I'll never let go...

A conundrum. To show this side of myself or not show this side of myself on the internet...the thing is with blogging is that you don't really know who is reading. 

Dare I admit on the world wide web that I am secretly really looking forward to something that comes out in April next year?? 

Do I let you all in on the big secret that in my heart I am a big fan of a certain blockbuster movie starring a certain good looking man and a very large ship? 

Do I share with you that after 5 years of piano lessons as a child the only song I can still play is "My heart will go on" by Celine Dion? 

Titanic. In 3D. Sigh. Doesn't Leo rock those braces? 

Maybe if they knew back then that they'd be putting it out in 3D one day they might have filmed the scene where they are spitting over the side from a different angle. Just imagine sitting in the audience and a wad of spit comes shooting out of the screen...

I remember going to watch it with mum and my sister way back when it first came out. In the late 90s, right? We also owned the VCR which I confess I've watched quite a few times although sometimes we fast forwarded to the part when the ship starts to sink.

And without fail a little tear slips out every time I see Jack slip under the water (the only other movies that get me every time are the Lion King and the Notebook - don't laugh!). 

Back to that song by Celine Dion - I was going to chuck an iceberg the next time I heard them playing it in Peru. It's practically their anthem. Don't get me wrong, I love all things Peruvian except the fact that this song is played on repeat in practically every restaurant and bus, and by every I mean EVERY! I've heard it played on panpipes, on clarinet, on guitar, dubbed into Spanish...you name it, I've heard it. They love it.  

When I got to Colombia I went nearly a full two weeks without hearing that song until one fateful night out enjoying a meal of red wine and cheese fondue with a lovely Dutch woman. While we sipped on our wine and waited for the fondue to arrive a man set up his instrument ready to play to the diners...and from those first notes I knew we were in for yet another Celine Dion rendition only moments after I'd been describing to my friend how crazy they are for that song in Peru and how lovely it was to not hear it thus far in Colombia. 

Grr, seriously! The Celine Dion faux pass was almost forgiven when I got to Uruguay to find them playing kiwi music in one of the cafes - Fat Freddy's. 

Still, even if that song has become my nails on a blackboard I'm extremely happy that we're going to have a chance to see this film again on the big screen! 

P.S. I always wanted to get my hands on a copy of that violin music they play when the ship is sinking and play it during a very rough crossing of the Cook Strait when I worked on a ship. Although I thought better of it thinking some of the punters might not have shared my sense of humour. 

I heart ox heart

I'm putting off leaving the house today - it is pouring down! I had my day off all planned out...a spot of gardening, coffee at Lyall Bay, perhaps a dip in the ocean and then home to prepare dinner as I'm having a couple of friends around tonight. Instead the weather's grotty, I'm getting an awful cold and am delaying going down to the shop to buy a bulb of garlic.

The garlic's the final ingredient in a marinade. The rest is already in the fridge and the beef soaking in it. It's wine vinegar, tumeric, sweet paprika (pimenton dulce) and chilli. Notice the lack of soy sauce, tomato, ginger...the usual things I'd marinate meat in. This is a Peruvian recipe for anticuchos or kebabs made from ox heart. The supermarket trimmed most of the heart up for me so it wasn't hard to dice up, dodging any arteries. Still, it's my first time cooking heart (I ate it nearly daily in Peru though) and I'm a bit nervous serving it up to friends (I don't think I'll tell them what it is until after we're done eating hehe). 

However if it doesn't taste good there's plenty of other food. Homemade walnut pate and pumpkin hummus with a cheeseboard to start; a Peruvian spread of empanadas, quinoa with vegetables, tuna stuffed potato and salad in the middle; and a giant lemon curd, strawberry and cream filled profiterole to finish. It's a bit of an odd assortment with no real theme but I'm sure it'll all taste yummy which is what matters. 

Wish me luck.

Get Growing

I've got a lot of unexpected free time today after the wine tasting training course work was sending me on, was cancelled. So right now I'm sitting in bed with a cup of tea and rewatching episodes of Get Growing.

I'm really getting into this gardening business and although I thought I was going into it a complete novice, I must have managed to pick up quite a bit of knowledge by osmosis during my childhood (my parents always had a garden and I watched that show with Maggie Barry hehe). I knew the basics - roughly what is in season, when; how to plant out seeds and seedlings; that plants need water... a lot I'm learning from trial and error, and the rest from the books, my mum and the internet.

One of the best (and most engaging) sources I've found is Get Growing. The show aired on Prime last year I think, but I missed it. All the episodes are available here. I recently acquired the book  'One Magic Square' all about everything you can grow in just one square metre - although this week I've graduated to around 3 square metres plus pots!

I have this memory of cooking a roast dinner as a teenager. I took the roasting pan up to the wool shed where dad popped a leg he'd just cut off the sheep carcass into it. Then we went out to the garden and dug up potatoes to roast. So fresh and so yum!

We also had chooks. That's something I'd love to have one day, especially at the rate we eat eggs. Somehow I don't think that will happen anytime soon (I can just see the landlord's face!), although we are allowed pets. Fingers crossed pommy flatmate isn't deported next month. If she isn't, we want to adopt a rabbit from the SPCA or somebody's unwanted one off trademe - we have lots of vege scraps for it to eat!

The episode I've been watching has just ending so that must be my cue to get out of bead, cook up some spinach on toast and head out to Bunnings and Pak n Save via a walk along the beach.

Happy Monday!

War on slugs

Slugs 8
Caterpillars 1

That's how many I squashed last night when I took my torch spotlighting in the vege patch. Despite liberal sprinkling of slug bait I have been waking up to neatly chomped holes in some lettuces and particularly the pak choy. I'm told putting a bowl of beer out there might help but although I like beer, I'd much rather spend money on wine for myself and not shout the neighbourhood slugs a round. I have been taking used coffee grounds home from work and putting it on the garden to ward off both cats and my small slippery friends which has had some success. I reckon adding a few minutes of night time manual pest control to the mix can't hurt either.

Pottering in the garden

It's not just the strawberries lapping up the sunshine

One thing I love about working in the evenings instead of the day is that I get to enjoy the sunshine while pottering around the garden. Not that getting home after dark has ever stopped me gardening by moonlight...

Yesterday I planted lots of seeds. All but one cauliflower has a head on it now and being impatient and craving salads in this weather I sowed plenty of mesclun, rocket and purple basil seeds underneath them. Once the caulis are ready the plan is to just chop them of at the stalk rather than pull up the roots.

I bought another square garden off trademe today ($50 including delivery) and ordered lots of compost from Zoo Doo ($32 for 160 litres, free delivery). My pay comes in tonight so the first day I have free next week I'll head out to the big Bunnings by the airport to stock up on courgettes, cucumber, chili plants and perhaps a capsicum. The landlord better let us renew the lease in January otherwise I have no idea how I'm going to move all this gardening stuff!


There's nothing better than going out to water the garden and coming back into the house with something to cook up. Yesterday I came in with 2 largish carrots, cos and red oakhill lettuce. I added to it capsicum, cucumber and a bit of balsamic vinegar and it was so good! I'm holding off picking more oakhill until next week as I have friends coming around for dinner and what better to serve up than a fresh salad from the garden?!

I'm on budget lock down until I go on holiday (not that the holiday itself is that expensive - taking more than a week's unpaid leave from work is) so I'm not allowing myself to buy food there. It's so tempting working a cafe, especially while slaving away in the kitchen making things like boysenberry muffins, to buy the finished product. To get around this I'm trying to bring something really tasty from home, better than a toasted panini! Tonight it is rice with stirfry - the cauliflower, mustard, coriander and pak choy we grew ourselves. By the end of summer hopefully we can whip a stirfry using only homegrown ingredients!

Alright, enough blogging. I'm going to go out and enjoy the sunshine before work. Here's some photos I took of the garden today, enjoy.

I can't wait for these to ripen!

Making the kitchen pretty with flowers from the backyard
and flax from over the road

Knittin' a mitten

Wow, it's 1.30am already! I should be in bed as I have work tomorrow. I got home from work just before 10pm and sat on the couch with my flatmate, drinking tea, watching An Idiot Abroad (love Karl Pilkington!) and knitting. I'm just about finished my first arm warmer. It's a fingerless glove made from alpaca but it stretches right up to my elbow. It's going to be so cosy and snug come Winter! Actually I'm wearing it as I type this; so at least one arm out of two is toasty. That's the worst thing about gloves - you have this great sense of accomplishment until you remember you have to make the same thing all over again. I'll post a picture once it's cast off.

I bought the yarn from a alpaca farm on the outskirts of Otorohanga in May. They have a small shop that they'll open up if anyone pops in and a mill which they gave us a tour through. It was really interesting to see all the machinery it takes to turn fibre off an animal's back into gorgeous knitting yarn. If you aren't familiar with Otorohanga it's about 40 minutes south of Hamilton and has a kiwi house and bird park, a kiwiana theme throughout the town and is just down the road from Waitomo Caves. It is also where my cat lives which is a pretty big drawcard in itself.

My cat. For some reason the neighbour's cat isn't as fond of sitting on my hip :-)

The alpacas that provided the gorgeous yarn I'm knitting

Kiwiana walkway in Otorohanga - Footrot Flats

I loved this recipe!

Pommy flatmate having some fun with the sign

The public toilets

Speaking of pairs of gloves, we rearranged our lounge last night. By rearranging I mean we kind of flipped everything around like a mirror image because it's so narrow and has so many doors coming off it, you are very limited in what you can put where. Anyway as I was moving the couch I found a mitten hiding under it. The same mitten my flatmate knitted me and I proceeded to lose the first time I wore it way back in May! And then today at work I found my angora Hermione hat and a merino cardigan I'd misplaced a couple of months ago. So this week has been a very good week for finding things. If only a $20 note or bottle of wine I didn't know I had would pop up somewhere too.

Boy am I glad to have this hat back! I love the mix of cables and lace.

Manizales

One of my daily rituals is reading the news on the internet. I always visit a minimum of 3 sites- Stuff, BBC and CNN, but more if I have time and want more specific stories from Latin America or the Pacific. This week I've been following the story about the mudslide in Manizales, Colombia. 

Unfortunately in many parts of South America, rainy season often  = deaths. Manizales is very hilly so when the rain comes... 

It's not the prettiest of cities suffering, like many other Colombian cities, from overuse of red brick (I can't stand red brick; it reminds me of Coro). The scenery nearby is stunning though and it's nestled in one of the major coffee-growing regions - the elevation and humidity is perfect for growing Arabica. Coffee's the main reason I visited. I took a tour to a plantation half an hour out of town. We walked through the coffee fields sampling the raw berries, saw it being processed and sampled A LOT of the finished product. 7 double shots of espresso to be precise. The clouds rolled in and the proprietors started to get nervous about the drive back up the windy road to town so we rushed back straight away. A windy, gravel road + way too much coffee = one very, very nauseous passenger using all her willpower not to chuck. 

The other reason people visit is the Los Nevados National Park nearby. This national park is home to the Nevado de Ruiz volcano. Tours run up there every day visiting hot springs, glaciers and the crater, I believe. I never got to find out first hand though after the tour was cancelled two days in a row. The first day we'd already driven in the tour van more than an hour out of town before being turned back by the police. They didn't tell us why except it was on orders from the government. The news later that night did though. There'd been over 2000 earthquakes under the volcano over only 2 days. Scientists were up there trying to work out whether it was about to erupt (it didn't in the end). In 1985 it did and over 20,000 people died so I can see where they were coming from. 

The thing I remember most about Manizales though the public transport. They've gotten around the topography by constructing gondolas up the hill. The beauty of this is that with one pole every 100 metres or so they could build a transport link above the houses without demolishing them, unlike building new roads. Add to this views over the green hills in the distance, voyeuristic views into people's backyards, a whooping NZ 50 cent fare for the ride and not having to watch your bag like a hawk when you are the only one in the capsule and it was my best ride on public transport ever! 

Actually public transport was stand out right across Colombia. Auckland could learn a lot from them! That's something about Colombia I never expected. Before I went if I thought of Colombia the first five words that popped into my head would have been cocaine, FARC, kidnappings, danger and coffee. It's for this reason that I didn't decide to go there until the last minute, only telling my family at the airport as I flew out! 

In reality it's a dream destination for backpackers and a safe, fun destination for family holidays too. There's so much to see and do from visiting a coffee farm to beautiful Caribbean beaches, adventure sports, the Amazon jungle, clubs to dance salsa until the sun comes up, fantastic museums and the most friendly, helpful and happy people I've ever met. I'll sign off with a few of my favourite photos of this most amazing place...

The view from the hills above Bogota

fresh fruit at a market in Bogota

kite flying contest in Villa de Leyva

Tobacco fields near San Gil

Sunset at Taganga

Tayrona National Park

Cartagena

a woman selling fruit salad in Cartagena

The first squirrel I've ever seen, in Medellin

Salento

men in traditional dress, Silvia

the sanctuary (church) at Ipiales