Not long to go...

Here in the trees it was much easier to believe the absurdities that embarrassed me indoors. Nothing had changed in this forest for thousands of years, and all the myths and legends of a hundred different lands seemed much more likely in this green haze than they had in my clear-cut bedroom.
- Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

I'm feeling a little jaded this afternoon. Tomorrow night is our family Christmas party so I've spent pretty much all of today in the kitchen preparing some of the food for the evening...but you'll have to wait until next time to find out what's on the menu! Of course, before ending up in the kitchen we got up not long after 5am for the final spin class of the year complete with champagne and strawberries! Then it was home to have breakfast of last night's tofu scramble. What a way to start the day!

This is actually last night's dinner but hey, breakfast looked pretty much identical so deal with it.

Anyway, on to more exciting things. Last Friday I got to meet Theresa from The Tropical Vegan for lunch as she was visiting Auckland for a conference! Being my usual self I was a nervous as anything but, as usual, there was nothing to worry about!

Meeting up in town meant the obvious place to go check out was Raw Power. Theresa ordered the Tofu Burger which I've talked about here. Despite being a fairly warm day, I had a craving for soup (needing comforting perhaps?!) so got their soup of the day, Curried Vegetable Soup served with focaccia bread and hummus. It was creamy and delicious. Washed down with one of their freshly made juices, it hit the spot perfectly.

Since you can't really go past dessert if it's offered I got a Caramel and Date slice (or at least that's what I think it was but I couldn't even remember by the time I'd decided what I'd wanted let alone now, a few days later!). We took our treats to enjoy in the sun (you have to make the most of it round here sometimes!) in Albert Park across the road from the university.

That evening we drove up to our family beach house at Wai Kauri Bay to escape for the weekend and enjoy the fine weather. As usual we had to check out the Matakana Farmer's Market on Saturday morning which included an On Yer Bike chocolate smoothie which you were supposed to blend yourself by riding this stationary bike attached to the blender. Unfortunately no amount of pedaling was getting my smoothie blended...I must have broke it!

In the afternoon we took our bikes over to Tawharanui Regional Park for a bit of adventuring (and a bit of scaring of the farm animals as we came flying past). We got some awesome views at the end of the peninsula looking all the way out to Little Barrier Island.

It may be summer now but that doesn't mean the water is warm and inviting for swimming but hey, all you gotta do is toughen up right? Anyway, after all the mountain biking in the hot sun, a little cold water never hurt anyone!

The jetty at Wai Kauri Bay