I'm back again! Already!! I know, I know, hard to believe I can get my act together to put two posts up in less than 24 hours isn't it? I'm heading off to a retreat in Yamba today and I'm unsure whether I will have internet access, so figured I'd do a post now and pre-warn that it may be another 6 days before a new post appears.
One of the things I forgot to mention yesterday was that I decided to weigh myself. I admit I wondered if it was a good idea given that I'd just had 3 days in NZ and hadn't eaten a home cooked meal for around 4 days or so. Imagine my excitement and delight to find I'd actually lost weight!!! Yep, you read it right.. lost weight. A whole 1.5 kgs.
Was I surprised? Heck yes!! That was totally unexpected. I don't have to eat to gain weight, I only have to smell delicious food, not taste it. Not that I ate badly while I was away but different meals, eating out, I even had some gelato one night and ice cream another afternoon.
But when talking with my friend and thinking about it, I realised that it was probably aided by the fact I don't eat before I fly (anxious flyer but that's a whole other story) and although often ravenously hungry once I land and am on terra firma again, I don't tend to eat a huge meal. And that was certainly the case in NZ given it was almost midnight their time when we arrived.
The food I did have was delicious, but probably fairly balanced and I moved more than I usually do (my day job sees me sitting in an office, creating reasons to go for a brief walk at regular intervals). Walking to chase photo's mostly but also just wandering to enjoy the views.
So do you want to know about the food? Oh my gosh! Can we say scrumdiddlyumptious? Everything we had was delicious. Although some of that may also be because we didn't have to prepare it :).
First up was the chicken, brie and cranberry tartlet I found at the Christchurch airport. Whoever said that airport food was dodgy? This was great and just a perfect size for a late night small meal.
The next morning on our travels, we stopped at a little place in Geraldine for breakfast (the name escapes me but it was a lovely little cafe and gift shop) and had a decent cooked breakfast of bacon, poached eggs, tomato, hash brown and a small sausage. I went without the toast and was still unable to eat it all. We also got a piece of ginger cake for the road, but didn't end up sharing that until late afternoon. In fact, our breakfast kept us going all day until we had the cake!
Dinner that night was at a Japanese restaurant in Wanaka called Sasanoki and was very nice. Just a good mix of things, sushi, gyoza's and curry, not too heavy a meal when shared between two (we had single serves and shared it all) and I'm hoping the manager's wife will do a cooking class for me at my retreat. We followed dinner with a visit to the Black Peak Gelato shop. Gotta love gelato!
Saturday morning I had a meeting with a caterer at a little coffee shop called the Urban Grind in Wanaka. If you ever have the opportunity to go there, do so. They make the best hot chocolate I've ever had! Not too sweet but oh so yummy. For breakfast I had smashed avocado which was a little like fresh guacamole and was decoratively served around 2/3's of the plate, with roasted tomato (thickly sliced roma tomatoes), on ciabatta bread that was lightly toasted and ever so soft in the middle, with a rasher of bacon on the side. The presentation was great and it was one of the nicest breakfasts I've had in a while.
After my next two meetings, we headed down to Queenstown for a scenic drive and came back through a quaint little place called Arrowtown. It's an old heritage town and was once a Chinese gold mining town. They still do some gold panning in the area and I'm told there are still some finds to be had. We managed to find some other treasures there, enjoyed wandering the little township and had an awesome lunch at a place called the Stable. Again, I'd highly recommend it. My friend had a potato and leek soup, which also had a little bacon in it, served with ciabatta bread that was delicious. I had a pear and blue cheese salad that was sublime! The pear was marinated in red wine and spices (such as 5 spice), there was mixed lettuce, walnuts and the blue cheese. One of the best salads ever!
Back to Wanaka late afternoon and we decided to mix up our dinner experience. It started with a visit to Patagonia Chocolates, a sample of their chocolate and a single scoop of hokey pokey ice cream in a cup which again we shared. I'm not much of an ice cream eater, but NZ ice cream is awesome.
From there we went to The Spice Room which is an Indian restaurant that was recommended to us. We shared their mixed platter which consisted of 2 small lamb shiskebabs, some tandoori chicken, a vegetable samosa and 2 onion pakora's served with rice. Very very nice! We found ourselves a little cafe bar afterwards where I enjoyed a local red wine and K enjoyed a little citrus cake with passionfruit icing, again very nice.
We decided what the heck, we may as well also check out Francesca's Italian Kitchen which had been on my to do list, but we knew we wouldn't be able to fit in a meal so went with the cheese platter instead. I LOVE cheese and although the cheese platter wasn't a big one, the serving size was just right and was a perfect end to our evening.
And that was pretty much the excitement of our culinary explorations in NZ. We headed back to Christchurch on Sunday to fly back home, but didn't have anything out of the ordinary to eat on the way back. Today's pic of course will have to be a food pic. Alas it was the only food photo I thought to take, thankfully it's a good one! It's of our lunch in Arrowtown on Saturday.
Enjoy!
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