offer, along with great tucker at very reasonable prices.

{via thepihacafe.co.nz}

Ice ice baby: Ambrosia Ice Cream

All right stop.  Collaborate and listen.  Ice is back with a brand new invention ~ Vanilla Ice

Amazing sun-drenched holiday in Piha last week.  Like.

All of a sudden being in my last week in Auckland before I head back down to the chilly south sans husband.  Dis-like.

My, my, how fast time flies when you're having fun.  

Just to prove how fast we are scurrying over the hill these days, my very dear friend Tuxy came back to NZ for the first time in four years since moving to the UK.  Four. Whole. Years.  But it feels like she'd only popped away for a couple of months and as we yakked away in the sunshine it felt like we were 12 year olds again gossiping about boys, wearing scrunchies, making mixed tapes, teeny-bopping to the Spice Girls and vowing to marry Leo.

Yes, we were children of the nineties.

{ambrosia ice cream: a brand new invention}

Being a child of the 90's also meant we grew up on kiddies birthday parties with delightful party nibbles such as fairy bread, cheerios with T sauce, and of course that creamy dreamy fav: ambrosia.

If you didn't grow up in New Zealand, you might not know what ambrosia is.  The concept is deceptively simple: take yoghurt, mix with whipped cream, add marshmallows, berries or other fruit and crumble in some meringue. Very much like a slightly healthier version of Eton Mess.  It's light and creamy and on a hot summer's day it's what definitely what you want, what you really really want.

And just how did I get from ambrosia to ambrosia ice cream?  Well, now this is a story all about how ambrosia got flipped-turned upside down, and I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, I'll tell you how ambrosia became Ambrosia Ice Cream.

A study in lanterns and dumplings

The lantern festival marks the 15th and final day of the Chinese New Year holiday and every year the Asia New Zealand Foundation puts on the Auckland Lantern Festival: a lavish three day long extravaganza with glorious techni-coloured lantern displays filling Albert Park and street stalls of delicious asian food lining the length of Princes Street.

You really get the sense you're in some exotic bustling marketplace in South East Asia rather than the immaculately colonial Albert Park next to Auckland University.

Me and my girls from high school went last night on a beautiful if somewhat muggy Auckland evening and ate our weight in dumplings, noodles, donuts, and steamed buns.

{$4 for 6 pork dumplings. I kid you not. Make sure you get plenty of soy sauce and sweet chilli on these bad boys}