Without Betty & blenderThe first chocolate cake I made without Betty Crocker! All ingredients were individually mixed, with no blender (my arm was hurting) and some Kiwis were laughing at me that I never made a cake from scratch. Who needs to make one from scratch when Betty Crocker's takes 3 minutes to blend and all you have to do is add 2 eggs and some water!? My mother was a working woman!

No ingredients came from a box and luckily there was baking powder or baking soda in the cupboard. It took WAY more time than using a ready mix but was interesting to try. It was delicious but am not sure it came out exactly right as it felt really heavy, not 'moist and delicious' like Miss Crocker promises. (Betty Crocker is a brand of cake mixes in America for all those peeps that don't know who I am referring to)
Stellina and the heckler (BH) enjoyed decorating it and eating it and it was worth all the hard work in the end. I think my next purchase is a blender. I probably have one arm muscle bigger than the other as this weekend I made a banana cake sans blender too. All these cakes are not good for my preparation for the beach in March but I guess that is what flowy sarongs are for.

Brie and cranberry pizzaApparently eaten down under in Kiwiland. It tasted delicious and is such a great idea! D made this along with some other clever pizza concoctions for a friend's baby shower.

She is now enjoying the NZ summer and similar pizzas, sailing around and getting tanned while the rest of us freeze, enjoy Dee!

x

Pineapple Lumps
A NZ treat! It smells like pineapple, has pineapple flavour but I don't think there is any pineapple in this candy bar (from what I recall when reading the ingredients' list).

My sis and I have a new favourite show -Flight of the Conchords - about two Kiwis who move to NYC to get their folk band into the limelight. It is hilarious and is getting quite the cult following. My friends in NY love it and my friends in TO are also keenly watching each week as Jermaine and Brett go through some interesting experiences in NY. It doesn't seem to be showing in NZ which is a shame as it is truly a gem of a show.

They make a lot of funny NZ references and perhaps one day they will be eating Pineapple Lumps sent to them from their family back home. One thing they do not do on the show is call each other by a nickname as every Kiwi I know is not called their real name e.g. Bug, Bun, Bobs, Coops, Hunty, Heinzy, Madz etc... Seriously, these are some of the Kiwi people whom I have met and for months did not know their real names. Some of them I still cannot recall their real names?!

On the site Homesick-Kiwi.com Pineapple Lumps are, 'the single best-seller among homesick Kiwis. Chewy and satisfying.'

Summerlicious
The weather yesterday was sweltering I think it reached 28degrees during the day with such a warm wind and lots of humidity. In the evening we had a spectacular thunder and lightning storm which washed away some of the humidity.

With this weather everyone seems to be in summer mode; riding bikes, bbq'ing, wearing summer gear and just being outside. Walking and hanging around on the street - it is nice to see people out again.

So...there have been comments from the peanut gallery that I haven't been cooking lately and that is correct but things will change shortly and I will be back in the kitchen, for now I will just post on my restaurant experiences and other food miscellany... Alex be patient, you can do command centre cooking for now maybe even a bbq for your staff. Maybe even a fruit surprise...

These fruit kebabs are from NZ and our kiwi friend Pat Hale- who may start writing 'Pat's Patch' notes from down under on what is going on in her garden and on her dairy farm...
Fruit kebabs are easy to make and once fruit is cut everyone loves to eat it. It is always the prep that sometimes shy people away from eating fruit. We do get lazy as when we have to slice and dice a mango we may put it off, but if it is done for us we will easily eat it. I am especially guilty of that.

Remember to recycle your sticks as they can be used again and again for your fruit kebab enjoyment.

Hot Kiwi?
Typical Kiwi country girl...hot!
With a lot of talk about the upcoming Anzac day festivities...which unless you have Kiwi (people from New Zealand) or Aussie friends you would not know about, we visited a pub which took us straight back to the wilds of New Zealand.

Everyone in there was a Kiwi, except me, everyone in there was wearing some sort of Kiwi rugby shirt or a t-shirt that referred to them being a Kiwi, or they were wearing a shark's tooth around their neck - which a large % of Kiwi's wear.

Australia and New Zealand commemorate the ANZAC Day holiday on 25 April every year to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC)who landed at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War 1.
So does this mean they worked together? It seems that Aussies and Kiwis have the same love/hate relationship as Canadians and Americans.

Anyhow, two drinks were served en masse at the Redback after a free bbq for patrons - snakebites and Speights beer. Speights was founded in 1876 in Dunedin, NZ and has been going strong ever since and is called the 'Pride of the South' (South Island of NZ, for those of you who don't know that it is made up of two islands)

And snakebites are - half lager, half cider and a shot of blackcurrant cordial. It looks purply and tastes sweet. Needless to say patrons at the Redback were happy, dancing and singing and well fed from the bbq...but it was a Sunday night so am sure there were some sore heads on Monday!

I felt like I was transported to NZ for a little while...
Thx Kiwi hosts.