When we first came to New Zealand in 2010 it was with a three-year business visa that would expire on 26 May 2013. In November we submitted our application for residence to replace that visa, and sat back to await the inevitable approval notification. Instead, in early April we got a call from the immigration officer handling our application to say that she needed more information. We submitted that information–an enormous pile of papers–in mid-April, and then sat back to await the inevitable approval notification again. Instead, a few days later, the same immigration officer phoned to say that she would have to deny our application on the grounds that we had not created a benefit for New Zealand (in the form of increased employment) and had not demonstrated that we are self-employed (in the form of paying ourselves a salary). She advised that we withdraw the application and replace it with an application for a renewal of our business visa, and reapply for residency in three years. There seemed no alternative so that’s what we did, and then we sat back and awaited the inevitable approval notification. Imagine our surprise then when we instead had yet another phone call, advising us that even that application was to be denied (despite the fact that we had paid a further hefty application fee for that visa–and of course also forfeited the hefty application fee for the residence visa when we withdrew that application).
To put it mildly, we were in a state of shock. How could it be that all the work we had done to promote the lodge, the town and the country to overseas markets was worth nothing, and that all that mattered was that we hire a few housekeepers and pay ourselves a salary? We leapt into action to mobilise every asset we had at our disposal–the people who have befriended us since we arrived. If there’s one thing we have managed to amass here since we arrived it’s friends, and it turns out that some of those friends are rather influential. We got all of them to write letters of support, some of which were very emotional and persuasive, and we met with our member of parliament who also got her act in gear to move things in our direction. Finally, this morning, we got a phone call from the MP’s office asking us to come in for a meeting. There we learned that the immigration department had agreed to extend our business visas for another three years as an exception to policy. It’s not residency, but the MP is going to help us put things together so that the residency process will be a bit smoother next time around.
So, despite a rough few weeks, it all ended up having a happy ending. Phew.
No sooner had I emptied my suitcase from the last trip to Auckland than I was on my way to the big smoke yet again, this time with J2 alongside. We left Oamaru on Wednesday afternoon, heading for Dunedin for the nonstop flight, enjoying our new access to the Koru Lounge, which I subscribed to in advance of the last trip. It’s a nice thing to be able to wait for the flight in the relative comfort of the lounge, complete with free-flowing wine and beer, better-than-expected snacks, and WiFi access. When we landed in Auckland we rushed by taxi to the house of Lauraine Jacobs, the cookbook writer who visited with us when I came back from the last trip to Auckland. She had invited us, along with our friends Stephanie and Tiff from Tiritiri Lodge, for a drink or two before we joined Stephanie and Tiff for dinner. Lauraine had promised she would not prepare food for us, so as not to ruin our dinner, but indeed she made us some lovely zucchini and feta fritters that went down nicely with our glasses of wine.
For dinner Steph and Tiff booked us into the French Café, one of Auckland’s top restaurants. The menu was full of interesting sounding dishes, and we managed to order a representative range for our table. I wish I could say that I was bowled over by the food, but the fact is the dish I remember the most was Lauraine’s zucchini fritters. But nevertheless, here are some (poor) photos of them for the record:
In the morning we had some time to kill before our meetings started. J2 proclaimed that he was craving dan dan mian, the Sichuan spicy noodle soup that he used to have for lunch ever Wednesday in Beijing. As luck would have it there was a little Asian food court across from the hotel where our show was taking place so we headed there with the chef/owner from Breckenridge Lodge, another member of the association. From the moment we walked in we were not sure if this was going to be the home of authentic Asian food, but as it turns out it was! This is a definite destination for future Auckland visits, since aside from Sichuan noodles, they have Singaporean, Korean, Japanese and Thai (and probably several other cuisines) and the place was full of Asian diners.
The Food Alley, Auckland
Dan Dan Mian
The reason for the trip to Auckland was to attend the Luxury Lodges of NZ trade show and annual general meeting, so on Thursday we set up our little stand in the ballroom at the Stamford Plaza and prepared for an afternoon of meetings with Auckland-based inbound travel agencies. Many if not all of these people already know us, or at least know of us, but it’s always good to show your face at these things and renew the acquaintance, and in our case it’s especially good to show them that we’re still here and see if we can tempt them to put us on more itineraries. Here’s a few photos of our stand and the layout of the place, along with a photo that shows just how exciting these things are in the lull before the attendees arrive:
Tiff at the Tiritiri stand
J2 at the PYB stand
Setting up the stands
In the end we had about eight meetings of varying lengths (the longest, naturally, was with the most worthless of all the agents attending, but there was no moving him on from us), followed by a cocktail party where we got to mingle with all the agents and some invited guests from Tourism NZ. After that, J2 and I went out with a few agents and a few other lodge owners for dinner, making it a pretty long day of marketing and promoting the lodge.
At the next morning’s AGM I was renewed as a member of the group’s executive (woot!) and we got more of a chance to meet the three new members of the group, including one couple with a lovely place outside of Wellington who we really warmed to quickly (he’s a Kiwi, she’s Italian, and they’re both a lot of fun). We even have made tentative plans to take a bit of a road trip this August to visit some properties on the North Island, possibly to culminate in a stay at Huka Lodge near Taupo.
One more domestic trip to come (this time to Wellington) before my trip to China at the end of the month!
Each year at around this time, New Zealand hosts an international travel show called TRENZ, which I believe is supposed to stand for “Tourism REndezvous New Zealand” (on a side note, I really hate contrived acronyms like this, and have thus formed a group called “Get Real, UnMeaningful Phrases are Yesterday”). The event provides an opportunity for people who are in the travel industry overseas to meet with the people who provide travel experiences in NZ so that they can send their guests to visit them when in NZ on holiday. The Luxury Lodge Association of NZ, of which we are a member, always attends, and for the past two years I bought a day pass to have a chance to introduce myself, and the lodge, to these important agents. This year, as a member of the association’s executive, I offered to represent the group as a whole at the event, and spend the whole three days at our booth.
TRENZ operates a lot like a speed dating service: prior to the event you set up your profile and then there’s a sort of electronic matching that happens, where you pick out the buyers you want to meet with, and the buyers pick out which exhibitors they want to meet, and whenever your interests intersect, you get an appointment. There are something like 50 possible meetings over the three days, each lasting 15 minutes, with additional time for meetings over tea breaks, lunches, evening events, and activities. In the end, we had meetings scheduled for all but three possible slots, which is considered exceptionally good, and the people we were meeting with came from all over the world, including the US, Europe, Asia and South America. I had a colleague with me for the three days, plus we had one more lodge owner there as a day-delegate each day, so that we could share the responsibility for going through the PowerPoint and talking about the lodges, which really does get pretty tiring after the first dozen or so iterations. Some of the meetings were with people who know us all pretty well, so those were focused more on introducing new members, acquainting them with new ideas for itineraries, and emphasising that the lodges are not all stratospherically expensive. For meetings with people who weren’t familiar with the lodges, of course we spent more time talking about who the members are, where they’re located, etc.
TRENZ moves around the country from year to year, and for the last two years it was held in Queenstown, just a short drive from us in Oamaru. This year it was held in Auckland, so I left on Saturday and flew up then, set up the stand on Sunday, and then had my meetings Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and flew back on Thursday. J2 meantime, stayed at home with the dogs and took care of some work around the house.
It would appear that the diet of the international travel agent consists primarily of finger food and liquor, judging by the food that was provided at TRENZ for most events. On Sunday evening they held a welcome function that featured utterly unmemorable food, and lots of wine, along with a traditional Maori welcome. There has been some controversy in NZ lately over a Danish parliamentarian’s blog about the savage nature of the traditional Maori welcome ceremony that greeted her during a visit to NZ earlier in the year. As a right-wing, anti-immigrant politician, it is perhaps no surprise that she found the Maori welcome to be a bit off-putting, since it features half-naked men and grass-skirt clad women sticking out their tongues and brandishing weapons while they shout menacingly and in unison. However, I see nothing wrong with it, though I think that the welcome ceremony may go some way to explain why the Maori culture survived colonisation while aborigine culture in Australia largely got wiped out.
After the hoopla of the opening it was down to business the next morning, with meeting after meeting after meeting to get through. Our stand was in the luxury section of the show, with a few of our fellow lodges’ own stands around us (for those in the know of the NZ lodge biz, those were Eagles Nest Lodge, Fiordland Lodge and Huka Lodge), as well as the stand of Boutique Hotels & Lodges (who markets us) and Green Journeys (another group we belong to), so there were a lot of people around who were able to remind people of our existence. Furthermore, in another section of the show was the stand of our local tourism promotion group, who also had us in their presentation. Best of all, when I visited the stand of Qualmark, the national travel assessment organisation, I was very happy to see that they had a poster on their wall that included a photo of our lodge!
James at the NZLA Stand
Since I am not as familiar with Auckland as with other parts of NZ, I was happy that, as a delegate, I was allowed a chance to become familiar with the city by taking part in an activity organised for TRENZ attendees on Tuesday afternoon. There was a huge number of activities to choose from, from jumping off the Sky Tower, to sailing on an America’s Cup sailboat, to visiting a Maori village. I was interested in the Maori village trip until I saw that one agent whom I don’t particularly care for was going to be on it, so instead I opted for a trip to three Auckland wineries and a west coast beach. The wineries were pretty good, though none tempted me to become disloyal to the wineries who currently supply us, but the beach was really beautiful, with beautiful black sand that contains so much iron that it can be picked up with a magnet.
One evening I got together with some of the other lodge representatives for dinner at one of Auckland’s newest big-name restaurants, The Grill at Sky City. One of the other guys had been there before and really raved about it, but I hate to say I was underwhelmed, especially since my portion of the bill was just under $200. Granted, we had two magnums of wine to share among the six of us, but it was far from a $200 dinner in my view. I enjoyed my dinner the previous evening far more, at a little Cantonese dive where I spent a whopping $9.50 for a delicious repast. But just when I started to despair of Auckland’s higher-end establishments’ ability to provide a satisfying meal, I went to TRENZ’s farewell shindig at Ponsonby Central. Organised along the lines of a fancy food court, they have mini-restaurants serving Thai, Japanese, South American, Kiwi, and other types of food. Among the stand-outs (that I remember) were a stall with fresh oysters and blini with tuna sashimi, another one with venison sausage rolls, yet another with seared angus steak with horseradish sauce, chorizo thingies and lots of other dishes that I simply cannot recall now. Oh, and there was a lot of wine and cocktails on offer, too…
It was a very good visit, and I think that my attendance will have proved good for the lodge. In a few weeks J2 and I will be back to Auckland for a trade show organised by the lodge association, so I should be seeing a few of the same folks I saw this time. And we’ll be going to dinner at the French Café, another big-name restaurant, but this time coming with a recommendation from some people whose taste I trust a bit more.
A few nights ago we were sitting in the lounge watching TV when I got an email from a fellow who has dined with us in the past and who runs one of the local meat plants. He was interested in having us put together a special meal for a group of Chinese who are coming to town to sign a deal for his plant to supply them with lamb and beef, and wanted to treat them to something special. We agreed to host the dinner, after expressing disappointment that they would not be staying with us, and were then asked if we could use rack of lamb and tripe from the plant as part of the menu. The racks of lamb were no problem, but tripe is not an ingredient that I have much (read: any) experience cooking with, but of course I just said “yes, no problem”. Given that the visitors were coming from Harbin, in the NE of China, and would be dining with us right after getting off the plane, I decided I’d best do a Chinese menu, rather than trying to foist a Western meal on them that they may not be ready for. For the rack of lamb, I planned to make a northeast Chinese dish that braises the lamb for a very long (two or more) hours and then coats them with a thick layer of cumin seeds mixed with other spices. It just falls off the bone and is incredibly tasty, and can be easily eaten with chopsticks. For the tripe, I decided I’d make “husband and wife lung slices” (it sounds better in Chinese), a popular Sichuan dish that consists of cold slices of beef brisket and tripe (though sometimes the tripe is omitted) in a spicy sauce made with peanuts, chili oil, beef broth and cilantro. Other dishes that would go with this repast would include “pi pa” tofu (little quenelles of bean curd fried and served in a light sauce; another northeastern dish called “di san xian” made with potatoes, eggplant and peppers in a sort of rustic preparation; stir-fried Swiss chard from the garden, and cold chicken with bean sprouts. For dessert I’d make a pavlova, in the one nod to their being in New Zealand.
I went to the meat plant yesterday to collect the meat that they were giving me to use–ten racks of lamb and two kilograms of tripe. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen two kilograms of tripe before, but let me tell you, it’s not a pretty sight. There’s just no way to hide the fact that it used to be a ruminant’s stomach. Since I had never made this dish with tripe before, I figured I’d better do a trial run. To make enough for four people, you boil together 4 ounces of beef brisket and 4 ounces of tripe in a large pot of water into which you’ve also deposited a few cinnamon sticks and some star anise, and a piece of ginger. Once it comes to a boil you simmer it for around two hours until it’s tender, and then you let it cool in the broth before slicing it and mixing it with the sauce mixture. When the beef and tripe was cool I figured I’d give it a taste just as it was, crinkling up my nose as I brought a slice of tripe to my mouth for a taste. To my eminent surprise, it was actually pretty good! The aroma of cinnamon and anise was definitely noticeable, and the slightly rubbery texture of the tripe was actually rather pleasant, and contrasts nicely with the softer texture of the beef brisket. And when mixed with the sauce, it’s simply sublime.
This morning I went out to buy some of the other ingredients for the dinner, from bean sprouts for that chicken dish, to eggplants for that potato dish, to more soy beans to make some more tofu (having made two batches this morning, I was out of soy beans). Just as I parked the car outside the butcher to pick up some stewing beef for another dish I was going to make, I got a phone call from the organiser of the dinner–the Chinese had to postpone their visit as a result of the latest avian flu crisis in China! Since they are one of the few major meat producers not affected by the outbreak, and they supply some major restaurant chains in the country, they were simply too busy to make the trip. He was very apologetic, and told me to send him a bill for any expenses I’d incurred in preparing for the dinner, but given the fact that I was in possession of ten free racks of lamb, not to mention nearly two kgs of tripe, I hardly felt it appropriate to charge him. Instead I said that I’d look the other way about those expenses in exchange for him booking them to stay with us when they do come to NZ.
Meantime, I now have 1.8 kg of tripe to do something with, along with the makings of a pretty serious Chinese feast. Happily our friends Toni and Derek have no plans on Sunday, so they’ll be joining us for a little party…
Last week, after our celebrity visit was over, within moments of the last guest driving away our friend Mike was on his way over with a load of new decking planks and all the tools necessary to rip out the well-rotted boards of the old deck on the verandah. The wood on the verandah was a source of considerable embarrassment for us, since it’s among the first things guests see and was looking quite the worse for wear. The new decking is treated and should last a good long time, and even though it’s not yet been stained it still looks many times better than the old stuff. Here are some photos so you can compare:
Before
After
We were not sure whether we should paint or stain the new deck, but I think the consensus is that we should go for stain. The stain will protect the wood better, and will be easy to maintain, and we can get a shade that matches the stain of the entry step and front door. Also, if we hate the stain we can always paint over it, while the same is not true if we paint and decide we’d prefer stain.
The processing of our autumnal bounty continues. I finished the preparation of the spiced figs and they are simply incredible, with a great figgy-vinegary flavor that will go great with roasted meats. It also produced a bounty of extra syrup, which I decided to hold onto to use as a sort of gastrique for making pan sauces. Not sure how that will turn out, but it cannot be too too bad, can it?
The lifetime supply of quinces is starting to dwindle. I made one batch of a sort of baked quince that did not turn out as I had hoped, but the slow-cooker poached quinces with lemon and ginger made up for it. I may make some more of those, as well as some more pot-roasted quinces and then freeze or pack them for use later on. Any other ideas?
Preparing the chestnuts is a much slower process. What pains in the ass they are to work with! If any of you knows of a good (read: quick, easy and foolproof) ways of peeling 4kg of chestnuts, please do share!!
Just a few of the chestnuts
Figs soaking in brine
In the midst of all this stuff, I also had to prepare a dinner for 11 guests who were due to come for dinner tomorrow. I say “were due” since early this morning (Sunday) I got a call from the agent who booked them in to ask if all was ready for “tonight”. I corrected him, saying they were coming tomorrow, but it seems he made a big mistake with the booking and could they possibly come tonight instead? Well, I might have been willing to make such a change, but literally nothing was going to be ready for them–I was marinating lamb for them that had not been in the marinade for enough time yet, and I was making salmon confit that also needed another 24 hours, and I was not really keen to serve them something else and then have these things lying around for who knows when. In the end the agent asked if they could just come for a bit of a tour around the house and gardens, followed by canapés and a glass of wine. Since they had pre-paid, I could see no reason to say no. Fortunately, they were really pleased with their tour, and they loved their canapés and the wine, which was all from the Waitaki Valley near us. Incredibly, even though these guests were all from Christchurch, none of them was aware that Waitaki wines existed or were so good!
So now we have a few quiet days ahead of us before our next guests arrive later in the week, so I’m going to head to Dunedin for errands tomorrow, J2 will get back into his painting, and I’m sure there will be a few things to write about.
Autumn has always been one of my four favourite seasons, since it’s the time of year when my birthday happens (in the northern hemisphere, anyway) and it’s when some of my favourite fruits and vegetables become ripe. No disrespect to Maria, but raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens ain’t got nuttin’ on quinces, figs and chestnuts. (She was on the right track about crisp apple strudel, however.)
Our property has a single, well established quince tree that this year had promise of bearing loads of quinces but alas only managed to bring one solitary fruit to fruition. When I made mention of my sorry situation regarding quinces, not one, but two people made it their business to ensure that we received enough quinces to satisfy our needs many times over. Even after making several batches of poached and pot-roasted quinces, I still have a few buckets and a boxful to deal with over the coming days.
We also have two fig trees that we planted two years ago, but they are still too young to produce a sizeable crop. Fortunately I have found a great source of figs (thanks to a celebrity chef who came to stay with us last year, who has turned me on to a grower in the North Island) and have so far ordered 5kg of figs that have turned into ice cream, preserves, tarts and spiced figs (the last from a recipe from yet another celebrity chef who’s been here, and who’s coming again later this month for a guest chef gig).
We have no chestnut trees on the property, and have hitherto never had a source of chestnuts, but this past weekend friends of ours with a lodge in Christchurch came for the night, bringing with them 5kg of brand-new chestnuts from their grove of trees. I had never seen this many chestnuts in one place before, and it was a beautiful site to behold, these bright brown nuts with their promise of many hours of arduous work ahead of me, since chestnuts have got to be the most ridiculously difficult foodstuff to process for human consumption. Fortunately they are one of my favourite nuts, and very much worth the effort, so I don’t particularly mind the effort. The first kg of them I boiled to remove the shells, then cooked them in a syrup to make marrons glacés, which I can then use in ice creams or cakes or whatever. The remaining ones I may roast and then freeze the nuts once I have shelled them for use in who knows what.
I also have a bevy of apples to turn into something, most likely a bunch of tartes Tatins and apple compotes for French apple pies, along with some applesauce and maybe apple butter, too. The Peasgood Nonsuch apples that Dame Kiri loved so much are great when they’re fresh, but I have learned that they don’t keep too well so they have to get turned into something or risk them turning into compost.
This past summer there have been a lot of new businesses opened in the Oamaru historic precinct, the major tourist destination in town. Among these are a wonderful furniture and antique shop (“Oasis”), which has relocated here from the North Island, a great used book store (“Adventure Books”), an ice cream parlour, an art gallery, and more. Then a few weeks ago I saw that there was a new shop about to open on Tees Street, on the periphery of the historic precinct, and a street that hitherto has not seen a lot of new development, so I took the new business as a sign of good things to come. I visited that shop today and it’s a nice soap-making shop, and while we don’t really need another soap maker, perhaps this one will do something a bit different and find a ready business.
Just as I thought that I’d seen as much new business coming to town as could reasonably be counted on, I read in the Oamaru Mail the other day that there will be a new business coming to town that will not only bring much-needed activity to the precinct, but also would be of historical relevance. Perhaps not many readers of my blog know this, but Oamaru used to have the distinction of being home to more brothels than any other town in the southern hemisphere. Nowadays those businesses are all gone, but not for long, apparently. An enterprising man named Richard Head is planning to open a Victorian-style bordello in the historic precinct, providing olde-tyme “entertainment” to clients of all stripes. According to the article, he has applied to the local council for approval, which is expected to approve the business’s license within the next two weeks. This all seemed pretty amazing to me, though admittedly with prostitution legal in New Zealand it may be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, though Oamaru hardly seems the most likely site of a bordello.
After telling a few visitors about the plan to build this new business, it suddenly dawned on me that the article appeared in the Monday edition of the Mail, which was of course April 1. How I let this fool me–especially when the proprietor of this business is named “Richard Head”–is beyond me. But good on the editors of the paper for getting me!
After so many weeks and months of worrying about the VIP guest who was coming to stay with us last week, I can now report not only on how it went, but who our visitor was. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, the New Zealand-born opera star who now splits her time between NZ and the UK, came to Oamaru for a one-night performance at our opera house (her only NZ performance for the entire year). She and her three travelling companions arrived on Tuesday afternoon at noon, so it was a good thing I had prepared a lunch for them (quiche of Windsor Blue cheese and roasted butternut squash with quince paste; roasted beet salad with maple vinaigrette; and slow-roasted pork belly cubes with gooseberry-elderflower relish). During the lunch, Kiri (we’re on a first-name basis…) enthused rhapsodically about everything, but especially the bread, which she adored so much that she asked for the recipe and to observe me baking a loaf if the opportunity should present itself. Well of course I made sure that the opportunity presented itself, so there I was showing Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, the singer at Prince Charles and Diana’s wedding, how to make a loaf of sourdough bread!!
Kiri was an absolute delight to have in the house, without any pretensions, hangups, or diva tendencies. Her travelling companions were also great to have around (though perhaps her accompanist was a bit of a handful) and they all seemed genuinely to enjoy spending time with us. During some of her off-time at the house, Kiri asked J2 to show her around the garden, and when she caught sight of the enormous Peasgood Nonesuch apples on the tree, she plucked one and snacked on it, enthusing about its flavour and texture so much that she asked if we could help her buy a tree to take back to England (which we did)!
Her performance at the opera house was outstanding, and the house was packed to the rafters. The programme was a mix of opera and popular music and was beautiful, and ended with three encores. When the concert was over J2 and I had to rush home since she’d asked for a post-concert light supper that we had to get on the table before she got back. We joined her and her friends at the table (along with our other guests for the evening, a couple who had come down for the concert and whom Kiri did not take too well to, deeming them “pompous”), and spent an hour or so just chatting with them while they ate their meal and had some drinks (the meal: zucchini-cheddar frittata, figs wrapped in prosciutto, rice-stuffed vine leaves, beetroot-cured gravlax sandwiches with cucumber pickles and cream cheese, and a couple of pieces of Whitestone cheese).
The following morning they had to leave at 7:15am to catch a flight to Auckland, from where Kiri would continue to London to be there in time for her first costume fittings for her role in the next season of Downton Abbey (you read it here first!). As she had her breakfast, showing us photos of her dogs and house in the Bay of Islands, she asked us to be sure to be here in three years’ time when she plans a holiday in this part of the country, and invited us to be her guests if we ever make it to her part of NZ. She also offered to put in a good word for us in case we have difficulty with our visas. It was an absolutely great few days, and one that I certainly won’t soon forget.
For the past several months we have been anticipating the arrival at the lodge today of a true bona fide celebrity. OK, perhaps some of my readers are not familiar with New Zealand’s opera singers, but if you watch Downton Abbey you’ll be seeing her next season in a few episodes, so that’s going to solidify her status as a bona fide celebrity. Anyway, for months I have been thinking of what she’d be like, and how her stay here would go. As the day of her arrival approached, and I got more and more requests from the opera house (who have brought her here for a concert tomorrow night) for meals and services she wanted, I started to think that perhaps it was going to be a bit of a nightmare looking after her.
This morning, as I was getting text messages from the Oamaruvian driving her up from the airport with status and ETA updates, I was busy preparing things in the kitchen on the off chance that she’d be wanting lunch on arrival and dinner in the evening. So I whipped up a fig tart, a quiche (with butternut squash, blue cheese and quince paste), a roasted pork belly and a roasted beet salad, along with a few other things “just in case”, since I had no information about dietary preferences. When they arrived, just after noon, lunch was very much on their minds, so out came the quiche and salad, and I cubed up the pork belly and served it with a gooseberry-elderflower relish and a loaf of my sourdough bread. It turns out our VIP is a huge fan of sourdough, and loved my bread (and asked for the recipe), so it went well. They also wanted dinner, but the VIP herself only wanted fresh fruit, while the others were pretty receptive to anything. So while they went out to check out the opera house, I cooked up some sous vide beef tournedos to serve with a diable sauce, and roasted up some of the potatoes that J2 dug up yesterday. Dinner also went off well, with the VIP helping herself to several bits from her friends’ plates after hearing them oohing and aahing about the beef and the vegetables (it was pretty darn good, I have to admit).
So with all the nerves and butterflies that I experienced in the lead-up, it seems all of it was for naught. Sure, we still have another 33 hours with them, but I am confident that we won’t screw anything up too badly during that time, as long as the weather holds up and they’re all keeping warm!
This past summer has restored my faith in the New Zealand summer. After two years experiencing what can only be referred to as “summer” with compulsory ironic quotation marks, we have finally had a real summer with no quotation marks necessary. It’s been very warm, mostly dry (in fact, too dry for much of the country) and just beautiful, and with it has come a steady stream of guests to our lovely part of the country. In fact, Waitaki is one of the districts with the greatest increase in international visitors this year! Now that it is March, and autumn is here both according to the NZ tradition of it commencing on March 1 and the astronomical tradition of it falling on the day of the autumnal equinox on March 21, we are starting to have a bit of a slow-down in visitor numbers, along with chillier mornings and evenings and stunningly beautiful and warm days.
With the great summer we are enjoying a fantastic harvest of fruits and vegetables. Zucchinis have been coming in fast and furious and now the cucumbers and tomatoes are doing the same. Some of the tomatoes got turned into tomato fondue yesterday, and today I started a batch of Russian-style cucumber pickles in a big old bucket. With the cooler nights I also figured it’s a good time to make a batch of saucissons secs (French dried sausages), so a number of links are now air-drying in the garage.
Yesterday we had a visit from our good friends Stephanie and Denis who own Tiritiri Lodge in Wanaka. They and their family spent a week’s holiday in Moeraki and came up to Oamaru for a visit with us before heading home. We had a beautiful day for their visit, and took them for a walk around the rejuvenated historic precinct, the updated Steampunk HQ, and the harbour area, prompting them to gush at all the improvements since their last visit a few years ago. They also joined us for quiz night at the pub, helping us secure equal first place (we ended up flubbing the tie breaker, so we got second place in the end). After spending the night with us we spent a while hatching a plan to do some joint marketing since their place and ours make a nice little itinerary for visitors from overseas.
Next week promises to be very busy. We have the long-awaited concert by Kiri Te Kanawa, with a full house on the two nights surrounding the event, and then we have friends from Hong Kong coming for a few days. Then it will be Easter and time to start all the marketing events that usually fall in April and May, culminating with a trip to Shanghai for a travel convention in early June!
