It’s now exactly a year since I got this blog site up and running. And looking back it’s obviously been a really interesting one! Well, ok, not that interesting… But hope you enjoyed keeping up to date with life here a bit. Beats the emails that you didn’t get, anyway…
And at least now I can remember what we did and when for the last year!
We’ll see if the next year is any more interesting!
Check back then!
It’s been a while since I gave you an update on the chillis. I know you’ve been hanging out for one, so here it is.
Ever since we got back from our trip to the States the 2 Ring of Fire plants have just taken on a new lease of life. I’m not sure whether it’s just that they like the much cooler temperatures that we’ve had since then, or whether it was the site of the 2 Habenero plants on the way down the stairs to the rubbish bin. Or maybe it was just that they almost died when we were away, and just got a drink from our house-sitter just in time, and they’re trying to be extra good so it doesn’t happen again…
Whatever.
But they’ve now got more chillis on them than they’ve ever had before, and the ones that we’ve got off it lately have been the biggest, fattest yet. Yum, yum! And they have been fertilising themselves a lot more too. Hardly had to give them a shake at all! But there are now starting to be a lot less flowers appearing on them, so I think it’s almost end of season time. I could over winter them and keep them to see how that goes, but I suspect that they’ll be heading the way of the others when the last chilli is salvaged from them. (Good job they can’t see what I’ve been writing! They might sulk and just drop the lot now!)
But I’m already looking forward to next year’s crop. Got quite a few different varieties to try this year. If I can find the packets of seeds! I know they’re around somewhere. Just exactly where is the big question! (Bec says – I bet you’ve just had a “man look” for them. No wonder you can’t find them!!)
Almost time to start the seeds off, I guess. I’ll need to check back on this blog and see when I kicked things off last year… Nice having a memory that almost goes back a year for a change!
I was lucky enough to get asked to go to the ruggers at Twickenham with a friend, so who am I to turn down free VIP tickets, even when NZ aren’t even playing! The game was between England and South Africa, so it was a bit of a struggle deciding who to root for. When I say VIP, it means that we got to go to the O2 tent and have a few drinks and a great big pie. After warming up with some food and red wine off we set to find our seats.
It’s quite different going to a game and being fairly neutral, but in the end I decided to root for England as I guess it’s my second home. I have to say that the game wasn’t the most exciting, probably due to the fact that my team wasn’t playing and at times it was so frustrating as the English were too slow with the ball and god only knows what their back line was doing. It was also great having our own little radios which are tapped into the ref, so you got to know what was going on more than usual (probably looked like a pack of dorks though). Both teams were pretty evenly matched, but the English stole the show at the last minute, which I am pleased about due to their recent losing streak and also maybe now those rugger fans at work will have something to be cheery about!
After the game back to the O2 tent to warm up again and listen to post match comments. Then off we toddled to Londontown to meet Mike at the Temple Walkabout (yes we did actually go there, for those of you that know what it’s like), to watch the All Blacks vs. France game. We even had in good ole Walkabout style some snakebits… I forgot how they give you a sore head the next day. All in all it was a good day out!
A while ago I was looking through Olive magazine and found an advert for the BBC’s Good Food Festival, and grabbed some tickets. So after remembering we actually had to take the tickets with us, off we set across London to the massive Olympia exhibition hall. And was it worth taking the decision not eating breakie. Hell yes!
There were mases of food and drink stalls with samples to try, and we made the most of it by trying as much as we could. And after all the sampling we came home with some various stuff, which actually motivated us to cook more than the ready made soup that we had been planning to have tonight all week.
The majority of the prices seemed to be discounted and there were some really good bargains to be picked up. However, unfortunately we didn’t come home with a bottle of the ‘100% pain’, a chilli condiment that we tried. By the look on Bec’s face, the product lived up to it’s name. It took her a lot of bread and about 10 mins to come right! Strangely enough I really liked it!
As always, there were a couple of random stalls there with not much to do with food… One selling sandals, and a power company trying to get people to change their power supplier. Duh! Of course we don’t want to talk to you about that! We’re there for the food!
I was looking at my web sever logs today and noticed that somehow someone had ended up at this blog by searching for paua pattie recipe. I thought that that was a bit odd until I dug a bit deeper and found that those 3 words were indeed used in various places on the post earlier this year about the NZ wine and food festival. Not all in the same place, which is why I normally first try to search with the phrase in speechmarks, but they were all there.
I suspect they ended up a bit disappointed with that result! Hope they managed to track down a good recipe though!
If there is such a thing. Can’t say I’m a big fan of them anyway. Give me fresh oysters with lemon and pepper, or some big, fat green lip muscles anyday!
Today is the start of us photographically recording our evening meals for the month. Why? No idea really. It just came up when we were in Houston and discussing the differences in food and stuff between the UK and US.
You can find the piccies and maybe descriptions here, or there is a link to the page on the right in the “pages” listing.
You can see what they’re eating in the States here.
Maybe a bit of motivation to appear healthy, but we’ll try to just eat what we’d normally do.
Check back later this month to see how it’s gone. And give us grief if there are too many meals of toast!
Yes, sorry. We are the type of people that run home on Halloween night and close all the curtains and only turn on the minimum number of light emitting devices to be able to see what we’re doing, and basically hide. We even considered cooking dinner by candlelight. But that might have possibly been misinterpreted as getting into the spirit of things, so we just grabbed enough stuff to make a sandwich and ran away to the lounge.
Bah humbug, I know, but I’m afraid I haven’t got much interest in another time of the year that really doesn’t seem to have a great deal going for it other than selling “stuff” to kids.
Doesn’t help that most of the kids running around the neighbourhood in masks on the way home were all about 16 or 17, and not the type of visitors that you really want to have to deal with on the doorstep on a dark night!
Seems to be working so far. No knocks on the door yet. We’ll see if it lasts…
I was looking through the photos that we’d taken while away and came across this one. My old boots left all alone in a rubbish bin in a hotel in Vegas when we left.
It might seem like a bit of an odd thing to take a photo of, but at the time it was just like saying goodbye to an old friend, and needed to be documented. A good pair of comfy boots is a joy to have, and a hard thing to let go of. But one day they just get past their use by, and hard decisions have to be taken.
I do wonder just how many kilometers I’d walked in them. Or even thousands of kilometers. They’ve certainly seen some sites with me around the country and world. I definitely know they’ve done a good many trips up and down the stairs to the front door!
But I have a new pair to replace them now. Of course I got them, and checked that they were relatively comfortable before I make the tough call to ditch the old. We’ll see if they last as well, and get a photo of their own someday. Hopefully not soon though!
Not that I normally get a bad case of it, but somehow after this last trip to the States for a couple of weeks (of which there will be a report soon, promise) I seem to have contracted my first real dose.
First night back, no problems. So tired after the flight that we had an hours nap in the afternoon and went to bed normal time and slept like a log right through.
Last night? A bit tired after working again (dammit) and so went to bed about the normal time… And then woke up after about an hour long heavy doze, just like a nice afternoon nap, and then that was it. No more sleep was to be had all night. Grrrrrr.
I suppose on the plus side it did allow me to be slightly educated by the late night documentaries that they have on. I learnt why the pilgrims left for the States, how the monarchy changed between about 1700 and 1850, and how photography influenced public opinion of WWI and as a sideline story to that one, how that impacted on women getting the vote. All stuff that everyone should know.
Made for an interesting day at work, with so much to do, including preparing for a training course I had to take in the afternoon in the morning, and delivering said course. They said I did make sense, but I’m not so sure. I think they were just being nice. Thankfully!
Somehow coming back from NZ has never been like this. I guess by the time you’ve travelled about 26-30 hours in one hit you’re just so mucked up that as long as you time your first sleep right, you can get straight back into a normal pattern.
Tonight better be better, or I’ll cry!!
As well as the UK passport I got a few days ago, I’ve also had to get a new NZ passport to replace my old expired one. I was quite surprised by the difference though. The UK one lasts for 10 years, and has 28 pages, while the NZ one only lasts for 5 years now and has 48 pages!
I can’t work out if that means that generally Kiwis just travel a lot more, or what?! Oh well. I’ll just have to see how many pages I use in the next 5 years.