Happy Lamb Day!

Making the most of a bounty of spring lamb, we give thanks to good friends, like Carrie and Michael who were visiting from CA, and a healthy wine discount! Sav blanc with the baked brie and smoked mussels and local merlot and malbec with the Thanksgiving lamb chops! The only turkeys on the table were chocolate. Yum!

Not a good thing

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Martha's familiar blond bob and pressed shirt on my own tiny TV here in NZ. TVNZ finally picked up her show to allow the people of New Zealand to discover their ultimate Martha potential.

The whole show was devoted to baking, chocolate cake, pecan buns, etc. I was so inspired I went to my own cupboard with visions of baked goods coming out of the oven before Paul came home from work. But as I reached for the baking pan, I was jolted by the sight of a giant water rat leaping out of the garbage back and scuttling off behind the oven. Any hopes of using either my baking pans or my oven were quickly dashed.

Apparently, my landlord tells me the critters are quite common in these parts, but you can be assured he's coming out here today to lay some traps and close and cracks the vermin might be using to gain access.

Brilliant!

Just when you think ice cream can't get any better, those Kiwis have done it again! As if the revoluntionary concept of dipping hard ice cream in chocolate wasn't enough (see my earlier post on that revalation), now they've gone and created the freshest fruitiest ice cream you can get on a cone. Not sold at a store or ice cream shop, but at the orchard and fruit stands. First you chose either vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt. Then they put a few scoops into this marvelously simple machine and add the fresh fruit of your choice (here that's quite a range-boysenberry, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, kiwi, etc...) and PRESTO, the machine blends the fruit into the ice cream and creates fresh, soft-serve fruit ice cream, one cone at a time!

Brilliant, just brilliant.

Gone fishing

The only way to eat trout in New Zealand is to catch it. It's illegal to sell it. So we joined a few friends and tried our luck at nearby Lake Rotorua. Three hours later, we came back to shore with two 3+ pound rainbow trout caught by the lovers from Leeds, Pam and Jim.


Back at home, I stuffed Tom the trout with lemon (see below), fresh herbs, and bread crumbs and cooked him on the grill. The perfect accompaniment, a glass of NZ sav blanc of course from Craggy Range! We're already planning our next fishing trip!

When life give you lemons...

You find ways to amuse yourself. Every house has at least one lemon tree here, so finding things to do with them presents a challenge. We stumbled across this lemon lineup the other day. A group of teenagers found the squishing sound of cars driving over their lemons very amusing.