Trying to Cook in NZ

So, it turns out that Wanaka, a town of 2000, doesn’t have much in the way of employment during the shoulder season of May and June. In fact, it doesn’t offer much in the way of jobs at all. Nina and I spent one night in a hostel when we returned to Wanaka a week ago so we could shower and I could shave my month old beard off. We then headed into the Wanaka job agency. That turned out to be quite a disappointment. They told us that there won’t really be any jobs available for at least six weeks. We should try traveling to Milford or Dunedin instead. Well, since we just did that, we decided to stay in town. That day, Treble Cone, one of the two ski fields we applied to told us that they didn’t need us for the 2008 season. So, there we were with no leads and one ski field already denying us. We were still hopeful though. We found some places to rent skis for the season and decided on not getting season passes, but getting a discount card instead. That left our options open for skiing at either mountain. We even planned a budget that could keep us in Wanaka until ski season and all the restaurants and shops started hiring. Our next stop was the Cardrona ski field office to check on our applications. It turned out that the food and beverage manager wasn’t able to start until that day and that she had a couple hundred applications to go through. She was hoping to start calling people in the next week or two for interviews. We left her a note, telling her we were in town and would like to talk to her. Then we waited.

Our plan was to camp at a nice little campground a few minutes out of town. It is situated along side the Clutha River with great views in every direction. After a few days, we began to run into some problems. Even though it isn’t quite winter and the ski resorts aren’t planning on opening for another six weeks, it is getting cold. It was so cold that we spent a lot of time sitting in the car reading. It was getting pretty boring. After five nights on the ground, we were cold and very bored. We decided to give Dunedin a try until the ski season. We could get jobs for a couple of weeks and then head back to Wanaka for some skiing all winter long. We stopped by the Cardrona office one more time to check in and were told that the F&B manager was planning on calling people in the next few days. We decided to give it two more nights on the ground and then head out of town. After seven cold nights, we headed into town one last time before heading out. That day, we heard that the manager was going to call people the next day and we got her phone number. We called her, left a message and got a room in a hostel for the night. The next morning, we were woken by our phone angrily buzzing, telling us that we had a message. A few hours later, we were having coffee with Cardrona’s new food and beverage manager at a coffee shop. She told us about the whole operation and offered us jobs. She said that we were at the top of her list since we had good food service experience. This is the second job interview I have had in New Zealand where it seemed like I was hired before coming in. Needless to say, Nina and I were very excited about our job. Now, we have jobs to go back to, a season pass, free lessons, cheap rentals and $20NZ lift tickets at Treble Cone (usually $99NZ), the same days off, and most evenings off. It is going to be great.

So, after the interview, we headed to Dunedin for the next month. We got in yesterday and stayed in a slightly grim and cramped hostel. This morning, Nina went into a temp agency and aced all their tests for admin work. Then we moved into another hostel. We paid for one week in advance and then were shown our room. It is great. It is huge with two great windows overlooking the city and a cool raised platform with a sofa. I want to live here. We have enough money to hang our here for the next month, but are going to find some work so as not to clean out the coffers.

It took a few days to get to the internet to post this. So here is a little more news. I got a job as a cook at the Rooftop Restaurant just a short 20 minute walk from our hostel. I don’t know how many hours a week it will be, but it should be enough for me to live on for the next few weeks. Nina has been to a couple of temp agencies and has an interview with a man at the Dunedin City Council. They are looking for an admin person for their IT division. That sounds like it is just up her alley.

Two blog posts in three days? Amazing. Now that Nina and I are homeless, unemployed and living in a tent down by the river, I have some more free time. I can also plug the laptop in at the library and type away in a nice warm building. Today I am going to write about food.

First off, the food of Wanaka. Nina and I have been here for three days now and have had lunch in three different chip shops. The eating options here are slim. The town is very very small. Only 2000 permanent residents live in Wanaka itself, but there must be around 2000 homes. Most are holiday homes for rich Kiwis and people like Shania Twain. There are two or three Indian, two Italian, one Mexican, and two Thai restaurants. The Thai restaurants have the same menus though. They are actually identical, the same dishes, fonts, colors, pictures and everything. We haven’t eaten at them yet, but we will have to try them out. There are also five to ten nicer restaurants and around five pub type places. The quick/cheap options are a bit slim. There is a Subway (which I hate), a Turkish kebab/fish & chip place, a Chinese/fish & chip place, a fish & chip place and a little NZ style bakery. We went to the kebab place a few days ago and I had a pretty good Lamb doner wrap. It wasn’t the best I have had, but it wasn’t the worst. Nina had a spring roll, it had mutton in it. Needless to say, we won’t make that mistake again. We tried the Chinese place this afternoon. Nina got a vege spring roll and kumara fries and I had the big burger and fries. The fries were good, but very greasy. As I write this my stomach is kind of complaining about the grease intake. But, maybe just maybe, it was the burger. The “big burger” was a beef mince patty that had the texture of a sausage patty, sautéed mushrooms, sautéed onions, cheese, sweet tomato sauce, some kind of white sauce, a huge slice of ham, a fried egg and a pineapple ring. It was huge and also pretty good. I don’t know if I have to get it again, but it was filling and cheap by NZ standards. Once we get jobs, you can expect some more thoughts on Wanaka fare.

On our way up from Dunedin, Nina and I decided to have our second, once monthly fancy dinner (postponed until further notice) in Moeraki at Fleur’s Place. It was highly recommended by all three of our guide books and it didn’t disappoint. The restaurant was the only restaurant in Moeraki and looked very ramshackle on the wharf. The inside was very nice though. Unlike most of New Zealand’s spiffy cafés with stainless steel, white painted walls and light wood, this one was all warmly stained wood with lots of great angles, nooks and crannies. The tables were all set with nice flatware and had a single long taper candle. It was a very cozy romantic spot. The special board was amazing. They offered grouper, terakihi, warehou, gurnard, flounder, sole and petrale. The main menu offered salmon and blue cod. I have never seen a restaurant have so many fish. The town is a day port and the fishermen unload some of their catch directly to the restaurant. We started off with bread and dips along with an Emerson’s Bookbinder dark bitter ale for Nina and a 2006 Pinot form Central Otago for me. The bread was a nice mix of different flavors and the dips were nice too. My favorite was a fish and sorrel pate while Nina’s was a kumara hummus. Our mains were a different story completely. One of the traditional dishes of New Zealand is Titi or mutton bird, it is a seabird. I can’t think of another seabird that is commonly eaten and there may be a reason. It is a very acquired taste. Nina ordered a half bird. It came to the table following a bowl of warm lemon water and a tea towel for her hands. The bird itself was served with potatoes, sautéed spinach and some sort of parsley sauce. All of which were overpowered by the bird. I think the bird was brined and then smoked in the traditional way to preserve it. It was very salty. The meat itself was incredibly dark, like mutton and very very greasy. The flavor was of salt and the ocean, kind of like kelp (possibly its only food source). I don’t know much else about it, but I will do some research. I had a more conventional blue cod filet wrapped in house smoke bacon with a cream sauce and cockles. It was very good. Dessert was a nice chocolate tart with roasted figs and rum raisins. We want to go back if we head toward Dunedin again.

Sorry about the long delay in updates. We have been traveling and have not had that much access to electricity. I will add more things soon now that we are in Wanaka and will have to stay in a hostel every couple of days for showeres. Now we are planning on camp in Albert Town, just five minutes from Wanaka while we look for jobs and an actual place to stay. We are also going to buy season passes to the Cardrona ski field today. Very exciting. I just hope we can find jobs so we won’t have to move to Queenstown or Dunedin and not be able to use our passes. Keep your fingers crossed.

We are back in Wanaka after our trip all around the south island. We started in Nelson almost one month ago when Nina’s wallet got stolen, and now we are in the beautiful little town of Wanaka where we hope to spend the winter. On our trip we drove the entire length of the West Coast where we were attacked by sand flies and saw the best weather of the entire jaunt. It rains about 200 days a year and about 20 feet on the West Coast. The two weeks we spent there were almost all sunny and warm. It rained once on us. From there we had to head inland at the north end of Fiordland National Park and spent a day at the Franz Joseph glacier and a day at Fox glacier. They were amazing. Both of them are not receding like most others in the world, but advancing back down their valleys. They are huge. From there we came to Wanaka for the first time, cruised through Arrowtown, a small former gold mining village, now an up and coming culinary destination, and on to Queenstown. Queenstown is the opposite of Wanaka, it isn’t much bigger, but it is much more hectic. The buildings are all full of shops and the streets are full of people and cars. It is only the shoulder season, but the place is a madhouse. Our next stop was a quick run up to Glenorchy to check out the end of the Roterburn track and the mountains around there. As most of the mountains we had seen so far, they were magnificent. The mountain landscape is nothing like in America. The mountains are so tall and huge and impossibly close, you can’t really tell how huge they really are. The rivers and lakes are also so incredibly clear they look fake. The river next to our campsite in Wanaka is a big river, but it is crystal clear. You can see the bottom fifteen feet down.

Our next portion of the trip was up to Fiordland National Park and the Milford Sound (actually a fiord). We spent two nights on Lake Te Anou and then drove up, over and trough a mountain range to get to Milford Sound for our morning boat cruise. The scenery there was breathtaking. Again the scale of the place was too much to handle. The day started by cruising by Mitre Peak, a mountain that rises a mile straight out of the sound. It is the highest peak rising straight out of the ocean anywhere. After that we gave a pod of bottlenose dolphins a ride through the sound as they jumped and played in the bow wake right below where we were standing. Next was a trip along a 2000 foot overhang. That sounds tall, and it is, if you jumped off the top, you wouldn’t hit the water for 30 seconds. But it just looked like another rock wall because there was nothing to compare it to. The same sensation was felt at Stirling falls. It is falls 500 feet down into the sound, but it looks like any other waterfall. The place was mind-blowing. From there we headed south again, hitting the coast again and driving around the bottom corner of the country to Invercargill. There wasn’t much to see there except for the aviary at the botanic gardens. That place was very cool. Nina and I finally saw a Kea and a Kaka, two of the large parrots of New Zealand. They also had a great collection of parrots and other cool birds from Australia, Africa and South America. They also had a golden pheasant. I had never seen one of those before. Crazy.

From there we headed into the Catlins. These are some of the nicest forest areas on southern New Zealand. There are waterfalls and nice walks and great scenery all around. We spent two nights camping there where but the weather didn’t cooperate. For one and a half days the weather went in this cycle. It would be sunny for 15 minutes, then cloud over and hail for 10 minutes. After the cold hail, it would rain for 30 minutes and then start all over again. It was also below 40 degrees the whole time. We didn’t see much of the Catlins.

Dunedin, home of the oldest university in New Zealand was a nice change of pace from the outdoors of the past two weeks. We stayed three nights and visited the Otago museum, botanic gardens, Firestone Tire Store and hung out. It was nice and relaxing. It was in Dunedin when Nina found out that the thief who stole her wallet was caught in Haast after a chase on foot through a sheep paddock. We are looking forward to going back in July for an All Blacks / South Africa rugby match. Further north along the coast, we stopped at the Moeraki boulders and had a great dinner at Fleur’s Place in Moeraki. More on that in my upcoming food blog. We then drove inland to the Mt. Cook / Aoraki national park for a few days.

If we thought it was cold in the Catlins, we hadn’t seen anything yet. When we set up our tent at two in the afternoon, Nina noticed that there was frost on the ground. It never melted. The ground was frigid. We weren’t too cold while sleeping as long as no part of us actually touched the uninsinuated ground. The mountains were great though. When we lived in Jackson, WY, we were right up against mountains that rose 7000 feet straight out of the valley floor. Here we were next camping at the base of Mt. Cook at 2000 feet, the top soared above us at 12,000. It was an amazing sight. One third of the park is literally covered in glaciers. The next day we headed back to Wanaka.

Now that we are here, the tough work begins. Nina and I both have to get hair cuts and I have to manage to shave my beard off. Then we have to find jobs and a place to live. We did find a nice ski shop that rents skis for the entire season, so we have that covered. Now we just need the season pass. Wish us luck.

Check out our new pictures on Picasa and my updated beer list.

After dropping Dad and Deena off at the Nelson airport (the story of our trip with them will be posted shortly (sorry for the lack of updates recently)), Nina and I headed out of town to the Marlborough sounds and for some wine tasting around Blenheim. We had been looking forward to going back to the sounds after seeing it for a short day a few weeks before. This time we decided to go to Kenepuru sound and camp for a day or two depending on the weather and views. It turned out to be a beautiful area and we stayed for two days. The water there is an amazing dark blue and the hills are covered with tree ferns, nikau palms and other tropical looking plants. It was very relaxing. We just say by the sound and read books and did sudoku puzzles. I didn’t have a care in the world until I drank a very angry and possibly drunk bee that found its way into my can of beer. It stung be twice on my gums and then once on my lip its way out. I guess I am not allergic to bees, that’s good news. After two days on the sound, we headed to Blenheim to taste some wine. We had been looking forward to that since we got to New Zealand and tasting wine with Dad and Deena in the Nelson region got us interested again. First, we drove to Blemheim to look for some more breweries for my collection. It turns out that the big one in my books is now a little one that I have already tasted completely. The second one doesn’t have an address. Nina did manage to find one 330mL bottle of the mysterious Pink Elephant brewery’s Imperious Russin’ Stout. The label told me that it was 11%, should be cellared for three to five years and was bottle 1112 (hand written) and that it cost $8NZ. It is by far the most expensive beer I have had, but it may have been the best. Back to the wine story. We drove to Renwick, where the majority of the good wineries are and started down the back roads. We visited Cloudy Bay, Allan Scott, Hunter’s, Clos Henri, Georges Michelle, Huia and Seresin. By the end of the day, we had had a lot of very acidic Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Chardonnay and some very poor Pinot Gris. Overall though, I was very impressed with their style. The chardonnays generally are very lightly wooded and the Rieslings are off dry to dry. That way you can really taste the grape and not so much of the barrel or sugars. I really liked the way they did that. The pinot noir, however, was pretty bad. The wine was usually quite watery and you could tell that the grapes had been picked very while very immature. I am looking forward to tasting the pinots in the Otago, we got some recommendations for some wineries there from a woman at Georges Michelle. We had a very nice time and plan on stopping there again on our way back to Auckland at the end of our trip.  Stay tuned for an update of our trip down the West Coast…

For the second time in one week, Nina and I had the same day off. This time, I took a day off so we could enjoy this country. On Saturday, we went to the Marlborough Wine Festival. It is the longest running festival in New Zealand and turned out to be an amazing time. There were 60 wineries showing 372 different wines. Along with that there were food stands offering mostly seafood, but they had other great things too. And just so people didn’t get too bored there was music all afternoon, a fashion show and a wine and food pairing competition. There were a couple thousand people there and everyone was having a very good time. People were dressed up in their garden dresses and hats and people in flip flops and shorts.

Nina and I decided to divide and conquer; neither of us could get wine from the same producer. We ended up trying 17 different wines, mostly Pinot Noir, but we threw in a couple of whites too. Overall, the wines were very good. There were a few losers of course, but overall, it was a very nice tasting. The best of the day was probably the Gravitas 2006 Pinot Noir. It was in the French style and just tasted better than any of the others we drank that day. It had excellent balance of tannins and fruit along with a nice earthy flavor. There is a list at the bottom of everything we had. We also decided to try out some of the wine and food pairings. I started with some Oysters Mornay paired with a viognier, the light sweet wine was totally overpowered by the smokey bacon in the first oyster I had. But, the second oyster was a little bigger and there was less bacon, so it wasn’t such a bad pairing. The oysters were great though. The next pairing I had was a greenshell mussel and watercress fritter with horopito aioli paired with an unoaked chardonnay. This one was very good; the fritters were nice and tender with a little bite to them along with a mildly spicy aioli. The wine complimented it very well. Nina decided on a Thai beef salad with lemongrass and chili jam sorrel bean sprouts (I don’t know what that means). It was good and went with the sweet wine well. We spent all day there wandering around, watching the crowd, drinking wine and enjoying a beautiful afternoon.

What we drank:
Nina
Isabel Estate Vineyard 2007 Pinot Gris
Endeavour Vineyard 2007 Crowded House Sauvignon Blanc
Vavasour Wines Ltd Clifford Bay Pinot Noir
Montana Reserves Riesling
Gravitas 2006 Pinot Noir
Spy Valley Wines 2007 Noble Chardonnay
Hunters Wines NZ 2006 Pinot Noir
Seresin Estate 2006 Pinot Gris

Dan
Clos Marguerite 2006 Pinot Noir
Saint Clair Estate 2007 Premium Viognier
Triplebank Awatere Valley Riesling
Lake Chalice2007 “Cracklin Rosie” Pinot Rose
Tohu Wines 2007 Unoaked Chardonnay
Momo Wine 2006 Chardonnay
Maho 2007 Pinot Gris
Forrest Estate 2007 Sauvignon Blanc
Stoneleigh Rapaura Series Pinot Noir

My weekend last week coincided with Waitangi Day here in New Zealand. That is the day, in 1840, that a treaty was signed between British representatives and Maori leaders that made NZ a British colony. The treaty then became a footnote in history. Too short and general to be a constitution and translated poorly when written, it spent the next 130 years being systematically broken. But in the 1970s a movement started to grow with Maori making claims against the treaty and gaining back land taken from them and getting large cash settlements from the government. The biggest problem with the treaty it seems is that when it was translated into Maori, it was done so poorly that it became two different treaties, one for each side. The day didn’t become a holiday until 1974. Today, it is celebrated or protested by a minority. The majority of Kiwis use it for an excuse to go to the beach. But that is not the real story for us. Since the holiday fell on my weekend, Nina and I had a day off together. She managed to get off work early on Tuesday, the day before the holiday (that turned out to be pretty easy since Monday was Nelson Day, another holiday) and we drove to the Nelson Lakes National Park.

A short hour and fifteen minute drive south of Nelson, is the northern tip of the Southern Alps. The two major lakes that make up the park are Rotoiti and Rotoroa. We got there in the afternoon and headed to a campground on Lake Rotoiti. The place was nearly deserted and had a great view over the lake to the mountains in the background. The lakes were carved by glaciers 8000 years ago and make for some amazing scenery. They are also home to New Zealand’s oldest fresh water Eels. They don’t reach maturity until age 90. We heard that you could feed them bread from the docks, but we didn’t see any. Maybe next time. The next morning we woke up and drove to lake Rotoroa, it is further from the main road (14km) than Rotoiti, so it doesn’t get the same traffic and was very tranquil. There we went on a hike through beach forests and up to a nice waterfall. I even saw my first Tui. It was a beautiful day in the woods, the perfect temperature and the amazing scenery of New Zealand that I haven’t really gotten to experience for a while. I am really looking forward to quitting my job and spending some time traveling around and hiking. Hopefully, that will happen in the end of March the fall will be starting and the crowds will be heading back to where ever they come from. On our way back to Nelson, we stopped at Rotoiti again and were amazed at the crowds. There were hundreds of people there boating, swimming and picnicking. It was quite a bit different from the other lake. That was a great trip and it was a lot of fun to get away from Nelson with Nina even if it was for just one day.

Some of you may be thinking that there is nothing good about food and drink here in New Zealand. In my first food blogs, I have been writing about things I have thought were different or strange here, but now it is time to tell you about some of the wonderful food finds here. This could be a very long entry, so I will try to keep it brief and maybe go back to some of them in the future.

First of all, I have to mention the foods from Asia we have had here. Starting off at Food Alley (see Auckland blog), in Auckland, we were very happy to find amazing Asian food. Nina had Malaysian and Japanese and I had Vietnamese and Thai foods. It was great. As we headed south we ate dinner at a nice Indian place in Wellington and was happy to see that they had peshwari naan, one of Nina’s favorites. It was good there, but the naan we had the other day here in Nelson at the Indian Café was great. It had shredded coconut and dried cherries in it along with the loads of butter and ground nuts. It is the perfect thing to dip in any spicy sauce that you get with your main course. Also, here in Nelson, Nina found a great place to get Pad Thai. The Poppy Thai, a place that I wanted to try for their egg curry, turns out to have a great Pat Thai. It is so good that it doesn’t even need extra peanut sauce. It is too bad because their homemade roasted and ground peanut sauce is excellent unto itself.

The quality of some of the meat is also very good. Kiwis do not mess around with their lamb. Since there are 40,000,000 million sheep here, they don’t mind sending their lambs to slaughter young. The lamb chops are tiny and delicious. In America, your standard rack of lamb might be six bones and weigh over a pound, but here it is less than eight ounces. The bones are like pencils. It is amazing. All the lamb is tiny. This makes for very tender cuts even from parts of the animal that aren’t usually that tender. The fish is also amazing. Nelson is the largest fishing port in New Zealand so the fish we get here is fresh. There are large factory ships that aren’t doing any good to the ecology of the area, but there are also a lot of small fishing boats that bring the fish in fresh. I have yet to smell bad fish here. I might be desensitized from working with fish all day, but the marina doesn’t smell like your normal marina. The varieties are also very delicious. Tarakihi is one of my new favorites. It is a thin fish with nice flaky flesh and a nice mild flavor. Another very popular local fish is the Grouper. That one is meaty like halibut, but not as white. In fact, I might stop by the fish and chip shop at the bottom of the hill today for lunch.

When I am not eating, I like to be drinking. I am sure you have seen my beer list. Just so you know, I really only drink on my weekend. Since, I have started keeping track of the beers I have had, I have tried 22 different NZ beers. Not too bad a start, if I am lucky I can try them all. There are a lot of very good beers here. It is not fair to judge the quality of beer by the major national brews, just like the fact that America has much more to offer than Bud, Coors and PBR. There is even another beer fete in March and the four breweries are each brewing a special beer just for the event, so there are four more right there. I can’t wait. A couple of good non-alcoholic options here are L&P and Lemon with Bitters. L&P or Lemon and Paeroa is a sweetened New Zealand mineral water with lemon added. Sean, a Kiwi at work says there must be something else in it due to it’s color and if it was just mineral water, sugar and lemon, we could all make our own. What ever it is, it is a nice refreshing drink. Lemon with Bitters is a Schweppes concoction that is made by other companies. It is just like a lemon lime drink, but with a hint of bitters that makes it very nice.

As fresh produce goes, New Zealand is just coming into its own both in the short term and the long term. In the short term, the summer produce is just starting to flood the farmers markets. Most vendors sell your standard lettuce, tomatoes and other normal vegetables, but now some are getting in different varieties of peaches and plums. It is turning into a cornucopia. There is an Asian farmer there who has a great selection of uncommon vegetables. He is on the forefront of the long term progress New Zealand is making in its food culture. He offers apple cucumbers, water spinach, five different pepper varieties, a couple different tomatoes, and some different onions. He also grows some Asian vegetables. And that is just small old Nelson. I hear that the markets in Auckland have great selections. I saw one picture of a stand that had four different radishes.

There will be more to come about the food here shortly. On Saturday, Nina and I are going to the Marlborough Wine and Food Festival at a winery outside of Blenheim. It sounds like a big event with food, wine and music. I hear they usually get 40,000 people there, so it should be a very nice way to spend a Saturday. Stay tuned for the highlights, I plan on taking lots of notes.

I decided to do something different with my list. Instead of moving it up to the top of the page, I am going to give it it’s own page. That way I can add to it and it won’t get lost. The link is to your right.

Today, I want to talk a little about Coke. I love Coke. It is a great drink. I love ice cold out of a can. I love it from a glass bottle, I even like it out of a plastic bottle. There is nothing better than a Coke with some popcorn at the movies. But I have had some disappointments here in New Zealand. I don’t know what the problem is. First of all, there are many different tasting Cokes. I know they are all Coke, because they come out of Coke bottles, but some of them taste different. At work, it tastes a bit fruity. I don’t know what that is about, but the other day, the bar served us raspberry Coke. I didn’t even know it existed. I am still not sure that it does. I think the problem is probably the sweetener, but it really tastes different. All the other Cokes I have had (Malaysian, English, Mexican, Tunisian) have all tasted like Coke, but that’s not the case here. Finally, the Coke and popcorn at the movies is just plain wrong here. There is only one theater in Nelson and they advertise that they sell Coke, but it is not Coke. It tastes like some sort of strange fruit drink; it reminds me of Irn Brew from Scotland. This strange concoction makes me thirstier and kind of makes my mouth tingle. It is just plain bad. Nina thinks it is some kind of generic cola being pawned off as Coke.

Now I want to make just a few quick thoughts on Kiwi’s food preferences. I have noticed two things at the restaurant that I find odd. First of all, when food is delivered to a customer, almost to a person, they all grab the salt and go to town with it. They grab the salt before they pick up their forks. The food I send out from the kitchen always has enough salt on it. I like salt, so I make sure my food has enough on it. These people then add more salt without tasting it first. It is crazy. The second thing is that lamb rump is vastly more popular than rack of lamb. When I have a rump special, it sells very well, maybe up to 15% percent of the orders. The rack of lamb will be lucky to sell 5%. It is the same for the pork tenderloin and not surprisingly the venison. I don’t understand why people love the mediocre cuts of meat and completely shun the tasty ones. Thirdly is the strange tastes people have for cheese and cured meats. Cheese in New Zealand is strangely expensive. This country used to be the dairy to the British Empire, it is still filled with cows and sheep. In fact I can sheep across the way from my window now on an adjacent hill. The country should be drowning in milk and milk products, but it isn’t. Milk prices and consequently cheese prices have skyrocketed lately and the choices in the supermarkets are not very good at all. It probably says something that the most common type of cheese is “Tasty.” I think it is like cheddar, but they also have some cheddar, so I don’t know for sure. There is brie and Camembert, but it is of dubious quality. The good local cheeses are very expensive and don’t even think of buying imported cheese (Parmesan runs above $75NZ a kilo. Even thought the cheese is a little bad, people still eat it up. As for your salamis and other cured meats, there are some good ones made here, but most people prefer Verkers, a factory made salami. It comes in Danish, Italian and a few other nationalities styles, but they all taste similar and pretty metallic. It is really quite disappointing. Finally, at the restaurant, the $36,000NZ of Tasman Bay scallops that were purchased back during the scallop season in August are almost gone and it sounds like we won’t get more until next season. I didn’t know scallops had a season. Just one more strange bit of New Zealand food trivia.

It is finally my weekend and it is an exciting one here in New Zealand. First of all, today is the day of the state funeral of Sir Edmund Hillary. The entire country is watching and listening. There are large screens set up all around the country for people to watch the ceremony. Radio NZ is broadcasting it and pod casting it so people can keep and listen to it over and over again. Hillary was the national hero; he was the only living person to be put on currency. According to the news here, the whole world is watching, so I am sure all of this is old news to you. He was an amazing man and left quite a huge legacy in both New Zealand and the Himalayas.

The other big news is that a Tropical Cyclone is rolling through. Yesterday from about 9am until 4pm, it is raining and there were 135kmh winds. There was rain coming into our windows when they were closed. It was crazy. At 4, it stopped raining, but was a little cool, but in about 20 minutes it got warm and very humid. By 8pm it was clear and the humidity was down below 100%. Today it is a beautiful Nelson summer day. Below are pictures of our normal view along Vanguard St., over the Warehouse and ANZAC park and finally to the Nelson Haven and the Abel Tasman Bay in the distance. The next picture is of the cyclone, it is hard to tell, but I took it from inside our front door and I was still getting rained on. And the last is of a sunset. We get one like this pretty often.