we’ve started smoking…

and boy is it good.

as you can imagine, I have not been on my feet very much post-surgery, and therefor not really doing any cooking. Tom bought a smoker on one of his recent field trips, and we (that’s the royal we - it was really all Tom + YLD&YLM) finally broke it out the other weekend, smoking a trout and some mackerel steaks. it works unbelievably quickly and well, and is absolutely delicious, we had smoked trout dip, and makerel with wedges and salad.

we’ve had another go on the weekend, and next I will upload the pics of what we did with the leftovers this time….

NZ - Far North and then Orewa.

I’m in hospital for my knee surgery tomorrow, so before I’m off again, here’s the other foody things we ate in NZ.

We drove ‘Up North’, where we had massive amounts of massive green lipped mussels, marinated artichokes from mama’s garden, fresh smoked tuna, and fish and chips from the world famous Mangonui Fish Shop, followed by a cone of goody-goody-gum-drops icecream. mmmm. we ate lots more on top of that too, and I also didn’t photograph everything, but here are a few pics.

freshly caught, battered and cooked tarakihi, chips and a chilled glass of cab sav.

on the way back down to Auckland we stopped in at Orewa and went to Waiwera hot pools with my cousin Chris and second cousin Grayson, 11, who took this sweet pic of me underwater.

oh, about those cookies. they were milk chocolate and macadamia, and I’ll do the photos and recipe thing when I’m out of hospital. they are too easy to eat.