Seasonally Challenged: Vegetable Soup

I fed my husband vegetables last night, lots of em.  Six different veggies, to be accurate.  And no meat, potatos, pasta or rice.  Miracle?  Nah, just starve him til he'll eat anything!

Shooting from the hip vegetable soup!

Disclaimer: I know that it is coming on spring, and this recipe is mostly tinned and winter veggies, but I have said that I am seasonally challenged, so I'm just living up to the hype!


This was last night:

• Cheeky pint with workmate and his lady.
• 6:30 @ home: husband dishes out a snack of pita bread and hummus.
• 7: 00 Cracked a bottle of wine - the alcohol held off hunger for a while so I could catch up on Grey's Anatomy.
• 8:00, me, "oh, guess it's time to make dinner!"  I checked the recipe for the Minestrone I had planned to make.  $h!t, it takes hours.  We didn't have hours, the growls coming from Jonno's monster of a stomach were drowning out the rugby game, that's when you know it's bad!
• Delivered bad news to husband, he takes it stoically then astonishingly is still able to think on his feet: "isn't there some soup frozen in the freezer?  Just throw that in a pot, she'll be right!"
• Sure enough in the freezer there is an ice cream container full of what looks like chicken soup - we're saved!
• Not so fast - the soup is only chicken broth, left over from when I roasted a chicken and then thriftily used the bones to make stock.
• Me: "Didn't I buy some chicken the other day?  I'll just cook up one of those and chuck it into my already-defrosting stock and we'll have chicken soup.  Boom!"
• Nope, I didn't buy chicken, I bought pork chops.  Fail.
• In a strange twist of fate, I had just bought celery, which I never buy because we both hate the flavour of raw celery.  It tastes like sweet grassy nothingness, you know it's true!
• Bonus: other actual vegetables in the house (as opposed to frozen ones, usually reserved for stir-fry), so boom!  Vegetable Soup!
• 8:45 Put Round 1 of veggies in the pot, then go back to Grey's and another glass of red.
• 9:00 Round 2 of veggies plus herbs, more Grey's.  Possibly more wine.
• 9:20 Grey's is done, I remembered that I was supposed to feed my husband, dish some out and actually sit down and talk to husband for the first time that day. 

Lesson learned: label what you freeze!  I also discovered some kind of dough in the freezer, and I have no idea what it's for.  Could be pierogies, bread, pie.... 

And maybe I should start reading recipes before I plan them for the week?  But come on, who has time to actually read things, especially when the rugby is on, which it is constantly right now.  Thanks Rugby World Cup, for usurping my husband and stalling our lives for six weeks.

Oh, oh, but wait - RWC you make up for all your time-stealing by giving us ships to explore this weekend!  Ahoy mateys!  Five grey Navy boats (ships?) are currently gracing our office view and taunting us with their cool gadgety-looking things.  So.  Cool.

Spontaneous Vegetable Soup

Serves: 6 at least

Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 L chicken stock or broth
• 1 tin cannelini beans or kidney beans
• 1 large kumara, sweet potato, or white potato
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 3 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1 tin sweet corn
• 2 tsp chicken or vegetable boullion or stock powder
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp rosemary
• salt & pepper

1. Defrost frozen stock or bring liquid stock to a rolling boil in a large pot.
2. Round 1 of veggies: beans, kumara/potato, carrots - into the pot for 15 minutes.
3. Round 2: celery, onions, corn, plus the herbs and stock or powder.  Season with plenty of salt and pepper.  Let simmer for another 10-15 minutes. 
4. You could also through in some pasta in this last step, but don't cook too long so that pasta doesn't get all soggy and floppy.
5. Serve to an unsuspecting yet starving family.

A Tale of Two Pies for Sweet New Zealand

I am an American, thus I make apple pie.  It's just something we're born to do.

I bought a bag of Granny Smith apples last week to make a pie for my lovely neighbor who had fed our cats while we were away for four days.  I thought I would just eat the ones I didn't use in my pie, apples that is, not cats.  However it seems that I had forgotten that I don't actually like Granny Smith apples because they're just to tough and fibrous, and don't do nice things to my tummy. 

Yes, I still call it my tummy.  Don't judge!

So then it's Monday night and I have all these apples sitting on my bench, taunting me with the pie potential.

Staring apples with the bright and shiny skins - lies!

I did what any self-respecting American with a baking addiction and too many icky apples would do - I made another pie.  But just not the same pie; I went the Tim Taylor route and added More Power!!!  (Remember that show, a staple of a 90's childhood?) 

Here's pie numero uno, made with Edmond's Sweet Short Pastry, which I love even though it sticks like the devil to any surface it's applied to.  Like. The. Devil.  I followed a basic two-crust apple pie recipe for the filling, which didn't call for much more than some white sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour.  Meh, it was alright.  My neightbor loved it, but I believe that because someone made it for her, and you always love food that you didn't make yourself.


Not a beauty pageant winner, that's fo sho!

Back to those extra apples.  I may have peeled and cut them up while watching The Mentalist.  A girl's gotta keep up with her shows, and that Simon, he's so darn cute, even if he is Australian. 

Also, this happened in the middle of pie-baking, and I managed to get a shot of it.  Win!


Hungover kitty needs a bigger drink than just her water bowl!

I used the same Edmond's crust because (a) I'm a little lazy and (b) I had two sheets in my freezer - kind of a no-brainer here.  But the filling, oh the filling; I added brown sugar, cloves, and lemon juice to the mix, and the kicker was that I softened them up in my magical non-stick wok to get those juices alllllllll up in there. 

Result: magic!  The crust still stuck to the pie plate though, even though I sprayed it.  Here's the Winning Pie:

Look at that thing of beauty, you can see the caramelized juices giving the apples a nice warm bath of love.  Makes me want to be one of those apples.  Is that weird?

I am so enamoured with this apple pie that I'm putting on my big-girl hat and submitting it (my first ever!) for Sweet New Zealand, hosted this month by one of my NZ food blog idols Pease Pudding.  Eeek!

Here's the recipe, if you find yourself in possession of too many apples and an episode of The Mentalist (or some other similarly riverting crime drama)!


Amazing Apple Pie
serves: 8 or so
time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

• 6 Granny Smith (or equally tart) apples
• Two pie crusts - I used Edmond's Sweet Short Pastry but any will do
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 egg

1. Preheat over to 180 C/350 F.
2. Put one pie crust into a pie plate so that it comes up to the edge of the rim.
3. Peel, core and cut apples into thin slices, set aside in a bowl and drizzle lemon juice over the apples.  Mix in sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves and let them sit for a few minutes.  This will bring out some of the juices.
4. In a large frying pan or non-stick wok, melt the butter.  Add the apples and sugar mixture and the flour, and let them simmer on medium-low heat for 7 or 8 minutes, until soft but not translucent.  At this point you will want to eat them straight out of the pan, but restrain yourself, it will be worth it.
5. Turn off the heat and let the apples cool for a few minutes, then spoon into the pie shell.  Shake the pie plate gently from side to side to get them to settle into harmony with each other.
6. Cut the remaining pie crust into strips and lay them on top in a lattice, or in a single sheet (be sure to cut a few slits in the top to let the steam out if you do the single sheet option).  Use a fork to press the top crust into the bottom crust and make a pretty pattern.
7. Whisk up the egg into an egg wash and brush over the top of the crust.
8. Bake for 30 minutes on a low rack, covering the edges with tin foil if you're worried about burning the crust.
9. Let cool before serving, preferably with vanilla ice cream on the side!

Will Sustain Life: Shrimp Stirfried Rice

This one is a Will Sustain Life with an exclamation point, as in,"Yay, this will sustain life and more!"

We went to New Plymouth for the rugby last Thursday.  Jonno was cheering for the USA, I was cheering for Russia.  I know, I should be rooting for my yankee brothers, but what can I say, my loyalties are screwy!  My favourite thing about the night was Captain Clever, the captain for the USA team.  I thought he should be a superhero. 


A Kiwi backing USA and an American pulling for Russia.

On Sunday when we got home, I did a Very Important Thing and organised our home study.  This had been bugging me for weeks, and upon arriving home from seven hours in the car playing crazy nerd games with my husband, I thought, "Now is the perfect time to tackle the bogey that is the study."  Not anything about relaxing or doing something about the pile of laundry that was starting to swallow the bathroom floor or about putting something together for dinner that was healthier than the last three nights pizza I had endured.  (Ok, 'endured' might be a bit strong - I loved every bite of all that pizza, even if some of it was frozen from the supermarket. I loves me some pizza!)  Nooooo, I was fully in 'Must Organise or Die' mode and nothing was gonna stop me!

I pulled out all my boxes of craft stuff and re-categorised everything, I filed all of our important papers into a new filing system, I even re-framed a photo and painted the frame black which is something I've been threatening to do for about eight months now.  I found our wedding decorations and made plans to create something arty with them one day.  I boxed up everything related to the seventeen different projects in various stages of 'bought the supplies and just barely begun' so that they looked pretty and weren't sitting out all over the show and thus reminding me of my failure to get past the starting line.

Meanwhile Jonno was sitting on the couch, watching the rugby - his Very Important Activity for the next month.

All of a sudden, I hear behind me, "Honey, don't you think we should do something about dinner?"  I realised it had gone way past dark out and my tummy was arumblin', aka past the point of logically being able to think of something to make for dinner and into the slightly-panicky phase where anything edible will do.  Jonno had a scared look on his face, like he was afraid I had forgotten to feed him. 

I always hate it when it gets to this point, when you're so damn ravenous that you can't even wait for the water to boil for pasta, you must have food thisveryinstant.  This time, I did a very new and novel thing for us - I went and looked at what food we had in the kitchen!  (Usually I just declare any thought of actually making food pure foolishness and beg for takeout.)  Lo and behold, in the freezer were some shrimp and some frozen veg, and lightbulb!  Shrimp Stirfry!!  This also helped to reduce the number of soy sauce bottles lurking in our cupboard down to three, all of which are in a semi-full state.  I'm pretty sure the kitchen elves are having a laugh at us somewhere behind all the pasta they stocked up on last month. 

Here are the details on my surprising food win on Sunday.  The stars must have aligned!

Shrimp Stirfried Rice
about 4 serves, super-easy for the lazy meal

• 2 cups frozen pre-cooked shrimp
• half a bag of frozen veggies, stri-fry mix if you have it
• 1 medium onion
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 1/4 oyster sauce
• 3 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 1/4 cup soy sauce (ish!)
• 1 cup cooked rice
• 2 eggs

1. Start your rice and cook as per directions.
2. Put the shrimp in a bowl full of very hot water to defrost.
3. Steam up your frozen veg.
4. Beat the eggs in a bowl, then cook them as you would scrambled eggs in a small frying pan or in a non-stick wok if you have one.
5. Roughly chop the onion, then put it into a hot wok with a swirl of olive oil.  Once the veggies are done, shake any excess water off and add to the onions in the wok.
6. Add the sauces to the veggeies and season with a little salt and some pepper.
7. Once the rice and shrimp are done, turn the heat down to low and add them to the wok at the same time, and give the whole thing a swirl of soy sauce, and let it all get to know one another for a minute or so - you don't want to cook the shrimp for too long because they will go all rubbery.
8. Roughly chop the scrambled eggs and add them at the very last possible second.
 

You could also add chopped capsicum, green beans, broccoli - the sky is the limit on the veggies, but this is what I had in my kitchen and therefore what my starved brain thought would be enough to sustain life for another night!  Also, my husband loves pineapple in anything Asian-related, and if we had had some, that would have been a nice addition to this too.

What have you thrown together in a moment of hungry desperation that turned out better than you thought?

...Now back to the rugby!

Ravioli of Heaven and a Revelation

My raptures over this ravioli win will mean a lot more if I just clarify one thing.  I kind of call myself a foodie, but I don't really feel like a foodie yet.  I mean, I luuurve food and would marry some of it if I wasn't already married, but for some reason in my mind to be a foodie you reeeeally have to know your food, and I don't quite know it all that well yet.  Foodies also seem to have been born with a large vocabulary of food-related words, like braised, charcuterie, and kohlrabie - I don't have that intimate relationship with foods and flavours yet.  All I know is what's yummy for my tummy.

Wine, on the other hand, and in particular Pinot Noir, I have a very familiar relationship with due to all of the "research" Jonno and I did when picking out our wines for the wedding.   

Oops, I digress, back to food.  My precious.  Now, my mom is a great cook and we had lots of great food growing up, so I like to think that I have a good base of food learnin' in my head.  But it's been 10 years since I've lived at home; the first two years of those I spent eating university campus food, and the next five I was living in an apartment but really only cooking enough to survive, so I've only been cooking cooking for a few years now.  Include the fact that I lived in a dinky flat in Melbourne for a year with minimal kitchen implements and less money and the nine months spent on wedding planning/wine research, and that brings us up to The Wedding last November.  Also, I'm from the States, where pre-packaged, pre-prepared, processed food is the name of the game and cooking out of a box is a normal thing, so I'm completely set back in the New Zealand food world where people have been baking from scratch and growing their own veggies since forevers.  I don't know why I'm feeling the need to justify myself and lack of real cooking experience, but there it is, my history with Food. 

I'm so completely ecstatic now that I can indulge in a real relationship with all things edible that I didn't know where to start for a while.  I bought cookbooks on a whim, I took some cooking courses through Community Education and learned a little (and I mean a very little), I've baked many things including 72 cupcakes which were actually successful, and several things were which complete fails. 

Last week I took a Ravioli-making course at La Bella Italia in Petone and first of all, I have to say how much I love that restaurant-in-a-store-with-a-cooking-school.  The food is amazing, you can buy Italian ingredients and deli items like cheeses and prosciutto, and it just feels like a little slice of Italy.  This class was no exception - we were welcomed with some bubbles and nibbles of Italian variety, which I am of the opinion that some kind of adult beverage is essential to any good cooking class, just as it is when you make dinner!  Right?



Chef Gabriele showed us how to mix and knead the pasta dough, roll it out using the pasta machine (which I now MUST HAVE!), make two different kinds of fillings, and assemble the ravioli.  We ended up with enough for at least four good-sized portions, as well as a take-home bag filled with the recipes learned, some parmegiana-reggiano cheese, and prosciutto.  He also may have verbally told us how to prepare our lovely pasta, but I had had enough bubbly for everything go in one ear and out the other, so the first time I made some ravioli, it was just eh, ok.  

Make a well in the flour and crack eggs directly into it.



Filling made with pumpkin - delicious.



Rolling out the dough, lightning fast!

 

What a drinking game this would make if you took a shot after you sealed each ravioli!

But last night, oh baby, last night was magnificent.  It was literally the best thing I have ever cooked (excluded baked goods of course) - In. My. Life.  Also the first time I have ever cooked silverbeet, so this was a double win for me!!  Never mind that I had made the ravs myself, this would work with any pre-made stuff as well, it's the sauce that makes this to dieeeeee for.  Even food-indifferent Husband was swooning. 

Ravioli in White Mushroom Sauce

adapted from this recipe from Cooks.com

makes enough sauce for four serves

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 bunch of silverbeet, chopped
• a double handful of your favorite mushrooms, coarsely chopped
• 1 sm. onion, chopped
• a good handfull of diced cooked ham or proscuitto
  
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesiano Romano cheese
• 300 ml cream
• 1/3 cup white wine
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• Salt and pepper
• enough ravioli for four people

1. In a large pan or non-stick wok, heat up the olive oil and butter.  Saute the onion until soft but not too translucent.  Add in the ham/prosciutto, mushrooms and silverbeet and cook for another minute til they are soft.
2. Add in flour, chicken broth, cream, wine, nutmeg and half the cheese.  Season with salt and pepper, and simmer until you can't stand how good it smells anymore.
3. Cook ravioli according to whatever directions they came with, then add them to your sauce and let them mingle for a minute.
4. Serve with crusty bread and a generous sprinkling of more cheese.  Trust me on the bread, you will need it to mop up some sauce, and you do NOT want to waste any of this sauce!

I'm Seasonally Challenged

Hi, my name is Christina and I'm seasonally challenged.  Hi Christina.  I live in Wellington, where there weather can excompass all four seasons in one day.  Case in point: yesterday morning it was all autumnish with the clouds and wind and cool temperatures, then all of a sudden it hailed something fierce, coating the ground white and killing the temperature by a good 100 degrees.  Oh, it also thundered any lightninged (totally a word!) like it was summer tiiiiiiiiime...and the livin's easy (name that band).  Then the wind blew the storm away, and it cleared up to be a sunnyish afternoon.  And today it's gorgeous and my wool coat it totally OTT.

Hail that looks like snow.  Typical Wellington.

So I find it a wee bit hard to cook with the seasons.  Case in point: I used my slowcooker this past weekend.  Someone on Twitter mentioned the first of the season's asparagus - I'm still trying to use up all of the frozen pumpking in my freezer. 

*Disclaimer: Please excuse my redundancy today, I've caught the lurgy going around work and feel like my head is crammed full of cotton. 

Last week I did a ravioli-making class at La Bella Italia in Petone, and we filled them with concoctions of pumpkin and spinach.  Totally didn't occur to me that these ingredients were technically about to go out of season.  More on this class later though, once I actually get around to eating said ravioli, which were made to be frozen. 


Making ravioli with Chef Gabriele at La Bella Italia.


I've been to two Farmer's Markets in the past few weeks and have had zero idea what veggies to buy.  Help, I'm seasonally challenged!!  It doesn't help that I'm from the Northern Hemisphere, where the seasons are the right way around, and read a lot of North American food blogs where they are all currently rejoicing in the oncoming autumn.  One half of my brain thinks "yay, time for soups and leeks!" while the other side is all "I don't know what to eat right now!!!".  Any help on this issue is highly appreciated.  Is there a 12-step program for people like me?

On-the-fly Slow-Cooker Rump Steak

I did another Experiment, but this time out of necessity.  We had beef and no desire to traipse out to the store to buy ingredients for any of the beef recipes I have, so I bit the bullet and gave it the good old college try.

After all of my recent failures, I have had a food win!  I may have had to advise Jonno to have a backup in mind in case it wasn’t edible, but it was deelishus!!!  I also hedged my bets and made sides that I knew would be good just in case of Total Failure – baked kumara and peas. 

It ain't pretty, but oh man was it tasty.  Yum yum, fall apart beefy tasty.  Easy to make, chuck in the slow-cooker, leave it til it falls apart!

Next time I would serve this with mashed potatoes and probably chuck some carrots in the slow-cooker too.  And maybe onions.  Whatever I have around really, because that's how this meal came into being - I used anything I could find that I thought might work with beef.

On-the-fly Slow-Cooker Beef

Ingredients:

• a rump steak, whatever size you want
• 1 tin tomato puree
• 1 packet Maggi Sweet & Sour sauce mix
• 2 cups beef stock
• 1/4 cup red wine
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tbsp cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup golden syrup
• salt & pepper

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients up in a bowl.
2. Trim any excess fat off the rump steak and dredge in flour.
3. Beef and sauce into slow cooker on high for 4-5 hours, or slow for 8-10 should do it. 

Will Sustain Life #1

My mother (hi Mom!!) liked to experiment with food, trying new recipes and sometimes making things up.  Whenever she did that, at meal time she would announce that we were eating An Experiment.  This declaration would elicit groans and gasps from my seester and I, while Dad would stoically gird himself to eat pretty much the whole meal on the chance that the rest of us declared it unfit for our consumption.  If the Experiment was actually good, it would go into regular rotation.  Then there was an in-between category that Mom called "Will Sustain Life" - it wouldn't poison us, and would sustain us until the next meal, but she was not under any circumstances going to make it again.  She was not under any illusions about the tastiness of her Experiments, and it was more about the exercise of trying new things that excited her I think.

Cut to Wednesday - I had grand plans of making a Banana Cake (my first recipe from Allyson Gofton's Bake) for this month's Sweet NZ entry, parmesian pork chops, and roasted kumara and peas.  The only success out of those four were the peas.  Total fail.

For some reason, I thought doing the Banana Cake first was the smart thing - then I could easily make dinner while it was baking.  What I failed to notice was that it would take at least 35 minutes in the over, which is way more than enough time for me to crumb some pork chops and chop some kumara.  I could have roasted a turkey in the time I lost waiting for the damn Banana Cake to bake. 

I'll just list all of my fails, shall I?  Let's get it all out there.  Cooking Therapy!

Second: soggy, non-flavorful porkchops.  Now, I thought since I had bought the Apple-Somethingorother flavored porkshops, they would be great with a crumb coating.  Pulled them out of the freezer, defrosted them but (Pork Chop Mistake #1) clearly not long enough, dunked them in olive oil and them coated them with half bread crumbs, half parmesian cheese (Mom's Never-Fail Coating Formula which failed, but due to Operator Error). 

Next: we got a bag of what I thought we just small orange kumaras from a roadside market on the way back from the snow last weekend, and I thought that roasting them might be a nice change from the usual baked (let's face it - microwaved) kumara that I do.  So I chopped them up into chunks, coated with olive oil, a splash of balsamic (this is the Experiment part), salt, pepper, and basil.  Into a casserole dish and time for Pork Chop Mistake #2 - I put them on the top shelf, so they got the direct heat and proceeded to defrost/melt/liquify while the kumara barely got any and therefore didn't actually roast.


The Kumara Experiment - could be a cool band name?


I figured out my oven configuration mistake about 20 minutes into the baking process, and swapped the dishes around, and while that did serve to kind of roast the kumara, it didn't do anything to my poor dead pork chops.  RIP pork chops.  You tried, you tried to be a good dinner, but in the end, you were just soggy.

So the final result of dinner was: wet (hey at least they were moist!) porkchops with no flavor, kind of roasted but too sweet allegedly-kumara, and the aforementioned successful peas.  Have I told you that we can actually screw up frozen peas in our house?  I didn't know it was possible!  But lo and behold, we have done it. 

The most hilarious part of all this was that by taking so long to actually make dinner, I had starved poor Husband all night, so that at that point ANY food would have tasted like the proverbial manna from heaven to him.  Sure enough, after a few bites and my proclamation of this being an Experiment, Jonno said, "honey,  you can experiment like this anytime!"  To which I cringed, because to me, this meal fell squarely in the category of Will Sustain Life.  But boy did we eat those peas! 

After dinner I whipped up some chocolate icing from Alexa Johnston's very important Kiwi cookbook Ladies, A Plate and promptly frosted my slightly pitted-looking banana cake.  Said cake, aka The Bane Of My Wednesday Night Existence Other Than The Pork Chops, was apparently still too warm for my lovely frosting, making it melt and run away from the heat.  I put the whole shebang out in the conservatory hoping to cool it down and stop the madness, but it was Too Late.  The dreaded frosting runs had already created carnage on my cake. 

Mr. Banana Cake - I am so disappointed in you.

Not to be deterred from something with chocolate on it however, I cut myself a nice chunk of cake, poured a big glass of milk (the mandatory bedfellow of anything chocolate), and prepared for Redemption and Glory as I took a bite, only to taste Defeat.  Bland, over-chocolated, over-sweetened frosting, stringy banana chunks.  Hmm, seems I missed the part of the directions that said to "mash bananas" - I merely mushed them up into chunky pieces.  The banana never got the chance to mingle with the other ingredients and spread its flavor tentacles into the cake, and I think they were a bit bland; definitely brown from being smushed in the car over the ski trip weekend but not over-ripe like a real banana cake needs. 

Disclaimer: before moving to New Zealand, I didn't know such a thing as a banana cake existed.  I'm serious.  I come from the Land of Boxed Cake Mixes!  So I guess I am still in the teenage years of being a Foodie in New Zealand, not being able to bake a proper cake from scratch and all.  But I'm working on it!  I will make another banana cake, and another, and another until I get it right, or my pancreas explodes in protest. 

But for now, it's the Rugby World Cup!!!!!

*Random capitalization done on purpose!

No Food, Just Snow and Views

I didn’t do ANY cooking or baking this past week.  Nothing.  Everything I have fed my food baby has been prepared by someone else.  Also, I've consumed a lot of Nutella.  Just how bad exactly is it for you?  Not too bad, right?  Oh, no don't tell me, I'd rather stay blissfully ignorant with my head firmly stuck in the ground.  Totally a good strategy for healthy living.

This weekend Jonno's little bro Rob flew up to Wellington and we drove up to Mt. Ruapehu for some good old fashioned fun in the snow.  You know it's gonna be a fun weekend when this is the face that is grinning at you from the back seat...

He may look slightly munted here, but that's just Rob.  He's the King of Shenanigans, with the haircut to prove it.  Jonno drove up til Levin, where we stopped at "Plenty Fast Food" and got basically buckets of fried foods.  I throw up a little in my mouth now as I remember what I ate, ick ick ick! 

The mountain was absolutely spectacular, and we could not have had better weather, not that this photo really does it justice.

Maybe this one is a better picture of what we were heading towards on Saturday - glory!

Looks like a family roadtrip of ye olde days.

Look at that happy smiling face.  What he doesn't know is much he will be hurting, and where he will be hurting in T minus six hours.  Prepare for PainFest 2011!!  Note Mount Doom in the background.  I love living in Hobbit Country!



I don't love it when my face all distorted.  Or at least that's what it looks like to me here.

Look how wide my cheeks are...must have been all the squintingness into the bright fiery sun that I was doing.  Also, could I have a more goofy smile?!

Now, I am a snowboarder and have been for about 12 years now.  I have my own board, affectionately named The Green Monster (it's a Boston Red Sox thing).  But the thing that I seem to forget everytime a coconut before going snowboarding is literally how damn much of a pain in the bum it is!  All that sitting/falling on the ground just to strap one foot into the bindings does not a happy posterior make.  And then having to push oneself up from the sitting position into standing whilst both feet are strapped to your plank without faceplanting - yeah that's a real joy.  There's really no way to do it gracefully.  A couple years back I perfected strapping in while still standing up, and then promptly lost that skill as soon as I finished my last run for that season.  I haven't re-acquired it yet. 

The only thing we could do once we got home from the snow was figure out which hotpool to go to - drive half an hour to the cheaper one with only one large public pool or slog it out for an hour and a half in the car for the fancy hot pool complex in Taupo?  Cheap and public it was!  Good thing we were early too - by the time we left after an hour of soaking away the bruises there were heaps of kids there, splashing around, ruining the serenity.  Not that we were there for the serenity.  Nah, our main goal was to cook ourselves pink as prawns.  My maths&physics husband and engineering bro-in-law had an in-depth discussion about how the natural hot springs (pictured above) transferred heat to the chlorinated pool next to them - that just made my head ache along with the rest of my body!! 

On Sunday we took the long leisurely way back down to Wellington, stopping in pretty much every small town along the way to eat or drink something.  We may have imbibed at dinner the night before, so between that and the ski pain we were feeling the effects of ... life, and needed constant refueling just to stay mobile.

They painted the Ohakune carrot black for the Rugby World Cup strung flags of all the RWC countries on every available surface.  New Zealand takes its rugby hosting duties seriously!  We stopped at The Chocolate Eclair Shop, in Ohakune (next to the BP) and honestly I don't know how they stay in business, because they sell the nicest, lightest eclairs and pastries at ridiculously low prices.  It cost us $5.20 for three pastries.  Seriously shop people, charge more, you deserve it! 

Jonno stopped the car so we could look over the edge of this bridge, which we decided to go under,  you know, as you do, in order to better see the bottom of the gorge.  Typical Baker behaviour.  Just wait til I tell your mother, boys!  *shakes fist*

They look way too pleased with themselves. 

Next we stopped in Mangaweka to check out the DC-10 flying through the cafe courtyard.

You know, coz that's normal, to hang a plane out at a cafe.  I have to say the Kiwis really know how to make things worthy of stops on a roadtrip.  It seems like every town has its own icon to stop and take a photo of.

Jonno requested I take this photo of the cockpit.  What a boy!

I love how old and vintagey it looks - much better than how a normal photo of the cockpit would look, because let's face it - a plane that has been around for 50 years is not in the prettiest condition. 

On the home stretch, we stopped at the lookout on the Kapiti coast, just in case we hadn't been reminded enough of how gorgeous New Zealand really is and how lucky we are to live here!

Cue Fred Dagg - "We don't know how lucky we are!"

Maybe this week I'll actually get around to doing something food-related.  Hmm, the Rugby World Cup starts on Friday, that's kind of like football, right?  Well then the only answer is Football Nachos!!