Let's burn fat, not oil

The timbers of the house, like the bones of an ageing person had 'settled' and shrunk, as the years acting like a wine-press had squeezed out their substance.
- The Carpathians by Janet Frame

Saturday was date night. After going to the gym then relaxing in the spa afterwards J and I headed off to Gina's, an Italian Pizza and Pasta restaurant that is famous for being very loud! I ordered their Alla Salute, a vegan pizza covered in garlic, onions, capers, artichoke, olives, basil, rocket and fresh chili.


It was pretty yummy but I can make better pizzas at home...the atmosphere was pretty funny though.

After dinner we headed up the Sky Tower to look over New Zealand's biggest city at night then ended the night with sorbet on Queen Street under some outdoor heating.


Delicious (and don't you just love the peacock they put on it? I'd started demolishing it before I remembered to take a photo).

If you ever visit Auckland I will give you one word of warning, it is NOT cycle-friendly. In fact it's a total nightmare. J and I are pretty pro having something done about this so the opportunity to join the protest about getting cycle and pedestrian lanes on the harbour bridge was a no brainer. The Auckland Harbour Bridge (50 years old this week) is what bridges the city to the North Shore. It's chaos during rush hour as there is no other feasible way across (other than ferries).


Several thousand of us gathered on the city-side of the bridge hoping the Transport Agency would say yes and let us cross. Unfortunately they wouldn't budge in their decision but after the leader of the protest announced that we were not to use force but there wasn't enough police to hold everyone (try like 20 police officers just trying to make sure no one got run over!) the crowd pushed through onto the bridge ending up blocking every North-bound lane across.


Oh my god the bridge is awesome! Okay, so I've driven over it countless times but it is nothing compared to crossing it on foot. The views of the harbour are incredible and it's pretty cool to see the structure up close. There are places where you can see all the way down to the water below. Here's a video of the bridge crossing too.


Memorable quotes of the day have to be, "Let's burn fat, not oil" and "Less talk, more walk."


After the last couple of days you could be forgiven for thinking that Auckland is a city of protests with the Auckland Harbour Bridge protest on Sunday and the Auckland Super City Hikoi on Monday (hikoi being a Maori word meaning protest march or parade...more here if you're interested).

All my shoes are muddy

All things are defined by names. Change the name, and you change the thing. Of course there is a lot more to it than that, but paracosmically that is what it boils down to...
- Pyramids by Terry Pratchett


Yes, my shoes did used to be white but I ran through some mud when they were quite new and never quite got around to cleaning them properly! I am SO tired. Working on speed/sprint training at the moment which is not something I enjoy. The long distance event in orienteering is my specialty where endurance (and navigation but that's rather obvious and the same for any distance), rather than speed, is the key!

Things haven't been so good round here lately but when I got home last night and discovered another package for me sitting on the stairs (which J promptly ran off with and hid under his shirt and I had to wrestle him for it!) I was so excited. I ripped it open to discover...


...a whole lot of Cocoa Loco bars! Emma, you've totally brightened up my week so thank you.

I've been going to a vegan cooking class taken by Alice of Angel Foods and last week we were looking at the different grains and ways of cooking them. I was so inspired by the pearl barley dish she made that I promptly went and created my own variation the following evening.


Warming, filling, healthy, delicious plus it made leftovers for the freezer. Awesome! We also covered this really delicious quinoa salad which I can't wait to make despite the fact it's winter and totally not salad weather!

Last night's dinner was a little adventure. J's aunty had given us 2 chayotes which, for a start, I've never heard of let alone eaten before. At least she gave us instructions on how to cook it otherwise I would have had no idea. Obviously this was perfect for Katie's New Foods Challenge.


The chayote is the vegetable that looks like pear slices (hence another name for it, the vegetable pear). What did I think? It wasn't anything particularly special but not bad for a little variation from the same old vegetables in the stir fry.

And lastly, Free-Range Tofu...

Raindrops are falling on my head

A hug may be accompanied by a moment of stillness. Or it may include expressions of pleasure, like these:
(Sigh)
Whoopee!
That's nice.
Thank you. I needed that.
- The Little Book of Hugs by Kathleen Keating

It is cold, wet and pretty darn miserable here at the moment - winter has made their arrival well and truly noticed. Since Friday it has rained most of the time which means it's kept me awake most of the night (my bedroom is in the attic so rain on the roof is pretty loud).

But despite the rain one can still enjoy good food. Let me introduce you to a little slice of heaven I enjoyed recently...


Peanut Butter Midnight Pie from Revel. Umm, to say that I enjoyed it would probably be quite an understatement.

Another highlight of the week (well, that would be last week since I'm too disorganised to work out what's happening with this week yet)...


...tofu stir-fry with enough leftovers for my lunch. Ah, leftovers. Seriously, they can make a dull workday bright again!

Soup, of course, really hits the spot once the weather turns sour.


Pumpkin, kumara and lentil soup with essene bread I managed to score from my cooking class. Man, soup almost makes winter worth suffering through!

As for the package I got, I've nearly managed to eat through it already (there's only 1 thing left)! Everything is SO delicious although the fruit-flavoured Nakd bars are a bit sweet for me. My favourite so far is the Nakd Cocoa Loco which made good fuel after orienteering on Sunday...although I had to share a good portion of it with J and Mum.


No, I didn't eat them both at once and trying to decide which apple pie I was going to try first (I was just heading out on my bike, hence the gloves but needed a snack with me). But which one did I like best? Personally I thought the Lara bar apple pie tasted better. Perhaps it was the nutmeg or something like that in the Nakd Apple Pie but the taste wasn't quite as nice.

A nak'd trek?

Was it her imagination, or did he seem slightly less thrilled to see her than she was to see him? No matter; men were silly about things like public displays of affection."
- The Temptation of the Night Jasmine by Lauren Willig

I arrived home last night cold and wet after some training in the rain to discover a package waiting for me inside. I was so excited that I started opening right there and then, all the while dripping on the carpet! Yay, my package swap from Emma of Student Vegan from the UK had arrived (Emma, I hope mine hasn't got lost in the mail!). It totally made my night!


The package was filled with a whole lot of bars from Natural Balance Foods which we can't get here in New Zealand, an apple pie lara bar and some stir-fry sauce. It all looked so delicious and I can't wait to try everything.

Now over the weekend we've been down at a place called Mountain Valley which is, if you know your way around New Zealand, between Napier and Taupo off SH5. We stayed in this gorgeous little A-frame chalet looking down towards the Mohaka River.


The scenery was so beautiful and everything was so peaceful and still...but I wasn't down there for a relaxing weekend. My team and I were down there for the Macpac Autumn Challenge Women's Adventure Race, quite the opposite of relaxing and peaceful!

The race starts off with a mad dash to the rafts where you pair up with another team and paddle 18km down the Mohaka River. It's incredibly scenic but it's difficult to take in with burning arms and the sound of your rafting guide pushing you to paddle faster!


Once at the end of the rafting you've then got to hop on your bike for a very steep ride/push pretty high up into the surrounding mountains before decending back down to the river for the final stage.


The last section (our team's strength) is on foot where you must navigate yourself to the checkpoints marked on your maps and then back to the finish. We made it back just as the light was beginning to fade to be greeted by the cheers of our support crew and the wafting smell of dinner being cooked. Awesome :)

After the race they provided dinner which, unlike last year, had some great vegetarian options. I fueled up on vege burgers and an awesome curried rice...much needed after a hard day's racing. No pictures but trust me, it was delicious!

It's Kiwifruit not Kiwi

Humanity's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.
- Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

This is a kiwi. You don't eat it.

The kiwi is a flightless bird endemic to New Zealand (a New Zealander is also called a Kiwi which tends to confuse people a bit).


This is NOT a kiwi. It's a kiwifruit (or a chinese gooseberry), a fruit, you eat it. More specifically, the kiwifruit above is actually a golden kiwifruit rather than your regular kiwifruit. It is not a flightless bird or a New Zealander. New Zealanders are not named after a fruit, we are named after our native bird.

Okay, lesson over now.

Make it quick and make it painless

Happily ever after - so how does that work?
The heart of a recipe, what makes it work, is a mystery. Taste is such a personal thing and yet the right recipe can open a person's mind to a food they thought they didn't like. Then again, you can put all the right ingredients together, follow the instructions exactly, and still have a disaster on your hands.
- Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Morag Prunty

This week has not exactly been the best but that doesn't mean you can't have good food.


For those lazy days when you want tofu but the thought of having to prepare it all yourself seems too much, Bean Supreme make a mean marinated Hoisin and Sesame tofu. So good. Also great sliced thinly and baking in the oven for sandwiches.

I spent the whole of the Easter weekend doing (surprise surprise)...


Every Easter is the National Orienteering Championships in New Zealand and this year it was held at my home turf of Auckland. Apart from the first day with the sprint race through the Auckland Uni Teachers College campus in Epsom the events were held up at Woodhill forest, one of my favourite places.

Below is a glimpse of the spectator control for the relay event.


You've gotta fuel up when you're spending your whole weekend out in the forest and I always looked forward to my lunch after the race that day (lunch being a loose term here since most of my races started around lunchtime so I couldn't eat properly until nearly 3pm)...


...a sandwich filled with heaps of veges and baked tofu. Perfect

Then by the time I'd get home (our club was helping so I'd be out there pretty late each day) I'd be exhausted so it was time for a quick and easy dinner...


...pizza! Chuck all your veges and sauce and stuff on a spinach wrap, stick it in the oven, and voila!

I wasn't totally without sweet treats though...J was away all Easter but he did leave me with something special before he went...dark chocolate eggs filled with marzipan. Delicious!

Run run as fast as you can...

Most people, on waking up, accelerate through a quick panicky pre-consciousness check-up: who am I, where am I, who is he/she, good god, why am I cuddling a policeman's helmet, what happened last night?
- Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

The "night before" tofu - my favourite satay tofu :)


We were just getting off the ferry as the marathon started so I managed to get a shot of the tail-end of the runners making their way up the first of several hills (you can probably barely see them in this shot - like ants on the horizon).


My race started an hour later up that very same hill. I found this blog entry about the race - pretty much sums it up really. I saw a few people tumble on the scoria on Rangitoto - it's very rough terrain over there.

Anyway, the race was awesome but we were pretty exhausted afterwards and spent ages waiting for room on a ferry to get back so luckily for us my parents invited us over for a 3-course dinner so all we had to do was sit down and eat! Mum had made fresh bread for the entree, this sweet and sour tofu dish on rice for the main course, and a chocolate self-saucing pudding for dessert complete with soy ice cream (okay, J and I swung by the supermarket on the way to their house and picked up my favourite Lite Licks Hokey Pokey ice cream so she didn't make that but still...).

The "night after" tofu - sweet and sour tofu made by Mum!


Last week was rather crazy and exhausting but I did manage a dinner out with a good friend of mine at The Blue Bird.


I got the Tropical Chickpea Curry on kumara ('cause I can't resist every time I go there even if the dish would be way better on rice or something else!).

We had to save room for dessert of course...


I'd love to tell you that both these dessert bowls were mine but alas, I had to share! They make an awesome apple crumble with soy ice cream.

Nothing like a spot of mountain biking to put you in good spirits though...


...or a delicious oaty slice filled with berries from Revel to brighten a day at work :)