Merry Christmas and Boxing Day

We had a lovely New Zealand style Christmas yesterday all afternoon at mum's house.  My husband's family tradition is a huge lunch buffet, then open presents, then have lots of pudding (dessert). 

This year I brought a Pumpkin pie and some warm artichoke dip and crackers.  Both were yum.  Shane's sister, nieces and mum made garden salad, rice salad, potato salad.  My niece's beau brought turkey and stuffing he had made.  Besides turkey, we had sliced ham, sliced chicken.  Mum made a big bowl of orange fruit punch with lemonade (soda). She put out a plate of nuts and dried fruit.  It was a good spread.

We brought our 2 dogs with - Lady the King Charles Cavalier Spaniel and Kiki the Basenji.  My husband's sister brought their 2 dogs - both Shitzoos: Merlin and Guenivere.  Mum has a large black Belgian Shephard named Ruby.  We got their first and brought three dogs downstairs to mum's outdoor patio and closed the glass ranch slider so they could have a romp and go pee if needed. 

My husband and I brought in our food and presents to add under mum's tree. We open presents downstairs which leads to the outside patio - and we have lunch upstairs in the open plan large kitchen, dining room and lounge (living room). My husband's father (who passed last year) built  their family home from scratch back in the 1960's when they moved to Titirangi NZ up from Taranaki. The home is built on a small hill so you drive in from the street, park in the carport and enter the house on the top floor where the kitchen is.  Down the hall from the kitchen is 2 bedrooms and a full bathroom.  The downstairs has a 2nd large lounge, laundry room, 2 adjoined bedrooms and a 2nd full bathroom.  They raised 2 girls and 1 boy in this large family home.  The upstairs has a beautiful macro carpa wood ceiling.  Kitchen and bathroom have lovely polished wood floors and carpeting throughout the rest of the home.  It is a big house just for my husband's mother on her own.  But she has her large Shepard watchdog and my oldest niece is living there, too for maybe another year or two. 

After we had lunch - with the 3 small dogs Merlin, Guenivere and Lady - we all headed downstairs for present opening.  We let in, from outside, Ruby and Kiki - and the present opening began.

I got some hand made soap, some clothes, pajamas, cement garden goose, cooking oil dispensers, mortar and pestile, plexiglass flower decorated cutting board and 3 flowering plants to plant in my garden.  We gave a couple doggie toys so those were unwapped so the dogs had something to play with. Our 4 year old niece got quiet a few activity toys so she started playing with those right away. We gave my 22 year old niece and her fiance a camping radio and rock climbing coupon for an indoor climbing place they like.  We found batteries and got the camping radio playing songs plugged into my husband's iPhone - a Brooke Frasier album sounded nice on this little player.

We all opened our presents.  My brother-in-law, a skilled auto mechanic and motor cycle enthusiast enjoyed a book we gave him which has lots of antique car pictures.  He enjoyed his presents, then took a nap on the couch where he sat.  After 1-2 hours of present opening by the group, this always tires him out and he falls asleep,  My husband joined in with my 4 year old niece playing a little mechanical fishing game.  After a bit, my husband wadded up some used Christmas paper and threw a wad or two from across the room trying to wake up my brother-in-law.  I think he beaned him on the head and he finally awoke. 

We all started filing back upstairs ready for pudding.  NZ calls dessert pudding - you may or may not get actual pudding.  Mum made a trifle and a pavlova.  Someone brought a big bowl of fruit salad. I made the pumpkin pie.  Mum also made blue, purple and red striped jello.  We also had a container of vanilla custard and mini bite size custard and strawberry pies. My niece made chocolate and marshmellow hokey-pokey.  We all had a plate or two of dessert and retired to couches and chairs to play some card games, watch TV and have a chat - or nap.  I fell asleep for a few minutes with my Cavalier Lady sitting on my lap.  Kiki and Ruby tired each other out playing chase up and down the stairs.  Merlin is blind so he was carried up and down the stairs a couple times so he could go potty outside. 

The weather for our NZ Christmas was grey all day and bit drizzly at times.  It was very humid - and we have the same weather today on Boxing Day.

We are heading out soon to hit mum's for a leftover lunch and go shopping for a present for ourselves - we've been saving up to get a new barbeque.  My husband is keen to get one that has a glass panel to see how the insides are cooking.  I just want one that won't rust after 5 years.  But it rains a lot here, it is a rain forest so I think 5 years is average lifespan for a bbq in NZ.

That was my Christmas this year.  I sent packages to Chicago and Paris where various family members live.  They didn't send me anything, but they did email me so they remembered I still exist down here in the South Pacific.  We have a summer Christmas here, but we have a great time sharing the day with our NZ family. 

While the world is always in strife, I wish peace and love to you and yours and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season no matter where you are.

native Pohutukowa "Christmas" Trees on NZ beach - they bloom in Dec

Chelsea sugar banana muffins yum

I haven't posted much with the tag "Yummy people food" but banana muffins are yum.  I just made some using the Chelsea recipe.

Chelsea sugar refinery near downtown Auckland on shorline - pix from flickr

Chelsea sugar is a NZ brand - a company which has been in business since 1884.

They have catchy commercials and sponsor a yearly show called NZ's hottest home baker.  I've seen it the last 2 years.  It is a really cute show and the contestants whip up all kinds of baked goods featuring Chelsea sugar products (of course).  I get the urge to make muffins or cakes when I watch it - so the show is dangerous to your mid section. 

I suppose that is exactly why cooking shows are so popular - people go out buy the ingredients and start bakin' up a storm...  :)

Going to eat a muffin now - go bake somehing now yourself and have a good day...

In 2010, PETA killed 94% of animals in their care

PETA kills animals

I admit I used to be a PETA supporter.  In the last 10 years, they have marched steadily to the extreme far communist, green, animals-are-better-than-people left.  GatewayPundit posts PETAs latest stunt: they want to put up billboards equating microwaving a dead piece of pork - to a microwaved baby killed by her own mother.  Obviously the mother has a mental issue. Normal people don't microwave their 6 week old infants to death. Horrible. Sick.  But not the same as heating a piece of dead pig.  The pig is ALREADY DEAD you PETA nitwits. 

Pigs, cows, chickens currently exist on this planet as a source of food for humans.  If humans did not farm these animals, do you think they would still be on earth in such large numbers?  There are wild boar, bison.  That would be it.  Chickens can't fly so they would have died out of natural predation - say by wolves or their descendants: dogs.  Or other carnivores.  Flightless birds barely exist down here in NZ where there aren't any wolves or other large carnivores.  NZ has stoats, weasels and possums.  The NZ kiwi and kakapo are examples of endangered NZ birds because of predation.  If NZ farmed these birds, they'd be abundant - just like chickens!

I am a big animal lover.  We have 3 cats and our new Basenji dog. I was a vegetarian for awhile, but now my health is poorly as I have a problem with very low iron. I blame 8 years of vegetarianism for my ill health.

According to PETA Kills Animals, in 2010, PETA killed 94% of animals in their care. PETA is now just another corrupt leftist org full of hypocrits. Farm animals should be treated humanely with respect but they are destined to feed people. That is their purpose.

Cornflakes & marshmallow Christmas wreath cookies

Made & brought these into work yesterday... melted marshmallow, corn flake cereal and green food coloring... they were yum. "official" kellogg's recipe here (but you really don't need the white frosting).

My Australian, New Zealand and South Aftrican co-workers weren't exactly sure what these were because wreaths on doors seems more a northern hemisphere, cold snowy winter Christmas tradition... but they liked the cookies anyway!

My mom made these every year using the cinnamon candies as toppings, but I couldn't find those so I used sprinkles.

Chocolate banana cake weekend highlight

slice of chocolate-banana yum

I made a chocolate-banana cake for my husband's birthday this past Saturday. The recipe was from HealthyFood so must be good for you, right? The recipe called for low fat spread (margarine) and plain low-fat yoghurt. The icing was icing sugar with more yoghurt and chocolate bits. It turned out very moist and quite delicious. Check out the recipe here.

We tidied, cleaned house, vacuumed and readied the food and barbeque to prep for guests. I set out place settings inside and outside. After running around all day, I sat about 1/2 an hour to rest my sore feet around 2:30pm.

Family members turned up 3:30pm+. Weather was bit overcast but no rain so we ate outside. Dad watched a bit of cricket on the tele and after presents were opened and cake was partaken with singing and hip-hip-hoorays stated, a few wandered off for table tennis (ping pong) out in the garage. Some compared their new electronic iPhone or iPod devices while a few looked for my cats who were hiding. 6 people could not find our littlest kitten George. After they searched the house for 5-10 minutes and gave up, I spotted him way up high hiding on top of some clothes in the bedroom closet. I took the troupe back into the bedroom (ssshhh, no talking) where I pointed out the hiding spot. We coaxed George out to get passed around for gentle cuddles then he went back to hiding.

All in all a very nice day...

petunia in bloom last weekend on a hanging planter

veg, herbs and strawberries have begun

Dec 1: we have finally got our first veggie garden going here in NZ...

beefsteak & cherry tomatoes climbers, green and red basil, spring onions:
cilantro, more basil, curry, parsley, thyme:
red and orange capsicums (peppers), chives, lettuce and strawberries:

I have my eye on that strawberry... hope I get it before the birds do! we'll have to build a mesh netting probably to protect our mini crop:

how vegetarianism is killing the earth... sorry PETA

I used to be a vegetarian for about 8 years until I wasn't feeling very well, was gaining weight and was low on iron. I just stumbled onto a website discussing a book which looks interesting called "The Vegetarian Myth"by Lierre Keith.

I haven't read it yet, but apparently Vegetarianism kills humans and is killing the planet.

Hmmm... guess it is a good thing I'm not one any more!

PETA ain't gonna like this book...

From the Protein Power blog "Ms. Keith was a practicing vegetarian (vegan) for twenty years, driven by her passion for kindness and justice for all creatures. She couldn’t bear the thought of even killing a garden slug, or, for that matter, even removing a garden slug from her garden to a place where something or someone else might kill it. Her years of compassionate avoidance of any foods of animal origin cost her her health. Her story of coming to grips with the realization that whatever she ate came as a consequence of some living being’s having to die form the matrix onto which her narrative hangs."
You can read the first 14 manuscript pages of the book on the author’s website.

How many vegetarians are there in New Zealand...? There sure is a lot of sheep and beef cattle.
Here is an interesting quote from author, (yes she is a radical leftist/feminist) and ex-vegan Lierre Keith, see what you think... I think she has some valid points:

"For two years after I returned to eating meat, I was compelled to read vegan message boards online. I don’t know why. I wasn’t looking for a fight. I never posted anything myself. Lots of small, intense subcultures have cult-like elements, and veganism is no exception. Maybe the compulsion had to do with my own confusion, spiritual, political, personal. Maybe I was revisiting the sight of an accident: this was where I had destroyed my body. Maybe I had questions and I wanted to see if I could hold my own against the answers that I had once held tight, answers that had felt righteous, but now felt empty. Maybe I don’t know why. It left me anxious, angry, and desperate each time.
But one post marked a turning point. A vegan flushed out his idea to keep animals from being killed—not by humans, but by other animals. Someone should build a fence down the middle of the Serengeti, and divide the predators from the prey. Killing is wrong and no animals should ever have to die, so the big cats and wild canines would go on one side, while the wildebeests and zebras would live on the other. He knew the carnivores would be okay because they didn’t need to be carnivores. That was a lie the meat industry told. He’d seen his dog eat grass: therefore, dogs could live on grass.
No one objected. In fact, others chimed in. My cat eats grass, too, one woman added, all enthusiasm. So does mine! someone else posted. Everyone agreed that fencing was the solution to animal death.
Note well that the site for this liberatory project was Africa. No one mentioned the North American prairie, where carnivores and ruminants alike have been extirpated for the annual grains that vegetarians embrace. But I’ll return to that in Chapter 3.
I knew enough to know that this was insane. But no one else on the message board could see anything wrong with the scheme. So, on the theory that many readers lack the knowledge to judge this plan, I’m going to walk you through this.
Carnivores cannot survive on cellulose. They may on occasion eat grass, but they use it medicinally, usually as a purgative to clear their digestive tracts of parasites. Ruminants, on the other hand, have evolved to eat grass. They have a rumen (hence, ruminant), the first in a series of multiple stomachs that acts as a fermentative vat. What’s actually happening inside a cow or a wildebeest is that bacteria eat the grass, and the animals eat the bacteria.
Lions and hyenas and humans don’t have a ruminant’s digestive system. Literally from our teeth to our rectums we are designed for meat. We have no mechanism to digest cellulose.
So on the carnivore side of the fence, starvation will take every animal. Some will last longer than others, and those some will end their days as cannibals. The scavengers will have a Fat Tuesday party, but when the bones are picked clean, they’ll starve as well. The graveyard won’t end there. Without grazers to eat the grass, the land will eventually turn to desert.
Why? Because without grazers to literally level the playing field, the perennial plants mature, and shade out the basal growth point at the plant’s base. In a brittle environment like the Serengeti, decay is mostly physical (weathering) and chemical (oxidative), not bacterial and biological as in a moist environment. In fact, the ruminants take over most of the biological functions of soil by digesting the cellulose and returning the nutrients, once again available, in the form of urine and feces.
But without ruminants, the plant matter will pile up, reducing growth, and begin killing the plants. The bare earth is now exposed to wind, sun, and rain, the minerals leech away, and the soil structure is destroyed. In our attempt to save animals, we’ve killed everything.
On the ruminant side of the fence, the wildebeests and friends will reproduce as effectively as ever. But without the check of predators, there will quickly be more grazers than grass. The animals will outstrip their food source, eat the plants down to the ground, and then starve to death, leaving behind a seriously degraded landscape.
The lesson here is obvious, though it is profound enough to inspire a religion: we need to be eaten as much as we need to eat. The grazers need their daily cellulose, but the grass also needs the animals. It needs the manure, with its nitrogen, minerals, and bacteria; it needs the mechanical check of grazing activity; and it needs the resources stored in animal bodies and freed up by degraders when animals die.
The grass and the grazers need each other as much as predators and prey. These are not one-way relationships, not arrangements of dominance and subordination. We aren’t exploiting each other by eating. We are only taking turns."
The states even has a few Bison farms...

There definitely is a lot of yummy seafood in NZ...

I'm glad I'm not a vegetarian any more... What's for dinner?

One trick pony and LOTS more pie please

At BigGovernment today, Paul A. Rahe points out how TheWon is A One-Trick Pony:

"Newt Gingrich once remarked that the most impressive thing about Bill Clinton was that he never stopped learning. By way of contrast, the most impressive thing about President Obama is his incorrigibility. He really is a one-trick pony incapable of learning anything new. He and his party have just suffered electoral defeat on a scale they have not seen in more than seventy years, but there is not going to be any change of course. Instead, the President is going to deploy his teleprompter and lecture us over and over again. The endless campaign – with its vapid rhetoric – is going to go on and on and on.

If I were John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, I would be pinching myself. Who could believe their luck? The only thing that it would take to complete their good fortune would be the return to prominence of Nancy Pelosi as minority leader in the House of Representatives – for that, coupled with Harry Reid’s continued ascendancy in the Senate, would be a signal that the Democrats have decided over the next two years to wage an all-out partisan war.

In sum – thanks to the unholy trinity of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid – what we can expect in 2012 is a replay of 2010."

I like pie. Americans like pie. Pie is mentioned in the definition of Socialism? (huh?) I searched for the history of the term "piece of the pie" and first pop up was from "Your dictionary.com":

"Socialism is a system whereby the ownership of capital, resources and production capability reside with and are controlled by the citizens. In theory, citizens have equal access to the products and resources and are compensated based on the amount of work performed.This form of economic control claims to have the benefit of allocating resources, services and compensation equitably among the population. In other words, the system purports to be fair to everyone and to provide everyone with an equal piece-of-the-pie."

The problem is, as history proves over and over (and over and over), socialist are wrong: there isn't just one pie. Ingredients are plentiful, they CAN be made out of thin air and there is actually an endless supply of pie!

Dan Mitchell, also at BigGovernment, discusses the economics in Debunking White House Pro-Tax Increase Propaganda:

"1. The economy is not a fixed pie. Notwithstanding all evidence, there is a near-religious view on the left that the rest of us somehow must have less if a rich person earns more. The video highlights important evidence on income mobility and economic growth.

2. There is a Laffer Curve. Folks on the left assume that higher tax rates have no impact on economic performance. Not surprisingly, there is widespread evidence that taxpayers are very responsive to changes in tax rates. Using IRS data, the video explains what happened with tax collections from the rich during the Reagan years.

3. Keynesianism is wrong. The Obama Administration has a simplistic Keynesian approach to fiscal policy. As such, they only think tax cuts help growth if people rush out and spend the money. Yet this was the same rationale for the failed stimulus, and the video shows how unemployment is far higher than the White House promised."


MORE PIE ANYONE?!

NZ 1st day of spring: pies & crumbles in the air

Who DOESN'T LIKE PIE...? eh? :) In USA, most pie looks like:

Not in NZ... Nope. A typical NZ pie is small & one serving:

A NZ co. called "Bakels" hosts a yearly pie baking contest...

for the best small little individual pie...

apparently a bacon & egg recipe won in 2010

HUNGRY YET? Me, too...

I love NZ reality TV... especially the baking shows (of course!)

Easy to understand why cooking shows are popular...

You can turn something like this:

Rhubarb (in case you weren't quite sure)

...

and this:

(Apples of course)

...

into THIS!

Apple & Rhubarb Crumble - I am making this week.

Exciting!... Note to self: pick up apples & some rhubarb

We made ham, cheese & onion mini muffins last night...

They were yum! Muffin motivation came from this guy:

chef Richard Till who hosts "Kiwi Kitchen"
He also recently made a lovely looking beef stew...

Couple months ago, after watching "Master Chef NZ"...

my spouse took a cooking course! :-)

Brett & Kelly squared off on last season's final of NZ Master Chef

Brett McGregor - winner

but I still want to make runner up Kelly Young's recipe: "Three Way Pineapple Digestive"

(ok the name is a bit unfortunate...)

What yummies are you making tonight?