Dream House?

I was in New Plymouth a few weeks ago for a Taekwondo Tournament. While walking along the seaside walking path, I snapped a photo of this mansion. To the right is a little white triangle. That's Mt. Taranaki. The house overlooks the sea. What the photo doesn't show is the conservatory on the left of the house which looks like maybe a spa pool is in there.

Big beautiful house with mountain and sea views in a town with some good cafes--sounds dreamy to me.

Snow on the Hills

That bit of white on top the hills is snow. It's pretty uncommon for Wellington to have even that little bit of snow.

Last week I went for a jog along the shore at Island Bay which is the southern part of Wellington. It was a clear day and I could see snow on the mountains on the South Island.

I've been keeping the wood burner going and it does a good job of warming our lounge and kitchen. Central heating and double glazing are uncommon here. On the coldest days I do miss having a thermostat to turn up a couple degrees.

Croissants - without a picture

They continue. I baked a dozen or so today. They were pretty good, a bit of butter leakage but all in all I am pleased with them. The big changed has been the instant yeast instead of the Active Dry Yeast. I don't know why but it gives the Croissants a much better rise. I will keep with it for a long time to come.

The croissants had a good oven spring and browned nicely. I ate them warm with some jam on them, man were they good! Now that butter is coming down in price I will bake a few more batches. :)

In addition to the Croissants I baked Ciabatta today. Will let you know how they taste soon!

Winter has arrived

The past two days have been quite the Wellington winter. I am impressed by the cold, the wind and the rain. It reminds me of a bitter November storm back up in Chicago. Of course here it is as bad as it gets.

I have started to wear my overcoat. A big old riding coat with a hood. The coat comes down to my calves (actually has straps to go around my calf but they are too small) and has two series of snaps on the front. It does a good job of keeping the rain off of me but is too warm for most the year. Now it is kind of nice to have another layer.

Today I had a great view of the cloud out of our living room window. It normally over looks a valley towards the south east. Today I was not able to see the houses on the other side of the valley, nice and cloudy.

This house is pretty warm. It is tight without any serious drafts, but only one glass pane for each window. So it gets cold quickly and is hard to keep really warm. Actually we are almost out of firewood for the year. About 1/2 a face cord is left and at the current burn rate that will take only a couple of weeks to burn up.

Changes

Life goes on here. After 39 months there have been a few changes here in Wellington. Recently the Black Harp closed down. (It was the pub where my father-in-law met the bartender who use to live in Stone Mountain.) I think of Wellington as being timeless. I just get to the point where it becomes familiar and then I notice a change. Now of course there are changes occurring all the time just that I don't notice them for one reason or another.

And my life goes on as well. I too have changed (fortunately nothing has closed down!) But like Wellington that which is familiar in me has been changing. Just that I don't realize the change anymore. Sure some things stand out, small cars, smaller portions, walking everywhere, and much of it up hills. I am no longer sure how my vocabulary has changed, but still hear Dennis' accent. :)

Alas life goes on, things change. And as I walk by the shell that was the Black Harp and watch the transformation of the city, I wonder wonder how Wellington has transformed me.

US Breakfast for dinner ...

We had Biscuits and Gravy for dinner tonight. It is a US recipe which we had to work hard to reproduce. Breakfast Sausage, as one can get it in the states, does not exist here in New Zealand. So I took some Pork Mince (that would be hamburger made with pork as opposed to beef) and added some sage, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper, and a few other things. Mixed it up and left it overnight.

The biscuits were the standard butter recipe which I have been making for years. The only difference is that I weighed the ingredients as that is how I generally bake these days. It was actually quite enjoyable to make the biscuits as they have no yeast in them. The joys of baking powder!

Gravy can be made in the 12 minutes that the biscuits bake. Cook the meat with onion add some flour to make a roux and then put in boiling milk. Let it thicken and soon you have yum!

For those who are have been kind enough to offer a place to stay while we are on holiday plan on having this for breakfast at least once. We will also make the poached eggs of a slightly earlier recipe.

We've Got Ours

I bought tickets today for the Rugby World Cup. We will be going to the Australia vs. USA game on Friday, September 23. It will be here in Wellington.

We have received fliers in the mail and seen signs at bus stops reminding us to buy our tickets. So now we've got ours.