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 :)

Dualing with shoes

As a fifth-year graduate student with an increasingly angsty dissertation advisor and a research grant that didn't quite pay my rent, I didn't have time for me - at least not live ones. Unfortunately, the dead ones could be just as frustrating as the live ones.
- The Seduction of the Crimson Rose by Lauren Willig

Somtimes you feel like something rather fancy...


How about a vegetable stack with a polenta base then topped with eggplant that got a bit shy (hence the fact it's hiding under the greenery), baby spinach, mushroom and tofu with roasted kumara and capsicum round the edges to make it super fancy?! Cool!

It's now only a few more days to go until The Dual. Feeling rather anxious but after a good training run out at the Hunua Ranges on Sunday I'm not feeling quite as bad as before. The question will be what footwear to use 'cause the terrain is just at that kind of middle-point between running shoes and off road shoes...which brings me to my new shoes!


Forgive the dirt splatters on my legs - it was after my run. I actually can't believe I took a photo of my feet but still, these are awesome shoes specially for off-road adventures. This is the Inov-8 Roclite 285 and 'cause they're red they must be fast!


A view from the lookout overlooking the Mangatawhiri Dam.

Anyway, it's definitely starting to get colder round here and there is a chill to the air once the sun starts to slip away. Winter, my friends, is well and truly on its way. One of the things about the colder weather is it makes me crave comfort food.

Like mac n'cheez (with stir-fried veges to give the illusion of a healthy meal!)...


Or nachos (with way too much sheese 'cause I got carried away when I was grating!)...


Or my absolute favourite, satay tofu which is going to be my dinner the night before the race this weekend. Not sure which is more exciting, the race or the tofu (okay, it's not that close to call...really)!


And lastly, you can never go past a good soup to warm you up...


This is leftovers from last night's dinner - Roast Pumpkin, Kumara and Peanut Butter soup. Delicious.

Bar baaa

‘I was a celebrity,’ droned the robot sadly, ‘for a short while on account of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a fate almost as good as death in the heart of a blazing sun. You can guess from my condition,’ he added, ‘how narrow my escape was. I was rescued by a scrap-metal merchant, imagine that. Here I am, brain the size of…never mind.’
- Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams

Tonight we are off to see Coldplay!!!

Moving on...

J has a small obsession with torpedo7 ever since we got our mountain bikes. This does have its benefits though as he spotted they were selling clif bars for an insanely cheap price for a couple of days. We ended up getting several packs (there was only one flavour - Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch).


J's description: "I thought that bar was yummy by the way. Still tasted kinda ‘healthy’ i.e. not a chocolate bar, probably coz of the protein and stuff but still pretty good. No raisins!!" He doesn't like raisins (obviously). They haven't lasted long as we are already halfway through our order. Pity they're sold out now.

I've found them great for before evening orienteering events or afterwork training as they're not too filling/not too light. Just make sure you drink plenty of liquid with them as they're a bit dry (not that it's a problem since I've got to down a fair amount of water beforehand anyway).

Then today my chiropractor told me that the New World (one of the big supermarket chains in New Zealand) across the road was selling Lara bars in one of the checkouts so I had to go see for myself! They're stocking, maybe, 5 flavours in total?


Of course, I had to get some while I was there!

Anyway, I actually managed to squeeze in some excuses for some baking recently! First up was my orienteering friend's birthday so I made carrot cake from Damn Tasty Vegan (this is one awesome recipe) which we devoured at a night orienteering event at Ambury Farm Park. I love how the animals' eyes light up under your headlamp!


The following night I had some of my cousins round for dinner which was a challenge - one of them can't have gluten or any vegetable from the nightshade family. I think I wracked my brains until they exploded to think of something that fitted all requirements and and still tasted good!


Here we have corn bread (adapted from the recipe in Damn Tasty Vegan so that it was completely gluten-free), stir-fried veges with chickpeas and kidney beans topped with a cheezy sauce and rice salad (made by my cousin). It was actually surprisingly good!

Last up on the cooking agenda were some cookies for J and his friends to take to the beach. I settled on the Chocolate Peanut Butter Shells from Damn Tasty Vegan (again! Yep, this book got quite a workout that week!). You can find the recipe here but I find that the dough mixture ends up being too sticky to work with so I add another 1/3 - 1/2 cup of flour. Maybe our flour is more moist...?


This is a pretty shocking picture (these were the leftovers a few days later) but they were, well, damn tasty (I had to have a sample before I sent them off with J - quality control you understand).

We're off to see Coldplay!!!!!!

That's all...

Food to Revel in

And now, at last I had found the way, or thought I had. At the next darkness of the moon I would find out whether my years of study had been in vain. I would realize my heart's desire or I would find my hopes dashed to pieces...
- The War of the Flowers by Tad Wiliams

I have a new find!! There is this cafe on K'Road called Revel and they have heaps of vegan food! I can't believe it! The worst of it is that I used to live just round the corner from this cafe and walk past it every day on my way to work and I never even went inside!

I didn't really look at the menu but the cabinet was filled with delicious vegan delights. I spent ages trying to decide what I wanted (okay, to be honest, what I really wanted was to have ALL of it!). In the end I decided on this...


A mini chocolate cake with berries and a lush chocolate icing. It was divine. I cannot even begin to describe how delicious this was.

The next time I stopped by I was in need of a takeaway lunch and their vegan sandwich caught my eye.


Filled with a decent amount of veges and hummus, it was perfect heated slightly in the microwave at work.

I couldn't go past a sweet treat too...


...a Chocolate and Pumpkin cupcake! It had a kind of a jafa flavour to it which was cool.

I got an apricot and almond cupcake another time I popped past Revel which was pretty good (although there was something about the taste that was a bit weird...too much almond flavour perhaps?).

Now, beans on toast always remind me of this old TV ad about being a poor student living on baked beans and weetbix and many weekend lunches as kids of baked beans in our toastie pies. I'm guessing it was probably a Watties ad but I can't remember. Anyway, I was in Revel this morning and feeling rather down and in need of a good breakfast and I was faced with a choice and one of them was beans on toast. Normally I would pass this by because it always seems to sound so boring but after Moira from An Auckland Vegan gave them such a highly favourable review on her blog I thought I'd give them a chance (after all, she did say it was the best vegan brunch in Auckland which seemed like pretty high praise).


So what did I think? Actually, I think it might quite possibly be one of the best breakfasts I've ever had! Sorry about the bad photograph but basically it's a mixture of several different kinds of beans in a delicious sauce of some kind sitting on deliciously thick grainy bread and topped with a whole lot of different toasted nuts. I cannot even begin to describe its awesomeness! Definitely improved my morning! Eat this if you are ever anywhere near Revel okay?

By the time I'd finished breakfast it was hosing down with rain outside and I wasn't really that keen to head out on my way so I picked up a sweet treat to look forward to once I got home.


This is their Midnight Chocolate Cake (well, it's more of a tart really but hey, names aren't really that important). Very rich but oh so good. Chocolate could brighten my day just about any time!

Keep up the good awesome

'I could tell you my adventures - beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly; 'but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.'

- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

I'm so excited I can barely sit still to type this...my piano arrived a couple of hours ago!! It stayed at my parents when I moved out but I finally have room for it where we're living now so after many years apart (okay, so I would go round to their place pretty much just to visit my piano!) we are finally reunited...and I've been playing pretty much nonstop since then!


The keys look like slabs of white chocolate with licorice strips...I must be hungry! Actually, it reminds me of when I was quite little and my eldest brother made me a piano cake for my birthday. Mum joked it was his first engineering masterpiece!

Anyway, as you may know, J and I were away last weekend competing in the Great Lake Relay round Lake Taupo. The night before we left for I had dinner out with a group of friends at Thai Eden. Thai has to be one of my favourite foods. You can't go past a creamy coconut milk curry filled with tofu and veges. Fills in all the gaps.


By the time we ordered I was starving so I shared a starter with another of my friends doing the relay with us...Pak Tod, a selection of tempura vegetables with sweet chilli sauce. They even had tempura baby corn!


For my mains I decided to indulge in the Panang Tofu, a rich coconut milk red curry. When I make curry at home I don't use nearly as much coconut milk so it's a real treat when I go out to a Thai restaurant. Not the best of currys but hey, it was still delicious.

The weather was not looking too promising when I got up on Friday and our drive down to Taupo was often in torrential rain. But arriving in Taupo itself the weather seemed to have cleared up quite a bit and there was definite promise of some easing in the weather. Our event started at 2am (the start times depend on the grade you are entered in - anywhere from 9pm on Friday night to 3am on Saturday morning) on the Saturday morning so the night crew (J and I included) were up by 1am and piling into our support van to get to the start.

The early hours saw us pulling out some crazy "encouragement" for the other runners and our team mates. "Keep up the good awesome," and "The sun rises from the East for everyone," were some of the most memorable ones.

Fueling up on a lara bar before my first run at around 6am - a 10.1km leg mostly of steady uphill as the sun came up. See the leg here. The best thing about this leg is you start off in the pitch black and as you run the sun slowly comes up so by the time you get to the transition area it's broad daylight!


Above was our first view of the lake after several hours on the road. It must have been about 9:30am but it felt like the afternoon considering we'd been up since 1am! The first part of the course winds along farm roads and it's not until you turn onto SH41 and head up the hill that you finally get a view of the lake (and a sense of scale of what you're doing since you can't see the other side of the lake except for the odd misty shadow on the horizon.


Above is the grind of Hatepe Hill, a steady 3km climb in the middle of my 6.1km second leg around 1 in the afternoon. Pictures always make hills look flatter than they really are! You can see the leg here.


Here's Lake Taupo near the finish line as we wait for our final runner to come past. What was scheduled to be a cyclone never really turned into much. Look, blue sky!

Coming in with a total time of 13 hours 1 minute and 39 seconds we came 30th out of 157 running teams and were nearly 40 minutes faster than last year - we rock!

Speaking of the lara bar I mentioned above, Katie from Chocolate-Covered Katie (which is a truly awesome name because being covered in chocolaty goodness would be delicious...and did that just sound really weird?) has this amazing competition going at the moment to win a box of Jocalat bars (they're kind of like the chocolaty, decadent version of lara bars). Go here for more details.

Back to my piano now...