Whale songs and leftovers

Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely and sometimes against the moment’s reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?
- The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

Not that there are many people who read this from Auckland, but if you are then please think about coming to this event. Whales are embedded deep into traditional Maori and Pacific history and culture and thus into the hearts of many New Zealanders. At work I have been working with images taken during the recent whale stranding on Perkins Island in Tasmania and it's pretty heartbreaking.

Right...moving on to food.

Despite having quite a lot of refried beans and nachos while I was away one of the first meals I made upon returning home was nachos!


Admittedly these were a lot more luxurious than those on the trip with Pico de Gallo flavoured corn chips and sheese grilled in the oven. Gotta be one of my favourite dinners (plus it makes leftovers for lunch the next day although J and I have to fight over who actually gets to take the leftovers)!

The smell of curry is always tempting and when you don't have much lying around in the pantry and fridge, well a chickpea curry solves everything (we always have some green curry paste in the fridge - it's so strong that you can only use one heaped teaspoon at a time!).


Curry is also one of the prime candidates for leftovers since I always end up making heaps. Leftovers for lunch at work are like paradise!

It's been really hot here recently so often you don't feel in the mood for something heavy at dinner. Homemade pizza is awesome (I swear the heat is turning my brain to slush so I can't form decent sentences)! 


The dough mixture I make is usually enough for two medium-sized pizzas (one for J and one for me) and if you're good and don't eat the whole thing at once then you'll get leftovers (yes, I like leftovers)!

I haven't had quiche in a long time and had been eyeing up one of the recipes in The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook.


I couldn't be bothered making the crust so I decided to attempt it without one. It kind of fell apart when I tried to serve it (hence no pictures of it on a plate 'cause it looked more like a scramble by then!) but I still thought it tasted okay. Could definitely do with some tweaking though.

Of course, if you don't really want to cook, you can always pop to your nearest Indian grocer (we have two only a few minutes walk away!) and pick up something there. Put some couscous on while you pop out and by the time you're home and your meal is heated it'll be ready to serve!

Relaxing in Oceania?

It wasn't that they didn't take an interest in the world around them. On the contrary, they had a deep, personal and passionate involvement in it, but instead of asking, 'Why are we here?' they asked, 'Is it going to rain before the harvest?'

- Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

I'd like to think that the beginning of the year starts gradually and slowly winds its way up to full speed by, well, maybe March? Unfortunately this year it's not really going to plan. We've launched into it at full speed (so much speed I have the bruises from coming down a sandy hill, losing control and then tumbling off my bike head first into the ground!). Clearly I'm not a particularly good blogger when my head is desperately trying to keep up so you'll have to forgive me a moment while we travel back in time to the beginning of the year here (seriously, is tomorrow really the last day of January? Where did it go?)...

Like I said in the last post, I spent half my holiday hanging out in Christchurch and the other half orienteering at the Oceania Orienteering Championship which is basically the Australian New Zealand Challenge.

Early on the 2nd I bused up to Nelson where I met my parents who were staying at Kaiteriteri Beach and also competing in Oceania. It was such a hot day we all ended up going for a swim before dinner. The water was beautifully warm (once you'd managed to get in).


We stayed at the Kaiteriteri Beach Motor Camp and I had this cute little "boat shed" all to myself! Luxury! The camp itself was completely booked out so there were people everywhere but somehow we always managed to find we had the kitchen nearest to us to ourselves at night!


The first day of orienteering was at a place called Canaan Downs and was a completely wild piece of land. There was so much missing off the map it felt like a treasure hunt at times! Oh well, always entertaining.

The following day we heading off to Blenheim to a place called Brayshaw Park for the 2nd event. If you look at the map you'll see a river to the left. Yeah, my course crossed it about 8 times. No point trying to keep your feet dry.

The next day was a bit of a drive as we had to get to Christchurch by the afternoon for the sprint race at Lincoln University. On the way Dad took a detour to show us the saltworks at Lake Grassmere. It's facinating looking at the different colours of the various ponds as some are much more pink in colour than others.


The salt, once collected from the ponds, ends up looking like some great big iceberg sitting on dry land!


Day 4 was a relay event along the coast at Kairaki Beach just North of Christchurch. I've never been a fan of relays but this was pretty good. The terrain is really similar to what we mostly run on up in Auckland at Woodhill which helped for the sanddune section. I saw a lot of, well, mostly Australians to be honest looking terribly lost on the dunes!


I was running the first leg for our relay team. It's pretty crazy because all first leg runners on all courses head out at the same time so there was well over 100 of us heading out into the bush all at once. Luckily my course was placed near the front of the crowd and I managed to get away pretty quick before getting trampled!

For the 5th event we headed out towards Arthurs Pass to Craigieburn. You may not be able to tell from the photo below but the terrain is steep and incredibly rough. The start triangle was at the bottom of the hill and if you were able to zoom in on the photo you'd see tiny dots of people making their way up the hillside to get to their first control. It was crazy!


This event was impossibly difficult. Not only was the terrain steep and very rough but it was also a terribly hot day. I don't know if I've ever been so happy to see the finish before! Unfortunately J and Dad were lined up with their cameras to catch me coming into the finish - not exactly glamourous especially after I'd just crossed a marsh and ended up knee-deep in mud!

On the drive back we stopped to check out the amazing scenery. Below is the Broken River which passes under the hillside at one point.


The rock formations below are part of Castle Hill (also on the way back from Craigieburn). We couldn't really be bothered walking all the way over to them to check them out closer up but they were pretty stunning even from a distance.


We had a day off after the Craigieburn event (I totally needed it) which involved driving even further down the country to a little holiday park quite off the beaten track, the Dansey's Pass Holiday Camp. If, somehow, you end up down this part of the country this camp is a little jem. It is such a quaint and peaceful place and the waterhole is amazing.


It's about the size of a full swimming pool but very deep and seriously, despite not being a super hot day, the water was really warm. I think we were in there for ages just paddling around and enjoying the peace.

Of course, peace never lasts for long as the next day we were off to Duntroon for the 6th event. It was, again, a terribly hot day and the event was set on rocky open farmland. I think I got a touch of vertigo at one point as we had two controls at the top of a line of cliffs and then had to make our way, somehow, down again to get to the next control.


Steep seemed to be a bit of a theme of the last couple of events. Above is the route from the last control down to the finish. It was quite a challenge to stay upright coming down at any kind of speed!

After the event we headed along the narrow, winding round over Dansey's Pass to Naseby in Central Otago. The views on this road were stunning especially with the darkening sky. I have this thing for power pylons marching across the hillsides in the middle of nowhere and these were particularly good!


Now Naseby is a tiny little town (population of about 100 but there are heaps of holiday homes here that are rented out throughout the year - summer for mountain biking and winter for skiing, ice skating and curling) that I've only ever visited in the winter to use their outdoor ice skating rink but it has a very special place in my heart.


Naseby may be really tiny but curling is big here. They even have a full-on indoor facility to use during the summer months! I love the sculpture they have outside the rink. He's so cool!


We had the two final events in the forest at Naseby, known as the most technical and most difficult orienteering map in New Zealand. How about that for encouragement?! Apparently the forest (unlike much of the forest orienteering maps in New Zealand which are generally pine forest, Naesby is made up of conifers) was planned to cover up the scars left by gold mining so the terrain is full of erosion gullies and steep dirt banks.

So all in all it was a pretty amazing trip. One of the things I love about orienteering is how you get to see places you'd never even think of going to (often places you could never visit normally anyway).

Of course, most importantly, New Zealand won both the ANZ Challenge and the Schools Competition! We rock!

Now I realise I have said nothing about the food on this trip. Well, dinner on trips like these is never flash (well, none of the meals are flash but dinner always stands out the most). You have to make do with the pots and utensils you bring with you and what the campground provides in the way of cooking facilities. You also have to make do with what the local supermarket can provide (if there even is a supermarket otherwise it's the local small-town dairy).

Tins of beans are great as they fill you up, have heaps of protein, and taste pretty good too. Although after a day outside orienteering, well, anything can taste good! Served with pasta, rice, potatoes, bread or even corn chips and a salad or some boiled veges, you have a complete (if not terribly exciting) meal.

This is my dinner from the first night at Kaiteriteri Beach: blue corn chips with refried beans and capsicum along with a salad.

Right, well that was a ridiculously long post. Things will resume as normal (if I can work out what normal is) shortly...

Adventures in (mostly) flat Christchurch

When he was in this sort of mood, Chacko used his Reading Aloud voice. His room had a church-feeling. He didn't care whether anyone was listening to him or not. And if they were, he didn't care whether or not they had understood what he was saying. Ammu called them his Oxford Moods.
- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I finally got back on Monday after 3 weeks in the South Island for Christmas and the Oceania Orienteering Champs.

Christmas Day was spent with J's family in Christchurch where I had made another tofukey (this one much more successful than the last one) as well as another chocolate trifle for my contribution and flown everything down on the plane with me the night before.


We spent Boxing Day with lunch in town...how could one possibly pass up a souvlaki?


Then we headed off to Sumner Beach where we played in the sand digging tunnels and exploring the caves by the sea. It wasn't quite inviting enough for a swim although one of J's friends did go test the water out. He didn't stay long so I'm guessing that said something about the temperature!


One of J's relatives was celebrating her 60th birthday at a fancy restaurant just out of Ashburton so we got to dress up for the evening. I got a very fancy vegetable stack...


...and green apple sorbet in a brandy-snap basket among other delights.


Christchurch is probably New Zealand's most cycle-friendly city so we did quite a lot of biking around town in the perfect summer weather (which naturally arrived a couple of days after Christmas as usual...it pretty much always rains here on Christmas Day despite being apparently summer!).


Christchurch is a beautiful city with heaps of lush green parks and lovely gardens...but it's just so flat!


We also fitted in a fair amount of training with several events coming up in the new year. J was taken out for an epic bike ride over Okuku Pass into Lees Valley whilst I ran up to the top of the pass and back as the summer sun really began to beat down before moving the cars around to meet the riders at the other end.


As I said before, Christchurch itself is really flat...but if you head out far enough into Canterbury you will find some pretty big hills as I discovered on my way up to the pass!

J and I celebrated the new year with brunch at The Lotus Heart. We were a bit late to try out the breakfast menu (we got there after midday) so had to settle for lunch food. I got the Bengal Burger with fries ('cause who needs to be healthy on New Years Day and choose the salad?!). It was awesome...but I was starving by then so potentially anything would have done!


Did I mention that I got a new compass? It was my belated Christmas present from J and is truly awesome (sometimes I really am an orienteering geek)!

I can't fit any more in!

Not only are the present lists well under way, the food lists now have come to the fore, because for some reason making one meal on Christmas Day with enough leftovers in the fridge to scavenge on until the supermarkets open again is a big deal. A big enough deal to send the entire female population into a food frenzy. And although I can rationalise that, can logically realise how silly it is to get sucked into all the panic, I do it again, like every year.
- The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman by Judith Holder

Our family Christmas parties are always filled with some kind of drama which is, I suspect, a common occurrence for most families. What is it about Christmas that brings out all this tension? Anyway, this year's party was no exception...but at least there was some good food!

My contribution was a tofukey since the idea always cracks me up. I found the recipe somewhere on the net last year (when it had its first outing) and basically it's a basic stuffing inside a tofu and nut mixture which is then spread with a marinade and baked in the oven.

Here's the tofukey served up with cashew gravy, roast veges, green salad (mostly grown in Mum's garden!) and pasta salad. My soy sauce I used this year was a bit strong so it tasted overly salty. Bit of a disappointment but a lesson for next time.

Of course, the main meal of the family Christmas party is dessert! My contribution, as always, was the famous trifle in it's chocolate form.


Basically it's a light chocolate cake spread with raspberry jam in the centre with fresh and tinned fruit on top of that (strawberries, pawpaw and a tin of mixed berries) topped with a thick chocolate custard and chocolate shavings. SO delicious!

Here's my HUGE dessert bowl (it's not often we get dessert so you've got to make the most of it!). I've got chocolate trifle, apple crumble and Christmas pudding (care of Mum...she is the pudding expert).

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

Take the Northern Gateway...it'll cost you $2

"It was simply marvellous. But, Laurie -" She stopped, she looked at her brother. "Isn't life," she stammered, "isn't life -" But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood.

"Isn't it, darling?" said Laurie.

- The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield

On Sunday we had the unique opportunity to bike the nearly-completed Northern Gateway, a new toll road North of Auckland bypassing the old route through Orewa and Waiwera. The motorway isn't scheduled to open until February next year but they opened the road for bikes (in the morning) and walkers (in the afternoon so they didn't get mowed down by us bikers!) for the day so we could get a closer look.

The Johnstone's Hill Tunnels

The new stretch of motorway is a pretty impressive feat of engineering combining design, engineering and attention to the environment (believe it or not!). The site of the motorway is home to native wildlife and special care were in place to minimise the impact on both flora and fauna along the route. The route crosses several main waterways and there are two eco-viaducts over some of the more sensitive areas.

Inside the Johnstone's Hill Tunnel

It was cool looking down the sides of the bridges to see lush plantlife rising up below and extensive revegetation is planned for other areas of the route.

Looking down the river towards Waiwera

My parents were walking the 14km round trip later in the day when it was so scorching hot that they got tar stuck to their shoes. They also got held up in huge traffic jams trying to get to and from the start of the motorway. The irony is of course that this motorway, designed to minimise traffic holdups, was causing them as curiosity got the better of everyone!

Cruising down the motorway.

Pineapple-coloured summers

They had both seen the lattice of streaky black clouds that climbed the horizon and scudded towards them, fleeing from the dying sun.
- Lord of No Time by Louise Cooper

It's been a little while since we've had cake right? So it was about time for another birthday!


I doubled the recipe for the Pineapple Right-Side-Up cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The centre is filled with a single batch of the pineapple topping and a toasted coconut cream cheese frosting. Then the top has more of the cream cheese frosting along with chopped dark chocolate, almonds, and some rather alcoholic cherries Mum had given me a while back. Delicious!

Of course, life isn't just about cake though (but that would be nice!)...


Lunch at my parents after raiding their pantry and freezer! Leftover veges and tofu luncheon on puff pastry. Unfortunately it stuck to the tray despite me spraying it first. Hmmm...


Although on the whole it's getting really hot and humid here, we still have the odd cold night. Corn Chowder after running home from work in the evening really warms you up (plus makes lots of leftovers for delicious lunches!). No recipe required...just my head as usual.


J had never had polenta before so it was time to whip up a batch with some stir-fried asparagus (I left J in charge of those...one has to delegate sometimes!) and baked tempeh (always a favourite). I cooked up the polenta in the morning, added some sun-dried tomatoes, smoked paprika and sheese, then chilled it in a pan until the evening when I cooked it in slabs over the fry pan.

As an aside, is it really December already? I don't think I'm ready for this!