His eyes were filling with some great emotion, as a pitcher fills with water when it is dipped in a spring.
- The Waste Lands by Stephen King
Things have been busy and now things are just plain overwhelming and scary. It all seems so surreal. Everyone I know in Christchurch is okay but that doesn't really make it that much better. I can't help worrying about M and all my friends. I just want them here and safe. Makes being at work seem completely irrelevant.
But you've got to try and keep your spirits up so here is the cake I made for a combined birthday party we had in Christchurch a few weeks ago for M and our friends.
This is before the cake made it to the party hence the awesome kitchen bench background
We ran around outside doing a crazy orienteering course, we ate lots of delicious food and even more delicious cake and we danced to awesome 80s music until I was too tired to stand up any more. Beautiful memories.
How many men had their marriage vows witnessed by fire-breathing dragons and man-eating cats?
- Dreams Made Flesh by Anne Bishop
Oh dear! I'm getting very slack at this blogging thing of late but life has just been so super busy. I flew to Christchurch on Boxing Day then we went kayaking which you can read about here and here.
When we got back I hung around in Christchurch for another 3 weeks. In amongst working (I can do some work remotely) and surviving aftershocks (there was a 5.1 one morning which was a rather interesting way to wake up) we had some more adventures as usual! Then it was back to Auckland...well, for about 5 or 6 days anyway until I flew back down for the weekend! Now I am finally back in Auckland again and attempting to settle back into routine but it is proving a bit difficult!
So in my last post you got to see some of what we ate kayaking. Here are some other holiday meals (you can probably see a theme to our camping meals by now!!). At a holiday park in Hamner Springs we cooked up an indian curry mix from a packet with a tin of coconut cream and as many vegetables and beans as we could cram in. Simple and delicious.
Another weekend we went exploring around Craigieburn and camped somewhere near Mt White Station with some friends. Dinner consisted of veges, beans and pasta sauce on, well, pasta. So good after a long day out adventuring.
Here's the view from our campsite that night. I love the brooding sky.
When we weren't out exploring we still ate pretty well. I got very slack in the picture taking though...
We also had M's parents round for dinner one night and cooked up a storm. I didn't take pictures on the night (feeling a little bit self concious!) but here are some photos of the leftovers...M made a massive vegan lasagna which was pretty incredible. I think he made it with a whole lot of veges (mushrooms, courgette, pumpkin and possibly a whole lot of other things!), beans and tinned tomato.
For dessert I made a crumble with rhubarb from M's Mum's garden, apple and sultanas. It was SO good that it was difficult not to dive in for seconds and thirds but I was way too full.
Another night we went round to their house and M's Mum cooked up a really wicked vegan feast of salad, pizza and black currant crumble. I couldn't believe the effort she went to for us, even finding vegan cheese and I wish I'd taken photos but rest assured everything was super delicious.
