Category: Food and drink

Fancy!

We went out for a fancy dinner the other night, celebrating a bit of Christmas and New Year’s all at once. That’s us strolling around the marina beforehand.

We drove our trusty rusty Honda Fit, but others pulled out their fancy cars. When I was a boy, the Jaguar E Type was the car I wanted. I still think it’s the prettiest, but grownup me shudders at the price, the gas-guzzling, etc., so I’m content to admire from the outside.

We had the 6-course tasting menu. When we got there the places were already set with five knives and forks. That was sorta cool but sorta over the top in my view. For what we were paying, couldn’t the server lay down new cutlery for each course? But restaurant service is a bit different in NZ… even in nice restaurants it’s common for cutlery and serviettes to be in a little box on the table and you grab your own.

We’d been to this place once before, and didn’t have a great experience. This time, it was much better, good food and good service.

Happy New Year! Now the diet begins…

0

My core values

Have changed.

There was a time when $3 or on a very hungry day $4 of food from the Wendy’s value menu gave me a good lunch. And by good I mean I liked it, it tasted good (enough) to me, and it felt like you really were getting value for money. Burger, salad, fries, chili, Frosty… good! A group of us would go there for lunch from work at the Missouri Hospital Association fairly regularly.

But this weekend I tried Wendy’s drive thru for I think the second time in the past dozen years. The price has gone up, and the portions have gotten smaller: the Frosty came in a Dixie cup. But most importantly, nothing tasted very good. Not actually bad, just not very good.

I don’t know how much of the change is on the Wendy’s side, how much is due to being in NZ, and how much is in my head. Probably I’ve aged out, just like with nearly everything on TV. But anyway… not something I’ll do any more often than every few years.

2

Popsicles

We found ourselves with a surfeit of strawberries, cause it’s that time of year. Add a little lemon syrup, coconut milk, banana, and yoghurt: hey presto… popsicles! We don’t have actual popsicle molds, and were disappointed that the $2 dollar shop didn’t either. But the plastic cups worked fine.

0

Election Face

That’s us as the returns rolled in, all dressed for a funeral, and headed out for an end-of-the-world dinner and a bottle of wine. Dark red wine, darker than blood. Blood, wine, smoke, carnage. The orcs are inside the city walls.

But then we got to the restaurant, where our perpetually cheerful hostess Svetlana leaned in and reminded us in her Boris-and-Natasha accent that we can’t influence the high politics. Never could, not anywhere. Still or sparkling?

The lady behind us was wearing a fascinator, maybe getting an extra day’s use out of her Melbourne Cup accessories. Hard not to smile at that.

And so we glumly ate the delicious chicken livers and the rigatoni with the rich red sauce and drank the wine and then since it was the end of the world we ordered a ridiculous foo-foo dessert.

It did help, at least a little.

1

The (touristy) red light district

My Australian colleagues have been to Manila a few times recently. They’ve developed a ritual to eat at the Filling Station each trip. It’s an over-the-top shrine to a sort of 1950s America that probably never existed.

My verdict? Atmosphere 14 out of 10… more kitsch than should be possible in one place. Food meh… I like diner food and this was ok, but that’s as far as I’d go to recommend it. But dinner out with your workmates is always fun no matter what, and we had sampled plenty of Filipino cuisine at other meals, so there was something to be said for comfort food.

The restaurant is just at the edge of the Makati bubble. Inside the bubble is lots of foreigners and lots of money. An American can walk down the street in relative security. Outside the bubble, it gets grittier.

It turns out that the restaurant is on P Burgos Street, a well-known red light district… so our group of five were enthusiastically offered massages and other unspecified services by an array of girls and boys. The restaurant is in the same building as a hotel, and the rates were helpfully displayed in the men’s room. 30 minutes and up…

I’m sure there’s a lot of poverty and diseases and debts and addictions and exploitation behind that whole scene. But being inside the bubble, and out on the street (definitely not legal like in Amsterdam), all the problems are scrubbed and hidden, so it was almost carnival-like to walk through.

0

Chikin!

No, I most certainly did not eat at Chick-fil-a. But I DID eat at Gus’s (whose politics could be just as offensive for all I know).

Awesome……

I substituted fried okra for baked beans, which was even more better.

0

PSL

Yes I did have a pumpkin spice latte last week. I didn’t remember how sweet they are… but still delicious.

0

Grill of my dreams

The post-flood renovations and improvements to the Northcote Bowling Club (which we in the petanque club share) are just about done.

One of the last projects was redoing the BBQ area. It looks great now.

As an aside, I’ll mention that antipodean barbecues usually have a flat griddle for part or even all of the cooking surface instead of a perforated or wire grill like I’m used to from the US. I was horrified at first but have come to see the value… not only is the grease not dripping into the works, but it’s way easier to fry onions!

0

$tarbuck$

Less than 36 hours after getting home from Dallas, I was back on a plane to Brisbane for a couple days of teaching software developers about the intricacies of sending health-related data between computer systems.

On the plane, I had to fill out the little arrival card that you always have to fill out when you go to a foreign country. Although NZ has recently digitized that, which is nice. But anyway, somehow, and I still don’t know how, that card disappeared. So, I was rooting around under the seat, trying to find it. I never did. But I did find a Starbucks gift card, and it turned out to have a $5 balance on it. So now I am at Starbucks, having a mocha and a croissant for breakfast. Of course that was way more than $5, but at least I got a discount.

0

Not so spicy

Years ago, we accidentally discovered a spice blend Bolner’s Fiesta Pico de Gallo con Limon. It’s become a staple in our house.

It’s mostly sold in the Southwest US, and so, finding myself in TX, I hiked to the supermarket to pick up a couple of jars to bring home.

When I saw this Bolner’s Fiesta display I figured I was set. But, after looking and looking, I was sorely disappointed to find that they had every variety except the one I wanted.

It was a ‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink’ moment of the first order. But I did get some Cream of Wheat, so the trip was not a total loss.

0

Fresh summer fruits

It’s been a really good year for fruit in NZ, or at least that’s how it’s felt to us. Abundant, tasty, cheap (or at least cheap’ish).

Produce in the supermarket is much more seasonal than in the US… while we do get imported fruit and veg from around the world, the supply chain isn’t as robust as in the States. So prices skyrocket in the off-season, or things just aren’t available.

But we got a couple of thoroughly unremarkable peaches recently. Luckily, we had golden syrup and sprinkles on hand. Et voilà! Delightful. Sometimes I have all the culinary sophistication of an 8-year-old.

PS — The title of this post refers to a jingle I’ve been carrying around in my head since forever.

0

Valentines Day

We had a lobster tail extravaganza for Valentine’s Day, accompanied by non-alcoholic champagne and one of the season’s last homegrown artichokes, and it was fabulous!

The lobsters here don’t have claws like Maine lobsters do, and they are obscenely expensive. For this meal, we got (frozen) US tails, which are available at the grocery store. Not as tender as fresh, but still tasty.

0

Cielito Lindo Taqueria

Tipped off by a Facebook post, we added a detour to Cielito Lindo Taqueria to last weekend’s Costco trip. The tacos and sopes were delicious and we’ll go back when we’re out that way. But even though the owner is legit Mexican, you can tell you’re in Auckland instead of LA… first, it was $25 for 3 tacos. And second, that didn’t include any chips. And third, lemon instead of lime.

0

Say “Cheesy!”

Here’s me at Costco with a truckload of American cheese. I’m perfectly happy and sometimes even proud that America exports a lot of physical stuff and a lot of cultural stuff to the rest of the world.

But you can take world domination too far, and I would argue that while Costco itself is on the OK side of the line, this pasteurized processed product really isn’t.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑