Kaukapakapa is Maori, not Greek. Tau Kappa Kappa is Greek.

Last week, in the first part of this report on our trip to the nursery and artsy nature trail, I talked a little about the name of the town, and why we like it.  None of that this time, and I'll skip the descriptions of honey as well.  We'll just look at some of the rest of the pictures I took. 

This stretch was interesting. As we approached and passed the objects you see on either side of the boardwalk, musical tones were generated from speakers hidden somewhere nearby.  

Well, that's it.  our group was very like the attentive cats you see above. We looked carefully at each of the exhibits this family business has provided for us, and thank them for their efforts.  

Next week I'll document a bus ride we took up to Half Moon Bay Marina. See you then.  -djf

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEANNE!  

Good grief, it's Friday already!

That was my comment, made to Jeanne this morning while my wake-up cup of coffee was still mostly steaming in its cup, so its rejuvenating effects had yet to do me much good. Friday already, and I haven't even started putting together a post for this coming week.  

In the old Peanuts comic strip, Charlie Brown used to show his level of frustration by the words, sigh, ugh, or aaugh!, in the text bubbles, depending on how upset he happened to be.  Fortunately, the small portion of coffee I had imbibed prior to realizing my post-less dilemma, allowed me to refrain from uttering anything similar. I just went with the comment already listed in the title of this post.

The fact that my title comment has an exclamation point at the end of the sentence indicates however, that I was treating my need for a post seriously. I planned to get to it today, 5/17/24. 

Not that it would be too hard to produce. The gardening group here at the village took a bus trip on Tuesday, up to a plant nursery that also included among its charms, a walking trail with assorted sculptures spread along its length. I was included as 'spouse of Jeanne,' and I tried to earn my 'passage' to some degree by taking copious pictures and sending them to the rest of the group.  

So, those pictures will make up my post for this week, and the next besides. (When I say copious, I mean it.) And, I have another reason for bringing you this particular post. The nursery/trail/sculpture garden was located outside Kaukapakapa, which  happens to be one of our favorite place-names here in Aotearoa.   

Now, neither Allie, nor Jeanne nor I belonged to a sorority or fraternity during our university years, but it is impossible to live or study on campus without becoming familiar with a number of, in my case, fraternities. I knew guys from several. 

You are probably aware that fraternities use Greek letters for their names and Kappa, the 10th letter of that alphabet, is used in several names. Kappa Sigma is one and Delta Kappa Epsilon is another.  

Therefore, when Allie first drove us through the tiny town of Kaukapakapa shortly after we had arrived in New Zealand, she pointed out that its name sounded like a Greek fraternity or sorority of dairy farmers. Jeanne and I were delighted and have loved the place for the memories it stirs up ever since.  

At the end of our tour at the nursery on Tuesday, I bought a jar of Kaukapakapa honey. How could I not? I have a special fondness for New Zealand honey, but more about that later.  

Let's get started with some photos. We had fully overcast skies that day but the layer of clouds was thin and therefore very bright. I notice pictures taken under such conditions turn out, for me anyway, somewhat washed-out looking.  I could try to edit in some sunlight I suppose, but decided against that.  

I have no clue about what that's supposed to be. It's kind of showing its age. 

  

That hanging sculpture is modeled on Kowhai flowers.  

And here is my treasure from our trip.   

Most of the honeys I have purchased here have been produced from a single species of flower. The bees have been located near large tracts of that species and the honey from each of those flowers has been collected from the hives before the bees could go on to harvest nectar/pollen from any other flowers.  In fact, the beekeepers do a microscopic analysis of each honey so produced, and if it is found that it has any more than a bare minimum of other pollens in it, it can't be sold as a single-species honey. They take their honey seriously here.   

Sometimes, I have valued and purchased a honey though, because of it's location of harvest.  It is a honey produced from dozens of species of flowers right here at Waitakere Gardens for example, or, most recently, from Kaukapakapa.   

Or, or course, there is my all-time favorite honey that is both a single-species honey, Pohutukawa flower, and also a local-area honey, having been harvested solely on the tiny island of Rangitoto, located about 2 miles offshore from Auckland. (Unfortunately, this is no longer available since the company producing it has decided to not transport bees out to Rangitoto each year during the pohutukawa flowering season.)  Fortunately, when I heard about this disaster, I went up to their retail outlet in North Auckland, and bought several bottles of the very last Rangitoto pohutukawa honey they had left. I have one bottle frozen and several bottles tucked away in a dark drawer.  And I'm not eating any. I prefer knowing that it's in my time-vault. Honey lasts forever.   

Well, I hope that you've enjoyed my post for today. As I warned you earlier, I intend to give you a second helping of pictures next week as well. See you then.   -djf

Did you know?

Hello, everyone.  This week's post is mostly about New Zealand, or Aotearoa.  I've compiled just a few facts that I've run across and I'll throw in a few pictures to keep it more interesting. I'll end with a very American bit that you may not know much about either.   

New Zealand has more cars per person than any other country in the world.  

That surprised me. Wikipedia says that a few places, like Guernsey, a bailiwick of the U. K., located off of Normandy, France, has more, but they have a population of 67.  In my book, that doesn't count. 

As far as 'real countries' go, NZ heads the list with 1,086 cars per 1,000 residents. The U.S.A. comes in at only 908.  

Jeanne and I had intended to buy a car when we decided to stay here long term, but changed our minds years ago. Now that we are living in this retirement community, we are doubly glad that we don't have one. For one thing, the buses and trains are free for old folks, and the cost of a spot in our below-ground carparks is enormous. 

Hmmm.  Allie, Amiri, Arram, Jeanne and I all have only one car between us. That means somebody else out there really owns a bunch of them. I bet their yard is congested.

    

Over 150 locations in New Zealand were used in the filming of LOTR movies. 

I know that not everyone is a fan of those movies, but we were, and are. 

I took these three pictures at Hobbiton.  

We were also lucky to walk along the path in Wellington that was used (I don't know exactly where) to film the sequence at the very beginning of their journey where the four Hobbits hid from the Nazgul.

The ambulance service here is run as a not-for-profit enterprise.  

St. John Ambulance, because it is not for profit, charges a fee of only $98.00 for a run to the hospital.  They do rely on memberships to allow them to do such a thing. They ask for a donation of $75 per couple per year.  And with your membership, if you need a run to the hospital, you are transported free of charge.   

  

New Zealand gave women the right to vote in 1893.

The U.S. didn't get around to it until 1920. Of course, England didn't give women the right to vote on the same terms as men, with a property requirement, until 1928, although they could be elected to Parliament in 1918. Doesn't make much sense, does it?  

The word Kiwi can refer to the people of NZ, to a flightless bird, and a fruit.  

Citizens of New Zealand call themselves Kiwis. 

This is a kiwi photo that I found from the National Geographic    

I don't think I need to show you a picture of a kiwi fruit.  Those, happily, are all over.  I don't know though, whether the gold and red varieties are available world-wide.  

The sun rises here first. 

That also means that birthdays and the New Year get a head start on the rest of the world.  

These shots were taken on the morning of April 10, 2024. (Of course, it was still the 9th in the U.S.A.  

I love looking directly into the sun like this picture allows me to do.  
If I were going to be an astronomer, I think I'd want to study the Sun. It would be enormously interesting, and just think, I could do it during normal working hours. I wouldn't have to stay up all night on some freezing mountain top.  

 

There are more vending machines in Japan than the entire population of NZ. 

Actually, that statement that I found on line might be a bit out of date. I think it is now pretty close to equal. One article I saw said that Japan has well over 5 million machines. I just looked up the 2024 population of New Zealand, and found it to be 5.25 million.

Hmmm.  I wonder where my vending machine is?  I hope it's next to Jeanne's.    

Finally, to end my post for today, I want to tell you about Scrapple. Nothing to do with Aotearoa of course. This is the Pennsylvanian Dutch meat product that they call Pennhaas. (According to Wikipedia.)  

I had never made it, or even tasted it for that matter, and I thought, when I ran across a video about it on YouTube, that I ought to give it a go. I didn't take any pictures of the process while I made my batch, but I can describe it briefly.  There are lots of steps, but it's quite easy to do. I enjoyed myself tremendously, and my final product turned out great.  

• Buy some assorted pork. I used a hock, some tongues, and a little bit of liver. I added two large onions, plenty of garlic, a large jalapeno, dried sage, paprika, and a bay leaf. Then, lots of  black pepper. (In case you're interested, it was 70 twists of my pepper grinder.) 
• Boil it all for about two hours in water to just cover, then take the meat out and let it cool. 
• Strain the broth and save it. I also kept the onion and jalapeno and added them to the meat in the next step. (The chopping part) 
• Pull the bones out of the hock and skin the tongues. Chop everything else.   
• Put the meat/onions/jalapeno in a food processor and blast it until it's like ground meat. 
• Measure your broth. I had six cups. For that, I added 7/8  to 1 cup of cornmeal and boiled for 20 minutes. (I could have gone to a full cup and it might have turned out even better.) 
• Then I added 1/2 cup of white flour and boiled for 10 minutes.
• Next, I added back in all the ground meat and boiled lightly for 10 more minutes. (Stirring that very thick mixture was quit a job.) Add salt/pepper to taste.  
• I lined a glass cake pan with aluminum foil and poured the mixture into it. 
• When it was cool enough, I refrigerated it overnight. 
• I cut it up into squares, wrapped and froze most of it.  

Jeanne pronounced my attempt to be very tasty. 

If you're interested, here is one of the video's I saw that got me interested in trying it. If you watch it, you'll notice that I did things a bit differently than Sam did. I'm sure there are a thousand ways of doing it, but they all have pork, corn meal and flour and some sort of spices in common.

One thing I noticed about Sam's presentation that I strongly disagree with. He said early on that it would take 2 gallons of water to cover his meat.  Then, he said later, that he used 5 cups of the broth. I think that is a terrible waste of flavor. If he had too much broth, he should have reduced it. It would have been even better.  But who knows, maybe he did something else with the excess broth.  

I just barely covered my pieces of meat and used every bit of the stock.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSq8NHhRAsY

Well, I  hope that you feel slightly more informed now than you did at the beginning of my post. 

I just looked up my monthly 'hits' on my blog's statistics page and found that last month I had 4,802 and so far this month I've had 575. I wonder if any one of those that will read this post during the rest of May might try to make scrapple because of it. If so, Sam would be pleased.  

-djf

This was Tuesday, April 30, 2024

I'd like to share a bit of our 'today' with you.  It was a pleasant one. Sometimes Jeanne and I find that we don't sleep quite as well as we would like. Old age seems to do that to a person, but last night we both slept fairly well, and woke up ready to go.  

And many days are just ho-hum. Today was a cut above the rest and so it's a good one to review.

Over our breakfast coffee and smoothie, Jeanne suggested we have some ribs for dinner, and that decision had the effect of ordering the rest of my day. I had purchased the pork ribs a few days ago, imported from the U.S.A. I noticed, and I asked the butcher to cut the long rack into thirds.  I had planned to do them not in the oven, but on the stove top. We don't do ribs very often. They are a special treat and they were on sale besides.  

I had a bottle of beer, two bottles of BBQ sauces, and one of a Filipino spiced vinegar that I particularly like. More about this amazing vinegar later.    

I think that ribs cry out for a carbohydrate side that you can use to extend the savor of the sauce. That side is really good bread, for dipping, and that necessitated a run to Daily Bread, a wonderful bakery housed in an old bank building in Point Chevalier. I am happy to go all that way because the bread is unsurpassed and the buses are free for us old coots to ride. Bus 11W dropped me off just across the street from the bakery.    

I am the proud owner of a tote bag that I've refilled with their bread many, many times. 

I bought two ciabatta (bottom 2 shelves) and a baguette. (top)  

There were other choices as well.

Often when I buy bread in such a place, I am reminded of the days, decades ago, when we would drive to the Huron Mountain Bread Co. in Escanaba or Marquette, Michigan. Not long ago my sister Mary told me that she had stopped in at the Marquette location for a loaf of their sour dough.  Made me jealous. 

You may have noticed that the bottle of vinegar in the picture just above is almost empty.  After I dropped off the bread at home, I headed for Da Hua market to restock. The vinegar is called Suka Pinakurat. 

 Here it is on the shelf.

And here is a closeup of the bottle.  You can see how dark it is. It's coconut vinegar with onions, garlic, chilies, and spices. I'd say medium to hot if you want a level of heat. I use it sparingly because Jeanne doesn't like too much vinegar, but even a little adds a zing.  

Here are my ribs with sauce added. Low and slow was the mantra, whether on a grill, the oven or the stove top.  

Then, it occurred to me that since I had plenty of room in the pot, why not add some other meats as well and turn this into several meals? I could even freeze some if we wanted to.  

Therefore, I added some lamb neck chops and drumsticks a little later in the cooking process.  

After the meat was done, I uncovered the kettle. With Jeanne's blessing, I added a little more Suka P. and some of my homemade hot sauce, to 'enliven it.'  I then allowed the sauce to reduce for a while.  It turned out to be superb, if I do say so myself. Just the right amount of 'bite.'

Finally, we had our dinner.  This is my plate.  I probably should have arranged it more artfully, but, it is what it is.  Good thing you can't smell it, it would drive you crazy.  

Jeanne's cole slaw was perfect of course. I added another spoon of it to my plate after taking this picture and then some additional sauce. 

We generally eat dinner in front of the TV. To accompany this meal, we watched an old episode of Agatha Christie's, Poirot. We love those.  

We did have lots of meat/sauce/bread/cole slaw left over and will repeat our dinner menu exactamente again tonight (Wednesday) evening. 

So, that's my post. Have I made you hungry I wonder?  I hope so.  I know that I've made myself hungry by writing this up today, on Wednesday morning, and lunch is still a long ways off. It serves me right, I guess. 

(And btw, I'm adding this short paragraph two days later. We got a total of 7 meals from this BBQ. Two dinners for each of us and three lunches. That was efficient cooking.)  

Since I'll publish this on Sunday, May 5, 2024, and we in NZ are about 18 hours ahead of many of you, I can close by saying May the 4th be with you, and it will still be timely.     -djf