Amongst the mangroves

She places her telephone calls as if she were raising a ransom - quick, it's a matter of life and death."

- from The Island of the Mapmaker's Wife by Marilyn Sides

Last weekend J and I checked out the North Western cycle route for the first time. This route follows along beside the North Western motorway for over 10km and starts, as we discovered, about 100 metres from our apartment!

We cycled out to Avondale and checked out the bike store there (got some new socks and the sales guy convinced us we needed Merida gloves to match our Merida bikes instead of our Giant ones! So now I have half-finger baby pink ones to match my camelbak and helmet...but not the bright green of the bike!) then discovered it was well and truly lunch time and we had nothing with us to eat. Conveniently there was a cafe right next door so we went there. I ordered a custom pizza with mushrooms, capsicum, cashews and mango chutney. It was truly delicious (or perhaps that was because I was so hungry!) so perhaps we will have to cycle out that way at lunchtime more often!

The coolest thing about the cycle way is the section right next to the motorway where it crosses over the estuary and you're riding right next to the mangroves. I've driven along this stretch of motorway in rush hour a few times and been extremely jealous of the cyclists and runners whizzing past so it was cool to finally experience it myself.

I've always found mangroves to be pretty special...I love the way they grow up through the mud and when the tide comes in only the tips of the trees are visible. My brother once made a picture book about living in amongst the mangroves and I always imagine the drawings in his story coming to life whenever I see the mangroves rising up out of the mud. I do have to admit though I once did a rogaine where we ended up, well, very deep in mud amongst the mangroves and I can't honestly say at that point I found them very special at all!

Shall you be 19 or 61 today?

"You can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

There is no reprise from celebration…!

It was my sister-in-law’s birthday a couple of weeks ago, Mum’s last week and Father’s day thrown in there somewhere too. We went round to my parents’ on the Friday to celebrate all three of those recent September occasions (can we throw in a celebration for spring as well?!). Since it was such a momentous occasion (okay, just a couple of birthdays and a rather belated Father’s day) we needed a pretty impressive cake.

It wasn’t until about 5 minutes before I started cooking (at some ungodly hour of the evening the night before) that I’d worked out what I was going to make…a 4 layered chocolate/coconut cake adapted from several different recipes (the chocolate part was mostly a smaller version of the Black Forest Chocolate Cake in Damn Tasty Vegan Baking Guide but the coconut part was a sort of ‘make it up on the spot’ kind of thing).


On transporting it to Mum’s it moved under our makeshift cover and upon lifting the lid I nearly freaked out to discover it on the far side of the plate on a rather scary angle. Luckily it had held together so well that it was fairly easy to slide back to the centre of the plate but I was definitely worried for a moment.


Mum joked that she could be 19 with this cake (turn the numbers round upside down)!

In the kitchen I shall be

All the earliest authors are anonymous. A legendary name, an Orpheus or Taliesin, serves as a conjectural origin, a myth to shroud the namelessness of our culture’s beginnings. Although anonymity is still practiced, it is as a ruse to conceal Deep Throats, both investigative and pornographic. It is a choice, whereas for generations of writers so absolutely lost that no line, no title, no name survives, it is a destiny thrust upon them. They might write, and struggle, and edit, and polish, yet their frail papers dissipate, and all their endeavor is utterly erased.
- The Book of Lost Books (An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You'll Never Read) by Stuart Kelly

What a change from last week...you may actually believe spring is here now. The sun is out and I am actually sitting in the office in just a t-shirt (okay, I'm wearing jeans and shoes as well so don't get too excited). The daylight hours are getting longer which means when we leave our early morning spin class (it finishes at 6:50am...don't ask when it starts or what time we get up to go to it) the sun is out which makes the whole process that little bit easier to bear.

That extra bit of daylight makes the evening feel longer too and cooking feels a little less like a chore. So what has been happening in our kitchen of late?


Baked tempeh with mixed stir-fried veges and sheese scones. Kinda random but we always have rice or pasta so I thought I'd mix it up a bit and I had some Sheese needing using up (I am addicted to the stuff!).


Kumara chips, stir-fried veges and some random tofu and vegetable chunk things that I found in the freezer section at the back of good old Lim Chhour. They are actually quite tasty but, well, were in need of some kind of sauce as we discovered.

I've eaten lots of curries before but I've never actually cooked one myself (I know, I can't believe it either). So here we have my very first green tofu curry. The green curry paste I used was pretty potent so there were lots of running noses but it was delicious and I can't believe it's taken me this long to make a curry! There will be more...


Homemade falafel with veges and hummus wrapped in a sundried tomato tortilla then baked in the oven. Quick, easy and very filling.


I thought I'd try my hand at baked kumara after so many good experiences at Raw Power. Mine was stuffed with corn, fried onion and sheese (surprise surprise!). It turned out really good. We had the kumaras with stir-fried mushrooms and capsicum and some random vegetarian patties I had found whilst browsing at Harvest Wholefoods and had forgotten I'd stowed away in the freezer.

I wanted spelt fruit muffins on Saturday but I was not in a position to leave the house to go get some so, well, I had to make some. Luckily I had spelt flour on hand…but no fruit. J went across the road in search of tinned pears but to no avail so we had to settle for tinned peaches. Didn’t quite work as well taste-wise but still good. So here we have Ginger and Peach spelt muffins adapted from this recipe at Vegan Yum Yum.


It made 6 BIG muffins (perfect for lazy breakfasts and quick lunches). I added some cinnamon, ginger and a mashed banana (‘cause there was one in our freezer that needed using before the big move…).

And nothing is complete without chocolate so I whipped up a batch of Celine’s Peanut Butter Cups. Amazingly easy and very delicious (although, do not eat these if you are feeling a bit sick and your stomach is not at its best as they are very rich…I tell you this from first-hand experience).

Take me to the market

The death moment was at hand now. Again and again Inigo thrust forward, and again and again the man in black managed to ward off the attacks, but each time it was harder, and the strength in Inigo's wrists was endless and he only thrust the more fiercely and soon the man in black grew weak. "You cannot tell it," he said then, "because I wear a cape and mask. But I am smiling now."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not left-handed either," said the man in black.

And he too switched hands, and now the battle was finally joined.

And Inigo began to retreat.

- The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Apparently it's spring...try telling that to the weather. It's pouring with rain, the wind is wild and the temperature has dramatically dropped again! But we did manage to squeeze in one week of spring before the bad weather hit again!

J and I decided to escape the city for the first weekend of spring when the weather was actually nice and test our bikes out at Tawharanui Regional Park, over the hill from my family's beach house at Wai Kauri Bay. But first, we had to go and explore the Matakana Farmer's Market. Despite being only about 15 minutes drive from the beach house I have only gone to the market a handful of times. There is heaps of fresh, organic vegetables, homemade chutneys and james, fresh bread, oils, wine...lots to see and taste.

We explored the river's edge while savoring sorbets in the first warmth of the spring sun. J was determined to find the killer eels that the sign post promised but we had no luck!



A little further down the road is the Matakana Country Park Market. Mum always gets sidetracked here with all the garden sculptures and art. Look at what we found at the market..a buzzy cow!! Classic! We also reverted back to childhood and played with toy blocks!

So what did we pick up at the farmer's market in the end?


Here we have feijoa wine, feijoa and apple juice, organic macadamia butter, an organic pumpkin, an organic avocado, an organic and gianormous capsicum, organic ginger rocky road and a pear, prune and walnut chutney. Yeah, we got a bit carried away!

After lunch we took the bikes over to the reserve (walking them up the hill from the bay was one heck of a challenge...there was no way I was going to try biking up that hill!) and I finally got to test out riding clipless with my new mountain bike shoes (the weirdest name I've ever heard...despite knowing why they are called clipless pedals it doesn't make sense as you have to clip your shoes into the pedals so, therefore, they should be clip pedals). There was a lot of yelling of frustration and several bruises but in the end I finally managed to work it all out. J clearly has A LOT of patience!

Above is my bike on the deck of our beach house afterwards...we had to put the normal pedals back on as I wasn't game enough to try riding along the gravel road in them in case I, well, fell off and forgot to unclip!

It was a pretty exhausting day and by the time we got back from the ride we were in desperate need of a shower and a hot dinner. Unfortunately not all plans end up how you want them to and we couldn't get the hot water cylinder for the bathroom going so had to wash ourselves down with a bucket of hot water from the kitchen!

At least we still had power though so a hot dinner was definitely on the cards. Roasted kumara chips, delicious curried vegetable pies and fresh salad with a squirt of lemon juice (lemons straight off the tree from outside) and chutney from the market...perfect!

The following morning J took his bike over to the reserve to explore some more while I ran the tracks. Tawharanui has a maze of tracks through the farmland and native bush and having spent hours of my childhood exploring the place I know it like the back of my hand.

On returning it was, again, a wash using a bucket before sitting down for lunch. The previous night I'd roasted up the pumpkin while making the kumara chips so with the roasted pumpkin (it was beautifully sweet and rich) I whipped up a pumpkin and peanut butter soup. Although I was lacking in all the usual things I'd add to the soup to add flavour it still tasted delicious. Marmite mixed in hot water makes a great vegetable stock!

Here's the view from our deck at Wai Kauri Bay. It's like being in paradise. I spent a lot of my childhood up here in the holidays and weekends...swimming, kayaking, exploring the hills and forests, making sandcastles...ah, it's making me dream of summer now!

Olympic baking missions

"You are better than I am," Inigo admitted.

"So it seems. But if that is true, then why are you smiling?"

"Because," Inigo answered, "I know something you don't know."

"And what is that?" asked the man in black.

"I'm not left-handed," Inigo replied, and with those words, he all but threw the six-fingered sword into his right hand, and the tide of battle turned.

- The Princess Bride by William Goldman

As I've mentioned earlier, there have been a lot of birthdays lately (a lot of leos around obviously!). This last weekend we had two in a row and I was baking for both!

Although technically not until the following Tuesday, my cousin D celebrated her birthday on the Saturday with a family dinner. We made the trip across the bridge in the wonderful wet winter weather we're having here at the moment. I helped D whip up a batch of good old Mac and Cheez which always goes down a treat as she'd always wanted to try it since I'd mentioned it to her.

I was in charge of D's cake but I just couldn't decide what to make. In fact even when I had decided, I changed my mind a bit once I got in the kitchen. So perhaps a marble cake is a perfect cake for indecision! This is basically the Black Forest Chocolate Cake from the good old Damn Tasty Vegan Baking Guide (yes, again!) but I decided to mix it up a bit. Dividing the ingredients in half I added cocoa to only one half of the mixture (balancing it out with a little more flour in the other mixture) then added chopped dark chocolate to the dark mixture and white chocolate chips to the white mixture. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into your baking pan then swirl it a little with a fork and hey presto, marble cake!

I blended up a tin of strawberries (didn't even know they existed until I found them on the shelf) and thickened it up with cornflour then added some melted chocolate and peanut butter and spread the mixture thickly between the layers with some good old chopped banana. It was very well received!

It was a pretty exciting night as we spent all evening after dinner watching the Olympics and screaming at the screen as our rowing team raced. We were hoarse and shaky after cheering on the rowers then gobsmacked as we made it to the gold medal race of the men's pursuit and very nervous over the women's shot-put. But it made for one very impressive evening of Olympic watching.

Here's the Evers-Swindell twins (they're the team closest to the camera) about to pass the German team and win by a ridiculously close margin. I don't know if you've been able to tell but we've been addicted to the Olympics during the past couple of weeks. I don't think I've watched this much television all year as I have since the Olympics began!

Anyway, the following day J's good friend was celebrating his birthday and J had suggested I make the Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie from Have Cake Will Travel I made a while back. When it actually came down to making it I realised I'd run out of cocoa for the crust so there were a few changes made (throw in some wholemeal flour and some toasted coconut and we're set) and goodness knows where you'd get agave nectar here so I tend to use molasses 'cause, well, molasses tastes yummy!

Since we've had so many birthday cakes lately the change to a pie was really refreshing. Plus it's a lot quicker to make and decorate than a cake. The only thing is that the melting of the chocolate (I do it in a pot over a saucepan of boiling water) can make one feel a little woozy as the wafting smell of chocolate surrounds you!

As well as birthdays, J and I had a little celebration of our own last week and J treated me to dinner at Sawadee. I had a red tofu curry which doesn't even seem to be on the online menu but it was delicious. The bowl was deceptively huge so I had to doggie bag over half of it! Of course that's never a problem since I can just have it another night!


I think that is the end of most of the birthdays and celebrations around here for a little while which really will be quite nice since it can be rather exhausting having such a busy social calender. It's busy enough as it is!

Warm me up please

'So how come you left the Evil Dark Lord business, Harry?' said Cohen.

'Werl, you know how it is these days,' said Evil Harry Dread.

The Horde nodded. They knew how it was these days.

'People these days, when they're attacking your Dark Evil Tower, the first thing they do is block up your escape tunnel,' said Evil Harry.

'Bastards!' said Cohen. 'You've got to let the Dark Lord escape. Everyone knows that.'

- The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

It is definitely got that winter feeling around here although our spin instructor this morning announced that there was only 2 more weeks of winter to go...hahaha. It doesn't snow in Auckland but if you had squinted your eyes a little a few weeks ago in the dark evening you would have been forgiven for mistaking the thick layer of hail for snow. According to records snow was officially recorded on the ground in Auckland in 1939. On Thursday, July 27 1939 snow lay on the hills (up to 2 inches on the top of the Waitakere Ranges and Eastern Bombay hills) around Auckland with dustings to sea level. This is the only record of snow lying on the ground in the Auckland City area since meteorological records began back in 1853. It would have been exciting to discover it really was snow this time but, well, no. It was freezing though especially coupled with the strong winds and heavy rain.

Then not long after that we got blasted by storm after storm. Nothing too bad in Auckland but if you lived in some suburbs on the North Shore you lost power and hot water. Other parts of the country were not so lucky with serve flooding and damage from the powerful winds. We just had rain...and more rain. Oh, and some icy gusts.

So when the winter has well and truly set in you need warming foods and what better way than a thick, chunky soup.


The other night I adapted good old Alison and Simon Holst's recipe for Corn Chowder using kumara instead of potato (it just sounded yummier), adding chopped up capsicum and spicing it up a bit with a rather large dash of J's mother's homemade chilli tomato sauce. (oh, and omitting the cream which I replaced with more soy milk). Just what we needed to warm up our insides.

Cooking up hearty dishes in the oven also helps keep not only us warm but also the whole house as the heat from the oven radiates through the living room (not to mention the delicious smell).

I hadn't made calzones or pizza dough in a while since I couldn't use my right arm to help kneed but it's improved a little (admitedly I mostly used my left arm anyway). So here we have a partly eaten ginormous calzone filled with vegetables, beans, more chilli tomato sauce and grated sheese (we've been trying the smoked chedder style and it's delicious).

Next up, pizza...there is nothing like homemade pizza dough. Mine is usually a half/half wholemeal/white with some coarse polenta thrown in for good measure!

Over the top of a thick coating of tomato paste I scattered sliced veges and marinated some tofu with a sprinkling of yeast flakes and some more of the sheese grated and added in the last few minutes of cooking to stop it going crispy.

Here's another variation on wraps. Lately I've always got a store of these fancy wraps from the fruit and vege store in my freezer (these are apparently basil pesto wraps but the sun-dried tomato ones are also deliciously vegan as well). They defrost in a matter of minutes (well, enough to be flexible then you just chuck the whole wrap in the oven to warm it up). Very handy for those lazy, cold, wet (very wet lately) nights when nothing springs to mind.

The wraps are filled with homemade falafel and veges with a good dosing of J's Mum's spicy tomato sauce and some homemade hummus.

And what better way to warm your tummy with a simple crumble and custard for dessert. Perfect!

The celebration of eating...and more eating

If you think you've been spotted, don't panic. If you react straight away it is very obvious that you have been rumbled. To escape from the situation, look at your watch or pretend to check a text message, then loudly exclaim, "Oh no, I'm really late!" and run past the person you are tailing rather than away from them. This looks far less suspicious.

- The Girls' Book: How To Be The Best At Everything by Juliana Foster

The problem with having so many birthdays in close proximity is that there is a lot of food consumed...a lot of cake, a lot of going out for dinners, lunches, brunches, a lot of snacking, a lot of licking of the spoon and taste testing the icing or cake mixture! We've only just begun the birthday season and yet I've still managed to eat so much cake I felt ill!

Next on the birthday agenda after J's birthday on Monday was, well, mine! To celebrate we did a heck of a lot of eating...

My Mum came into town to visit me and we wandered round until lunchtime when we met J and my lovely cousin D for lunch at, you guessed it, Raw Power! I couldn't decide what to have so ended up going with the baked kumara again. As usual it was delicious. D experienced her usual menu order envy (basically wanting what everyone else ordered!) as our dishes arrived but once tucking into her thick and creamy looking vegan leek and potato soup she looked quite satisfied!

Dinner, well, neither J nor I felt like cooking so we ate one of my favourite fast foods...Burger Fuel! Lime Soy Malt Shakes (okay, they're huge so we shared the one), kumara fries and the Combustion Tofu Burger (minus the aioli of course). I love it how big the burgers are and how they make them with wholemeal buns. I could almost kid myself they were healthy!!!

You'd think that your birthday only lasted for one day each year but J seemed determined to take me out for brunch on Saturday morning and as I walked into the living room as we were about to leave I found out why. Sitting on my couch was my best friend B and another of my good friends E. I was so gobsmacked I had to walk out of the room again and come back in! You see, B lives in Christchurch and although I'd talked to him the week before he'd said nothing...those cunning boys!

So off we went to try out a cafe I'd heard a bit about in Kingsland, Roasted Addiqtion. I ordered the Vegan Tofu Florentine and it was superb. Words do not describe how delicious it was so I'll just post a photo instead and you can make up your mind (hint: it was awesome).

Sitting in their counter display was a mouthwatering slice of vegan chocolate cake so despite us all being full I decided we would all help devour this slice of cake...and it went down very well!

If you were thinking that was my birthday cake or wondering whether I even had room for cake after all these birthday celebrations that week well the birthday cake was still to come. Early on Saturday morning I'd got out of bed and whipped up the cake part of the Boston Cream Pie from The Damn Tasty Vegan Baking Guide and in the afternoon whilst the boys were immersed in SmashBros Brawl (??) on the Wii I made some cookies and cream frosting as we had some cookies that needed using. Together it made for a very successful and highly delicious cake.

It was so good in fact that at the end of the night there was none left including the off cuts from the top of the cake!

This is not the last birthday within the astrological sign of the Leo this year though so there are plenty more birthday cakes and celebrating to come. Almost everyone I know seem to be Leos which makes it a bit of wonder we all get along considering the typical nature of the Leo. Supposedly we are ambious, materialistic, great extroverts, power hungry, leaders etc. Hmmm...