The Ever Expanding Waistline

We may be hurtling towards the thin end of the year, but this week the waistline has been heading in the opposite direction. It has been a week of cooking, baking, and subsequent eating. Most mornings I have risen to find that Nicky has already been in the kitchen "rustling" the contents of the pantry and the fridge for some hours. One morning, around 2.30 am, I found her struggling with custard in the microwave, so I heroically stepped in, decanted the custard into a pan, and with a bit of magic mixing on the hob got it to thicken nicely. On relating this story at work, one of her colleagues was stunned that I had got up at such an hour to make custard… I think she assumed that I woke and thought, "time to make custard", and off I went. Much incorrect stick holding.

The custard was being made in order to re-purpose a lemon cake which had apparently gone wrong and was becoming a trifle (add your own small puns). The top layer was supposed to be some microwave defrosted cream, but that turned out to be a disaster even before it got anywhere near the trifle dish. In a moment of utter inspiration, Nicky topped the trifle with some citrus yoghurt (a flavour recently introduced by Yoplait, the only yoghurt which I will eat). This, combined with the pears she had chopped and mixed in with the cake, and the layer of custard, produced a stunning trifle, the citrus edge of the yoghurt complementing the sweetness and constancy of the cake beautifully. The only disappointment was not being able to taste the gallon of sherry that she had put in. The trifle was her contribution to her birthday celebrations at work. She had already made another lemon cake for the last Book Chat of the year, happening on the same day.

In order to celebrate her birthday at home, I made a walnut and honey syrup cake. The main dry ingredients for this were bread crumbs and roasted ground walnuts. Roasting the walnuts was easy enough. Removing their skins afterwards (from some 380 gms of nuts) sufficiently tedious to result in some slack execution. The grinding was a whole new experience. The oil in the nuts resulted in some grounds and much "paste". Anyway, we got there in the end, and produced a nice and quite interesting cake. This didn't actually get cut on the day due to all the other goodies being consumed at work, and my estimation of how much beef schnitzel we could manage being on the optimistic side.

A couple of days before I had produced a vegan chocolate cake for Claire's birthday, from a Martha Stewart cupcake recipe. Another interesting experience. Along with this I have also been experimenting with different pastries (shortness, cinnamon-ness) for mince pies. Nicky has also made eight (count them - eight) Christmas cakes. Fortunately seven of these are being given away, because if I was supposed to be eating one for each day of Christmas, we need another four!

To celebrate Claire's birthday on Tuesday, she and I picked Nicky up from work at lunchtime and went to the Kohu Road café on Portage Road. Kohu Road make fantastic ice cream (their Lemon Curd and their Golden Syrup being two of my favourites). A budget ice cream in the supermarket costs around $3 a litre. A decent one $8-$9 a litre. Kohu Road ice cream is $18 a litre, but boy is it good. Nicky made a cassata one Christmas with it and it was truly wonderful and heart stopping. A little while ago, possibly a year or more, they opened a café on the side of their ice cream factory. Each time we have visited they have done a little more with the rustic decor, and I don't know if they will ever finish. We enjoyed our lunch. The food was simple and tasty, but not as good as their ice cream.

To complete the celebrations for Nicky's birthday we are going to go to a new restaurant which is opening soon in Blockhouse Bay. We have a couple of good cafés, a recently opened ice cream bar and an even newer sushi bar (which is already gaining a good reputation and replaces what was the third café), but this will be the only restaurant in the Bay. It is a conversion from the Hammer Hardware store, and there is still a small hardware store attached. On a side note, when my father worked in the Middle East (Doha) the local fish for fish and chips was called hamour, so the ex-pats renamed the dish "hammer and nails".

In amongst all the culinary repercussions of birthdays and a rapidly approaching Christmas, we have also been doing the more usual things. Nicky has been busy as work, but the school term coming to an end has quietened things a little. She had house group on Wednesday evening (more food required), a council Christmas drinkies do at the Viaduct on Thursday evening, and a hui in town on Friday (scones made for this). I have also had some bits of work to deal with.

On Monday I had a phone call from the insurance assessor who had being looking at our car. He said it was borderline between being repairable and being written-off, so he was sending it to the panel beaters. On Tuesday the panel beaters called me to say they can repair the car for a price the insurance company is happy with, so this is really good news. I didn't really want to have to replace Lilly at the moment, as she is a great little car and is very reliable (only one small blot in her copy book that I can remember). Unfortunately they can't start working on her until the New Year, so we won't have her back for awhile.

The weather this week has taken a turn for the better. Following the tropical storms a number of high pressure systems have settled over us, bringing warmer and sunnier days. On Friday evening we had dinner on the deck - I have to call it a deck because I'm in NZ but because it is made of concrete (not wood), to me it is a patio. The sun was still hot a 7 in the evening. I know this because I noticed one of the lenses in my sunglasses had started to melt. I had put them down on the table to take the plates in and put the kettle on, and when I got back I picked them up and thought I had spilled some lamb korma on them, only it wouldn't wipe off (and korma is a very mild curry, so it must have been the sun). On reflection, I think my glass of water, which is concave towards the bottom, was between the sun and my sunnies and may have enhanced the plastic distorting abilities of the suns rays. This is in sharp contrast to the many hours as I youth I spent on the school playing fields with a magnifying glass and a few blades of grass. I don't think the grass ever looked anything other than luscious green. Not even a hint of charring.

Yesterday morning Nicky popped up to see Dr. Vather for a regular check-up and prescription renewal. He was very pleased with her progress. We had breakfast on the deck when she got back, and then she went up to the library to join in with the carol singing. We had lunch inside because it was so hot (41°C in the roof) and I didn't start sunbathing until after 3pm. The concrete was so hot (even through the rugs) that I had to get one of my insulating karri-mats out that I used when camping many years ago so stop myself from being slowly simmered. We had tea outside too and stayed there until 8-ish when the cloud cover finally cooled the sun.

Today started sunny, but the clouds have built up to give us a cooler day. It was much sunnier in south Auckland when Nicky went to the prison this morning. I spent the morning doing more cooking (Kentucky Pie for Shani's birthday gift and shortbread for Christmas gifts), and then have had a quiet afternoon while Nicky Scrabbled, hoovered (we don't vacuum here) and gardened.

And I think that it is. Quite enough for one week.

Take care, Rick