This weekend, Tim and I met up with some friends in Auckland, Sarah and Matthew, for some delicious food and wining in Hawkes bay.
How many food festivals is too many food festivals?
We don't know, we haven't found out yet.
The first event we went to was called Tea, a drink with jam and bread. It was a pastry and jam and tea tasting session, which Tim and I arrived ravenous at, having not had any breakfast beforehand. We imagined a sort of jolly, wonderful, tea jam pastry cake bread free-for-all where we would casually eat as many pastries as humanly possible within 5 seconds while mumbling through a mouthful of crumbs "mmmverynicemmmyes" in a semblance of dignified tasting.
In fact, it was quite a formal lecture type setting where two women slowly made jam in front of us while withholding pastries. Have you ever watched jam being made? While being ravenously hungry and desperate for pastries? While the hob on which the jam was being made was malfunctioning and therefore the jam was not boiling? While being desperate for pastries? While sitting in a pavilion, looking at pastries, which were being withheld from you, while jam was refusing to boil?
It was, in its own way, a first-world form of torture.
Anyway, we did end up tasting the pastries.
We tasted them and tasted them and tasted them.
I must have drunk about 6 cups of tea in that pavilion. I tried green earl grey, and french earl grey, and rooibos with vanilla and creme caramel, and a blend of green, red and black tea, and green chai, and all sorts. And then I went back for seconds.
And then I was desperate for the loo for the rest of the day.
Not helpful, since we were going on a cycling wine tour.
My stamina clearly has decreased since Uni, since that day we cycled only 36km and we did stop for wine at two places on the way. But whether it was the wine that made me slow and tired or the head wind or the fact that no matter how tasty pastries are, damn it, they cannot sustain one for 36km, or the fact that I really, really needed to pee, that 36km really did feel like a hell of a long way.
Still, the wine made up for it.
We went with two doctors from the UK, Sarah and Matthew, who I worked with in Newcastle. Sarah's a med reg and Matt is a GP trainee, and they were very, very delighted with how their day was going (see above picture.)
It was so nice to meet up with some old friends in the new world. And fairly surreal too. So far away....and yet here we are. Scoffing wine. As usual.
I tried a lot of delicious wines and tried to expand my personal favourites, though I'm afraid I'm still stuck in the aromatics and the Marlborough sauvignon blancs. Any good riesling or semillon or pinot gris gets a big thumbs up. But I did try a good red - a cabernet franc, which I had not heard of before. I recommend it. It is a luscious grape. And also a red dessert wine, which was very special.
We bought several bottles.
Tasting is $5 per person, and you taste as many wines as you like, which is a very good deal. And also now look! I sound as if I know a tiny bit about wines, which is not true, as the only thing I know about wines is how tasty they are and the names associated with the tastiness. Which I suspect is all anyone actually ever truly knows about wines. There you go. Tastiness and culture, all in one big bottle. How good is that?
We also took the time, as we were by now both famished and extremely tipsy, to have a picnic in the vineyard, where they gave us a platter of food and a bottle of their Malbec, and we had a generally lovely time. Tim and Matt and Sarah all had to put their napkins on their heads because the sun was so hot. It's NOVEMBER! My body is so so confused.
Inside is nice, but outside is nicer.
The nice lady helps us get as much wine as we need for a good day out.
It was really a long, long road back, and I was tired as, man. We had to face down some cows as well on the way. It was frankly terrifying, but I stepped up to the challenge. I was brave as, despite having a full bladder and a very sore bottom.
Well done me.
In the evening, we had a date at the oyster saloon. Sarah and Matthew had only just started eating oysters (beer battered ones, naturally), and were excited, yet apprehensive, to try the raw wriggly ones.
Side note: when you think about it, so many of our acquired tastes really are just disgusting, aren't they? Oysters. Black pudding. Rare steak. Runny egg. Cheese. What is wrong with us as a species?
I don't know. But I love it.
Eating oysters with dignity is a very tricky skill, and I...well, I'm going to share the pictures below as a cautionary tale of what happens if you let me photograph you doing anything and then don't censor where I can post the images afterwards. And also because they are brilliant.
I was looking at this series of pictures, and thinking, what does this remind me of, and then it came to me. This is even better than Kirsty eating ginger cake! (You need to scroll down slightly for the eating sequence. It is wonderful.) Also - clearly I have a history of doing this around eating people (why? eating is so funny!)
I am going to start making a collection called When You Eat You Look Funny.
Question: can anything (edible) battered and fried be not tasty?
Answers on a postcard please.
(The Scottish, btw, have clearly made their decision on this already. It's a good one, hard to argue with.)
So disgusting yet tasty!
I tried all of the oysters on the blackboard, and then I tried them naturel, and then I tried them beer battered, and then I tried them again.
To be honest, I couldn't tell the difference between them.
Maybe it was the amount of wine I'd tasted that day.
After tasting and tasting and tasting the oysters (and more wine), we went on a very drunken wine shopping session in the wine store where this was held, where a very nice lady came and helped us choose wines. (This is what it was like: me: "I LOVE MARLBOROUGH SAUVIGNON BLANC" her: "ME TOO! BUY THIS ONE!" Me: "YES! Also, I love The Doctors Riesling." Her: "LOOK! I have a bottle." Me: "I LOVE YOU." Her: "Have you considered buying more wine?" Me: "YES. But which ones?" Her: "let's run around the shop and I'll choose some for you! What is your price range?" Me: "I don't know, I'm too drunk to think of a price range." Her: "That's the best kind of price range.")
Anyway, so I bought some wine (and actually it was very reasonable, we bought 4 bottles for 30 quid, and they were all very good too. So clearly she must have inferred I had some kind of price range, even though by this point I was just running around the shop randomly pointing at things and trying to link arms with her while skipping) and we had a good chat about how much we all loved wine, and was 4 bottles too much for 7 people (answer: no) and then we had to ask her where we could buy a kebab, because after a full day of eating nothing but oysters and very cultured slices of salami and pate, and drinking like I've never drunk before, we were famished. Like, STARVING, MAN.
Doesn't she look nice?
She gave us very good directions to a Turkish restaurant aka kebab shop.
And we bought a kebab and we ate it with our Marlborough sauvignon blanc and our Hawkes Bay Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir and we had some Riesling to end off and also, chips with BBQ sauce.
It was divine.
The next day, I felt a bit rough.
(This is starting to become a bit of a recurring theme in my NZ travels.)
Luckily, there was a farmers' market on where we could eat delicious things and feel better about ourselves.
There was more wine tasting at the market too, but I wasn't really up for it. I'm not sure why.
And this is our haul from Hawkes bay: from the left: some good old Marlborough Sauvi, which the nice lady in the shop recommended: some Noble Sauvignon Blanc from the Beach House - an amazing little place which was a lot of fun to taste at, very unpretentious and run by the cheeriest man in the world, who had a glass to taste each time anyone had a glass to taste (no wonder he was cheery), and the Doctors' Riesling (some great, great Riesling there, my friends. Doctors know best), and more Beach House Riesling, and the red dessert wine (a strange beast), and two pots of damson jam from the jam tasting, and a bottle of damson vinaigrette which Tim bought at the jam tasting before I even had time to say, "gosh that's quite tasty". That Tim. And I'm really looking forward to the jam tomorrow on croissants, which I have also bought today. I have been busy. Busy stuffing my face (as usual.) I'm just so good at it, that's the problem.
Also, guess what.
It's our anniversary!
5 years together!
Shameful to say, I kind of forgot about it. that is, I kept on remembering in the weeks coming up, and thinking, "oh, I mustn't forget it's our anniversary!" because man, it does not feel like November. It feels like July. And then naturally, I forgot about it. And so today while Tim went to work, I had to go and buy him a present.
I bought him an awesome present.
The below is not it, but it is something else that I bought him.
Business socks!!!
A flight of the conchords reference that I never knew I hadn't got. Turns out, business socks are a kind of sock everyone wears in New Zealand, for business! And I do not mean sexy business. I mean, just normal office business. Business that requires sock wearing.
Who knew?
Love from Connie.
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