WBB - a healthy eats breakfast

I love breakfast.. well, I love going out for breakfast and lounging with coffees and friends and the paper and, admittedly, pork products. I’m less keen on the cereal-before-trudging-to-work-early-in-the-morning kind of breakfast, though I do try, because it is a Good Habit.

Because I am currently not doing any trudging to work in the morning or at any time, my breaking of fast is a little haphazard. If I’m going to the gym early, I might have some fruit first, then come home and be starving and eat lunch early, but if I’m going to the gym late, I slip into old Bad Habits, and don’t eat until 11am or even well past ‘lunchtime’. Bad Habit!

Here is a morning feast from the other day, that was easy to put together, with minimal dishes, not too full on either in the kitchen or in the puku (tummy), but tasty enough to motivate actually cooking and eating, while also being really very healthy, and looking kind of substantial, in a lazy weekend kind of way.

I can’t think of where it was, but I must have heard/read about some sort of middle easterny influenced egg breakfast recently, which niggled in the back of my head when I was looking for inspiration in the morning. I have no idea if there is any resemblance to the original, apart from the cumin/chilli/paprika and egg combo, but if I remember or find it again I will reference back to it to see.

in the meantime, this is so bloody simple, but really quite delicious and light.

Spiced Egg with Hummus on Toast

In a non-stick frying pan, crack as many eggs per person as each person wishes to eat, and sprinkle liberally with ground cumin, paprika, chilli flakes, cayenne, salt, pepper, sesame seeds (or of course, anything else really, as your tastebuds/pantry dictate). toast your bread of choice - mine was a thickly slice of poppyseed vienna loaf, and I toasted it over the bare flame, because our toaster is broken, and I couldn’t be assed turning on the grill for one piece of toast. It imparted a lovely smokey flavour in fact. Spread said toast liberally with hummus, place eggs (cooked to your liking) on top. eat.

In the photo, it does not appear to be a very liberal sprinkling of spices, and I think it could have managed a bit more kick, but it was really very tasty. This would make a very easy breakky to serve a large-ish group, especially as the chilli kick will ensure your guests are not turned off, if their eggs are less than piping hot when they get to the plate. Not that I’m saying you will serve them cold eggs (I’m sure you wouldn’t!), but chilli does trick the brain a bit on temperature, so you won’t be stressing as the plates go out.

I am putting this forward as my first entry for Weekend Breakfast Blogging, which is hosted for February by Tasty Palettes. WBB is focusing on healthy breakkies this month, and this gives a great protein boost via the egg and the hummus, was cooked without oil, and could further be improved by a nice wholegrain bread, so it really is a healthy eat!

7 (Random) Things about Me Meme

I’ve been tagged by Bron for the puku’s very first meme; the 7 Things About Me meme.

here’s the deal with the meme ‘rules’:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Usually I would ponder over the 7 things to reveal and dither around for an age, and maybe never do it, but since I am currently in Townsville (for uni) and therefore not really doing much blogworthy cooking or eating (packed lunches and quick dinners), and since Tom has started food blogging both of our food creations over at tomandzoe.com, well, I’m a bit short of other things to blog.

so here are 7 truly random things about me, with minimal editing (I’m sitting at a cafe, purportedly preparing uni assignments):

1. I quit my 16oz+ (yeah, I don’t know why, in our metric country, we buy coffee by the oz) a day coffee habit last year. I went from being pretty reliant on my large morning soy flat white to get through the day, to being quite fine for days sans caffeine. I’m now a recreational coffee taker, and enjoying it more and feeling less skattery.

2. I like taking photos of my feet, and have pics from age ~12 to present. I do not have them in an album. maybe I should start a feet photo blog? no?

3. I was born in Gisborne, NZ, the first city in the world to see the sun each morning.

4. I hate rubber foam. especially dusty foam. it’s so gross, but also so random.

5. I cut my own hair, and have been on and off for about 10 years. I’m colouring it myself at the moment too, b/c I can’t justify paying someone else to do it when I know how.

6. I go through obsessive cooking phases, and have in the past been into making muffins, bread, noodles, hainanese chicken rice, sweet potato wedges, burritos (oh, etc etc ad infinitum) where I cook and eat very little else. everyone does this, right?

7. I pretty much live in black drawstring pants (Tree of Life ones are great), and sometimes have to really force myself to wear them with something other than a black or white top and thongs (JANDALS). when I packed for this trip to Townsville I bought 2pr black drawstring pants, 3pr thongs/jandals (different colours) and a selection of tops in black or white + 2 coloured tops, and a black cardigan and some sarongs (good as scarves in the air-con). but I wear very colourful underwear!

thats it. 7 (random) things. I am a bit reluctant to tag anyone, b/c I am a bit shy and I know others have probably done this one already, but I will try a few names and see how we go.. no pressure!

1. Aria @ Melonfish (formerly Passionate Nonchalance)

2. Gattina @ Kitchen Unplugged (I checked, she’s only done the 4,3 & 5 things memes! this one is TOTALLY DIFFERENT!)

3. Raging Yogurt (such a great name)

4. Sophie, who is Mostly Eating

5. Steph @ BackInSkinnyJeans

6. the lovely Umami

7. Stephanie @ Cumin & Coriander and look, some evidence - pic of feet, black pants w thongs, and the freakiest giant gum leaf ever. the tropics are wild, I tells you.

Happy bloggiversary, Puku

Well, the puku has turned one year old. My first proper food post was a year ago this week, and was about the spiced oil I’d made as xmas presents. What fun!

I’ve been less frequent with the postings than I’d like, been involved in less foodblog events than I’d like (every month I look at Is My Blog Burning and think of all the interesting events I want to be part of, and then… do nothing), and actually not even cooked as much as I’d like (moving states, surgery etc), but I’ve had some fun, some great conversations, been warmly welcomed by the foodblogging community whenever I do get my ass into gear and get involved, and been inspired to do plenty more.

I love that in WordPress you can check the site stats, including referrers and search engine terms that have lead people to your site. It’s quite addictive. I tend to get several visits a day from people searching for ‘puku’, ‘papaya’, ‘risotto’, ‘mashed potato’ - even a ‘why eat fresh mashed potato’ the other day (which had me wondering why anyone would prefer eating off/rotting mashed potato until I remembered powdered instant mash existed in some revolting alternate world), and ’snow pea/fetta/avocado salad’ which leads to my highest hitting post to date.

Every day or two there are ‘dragonfruit’, ‘fruit salad’ ‘coffee’, ‘lentil soup’, ‘kedgeree’ and a growing variety of ’smoked’ searches. Then there are the totally weird ones - lately; ‘Pizza’ - I’m pretty sure I don’t have any pizza posts on the puku, ‘Fiji hospital’, ‘poor hospital’ (WTF?), 2 searches for ‘insipid food’ and on Friday alone ’sachet food’, gross food’, ‘awful food’ and 2 searches for ‘eating gross food contest’!! ummm… is Google trying to tell me something?!

On the other hand, in the past couple of days there has also been a ‘love’ and a ‘pleasurable eating’, so I can only hope, dear reader, that this is what you have found here.

Aroha nui, ka kite ano, bring on 2008!

xxx z

a peck of pickled peppers (ok, smoked actually)

Tom and I decided (ahem, and our bank balances strongly suggested) more homemade xmas presents this year. Roddi gave us an idea with his mention of chipotles during our smoker craze (admittedly, ongoing)… so we thought we’d have a go at smoking our own chillis.

Traditional chipotles take several days to slow cold smoke and basically dry out, but we couldn’t be bothered spending 48 hours straight attending to and refueling our small smoker every 20 minutes. Instead we simply hot-smoked a selection of mixed chillis and capsicum-y things (banana caps, long green chilli, long red chilli and birds eye chilli), and jarred them up prettily in olive oil.

The finished product was distributed to Sydney friends and family, unfortunately the Ikea rubber-sealed jars we used were not as tightly sealing as one might like, but hopefully the contents is ok!

Interestingly, we left a couple of the un-jarred smoked chillis in the fridge and they are still sitting there in a ziplock bag, looking quite unblemished (about 3 weeks now).. so the smoking process does quite a bit of preserving.

We kind of made it up as we went, so no recipe for this, but roughly; hot smoke chillis for 20-30 mins, squash into sterilised jars, cover in olive oil (add garlic cloves, herbs if desired). Easy!

someone was spoilt rotten this xmas…

it was me!

processed to date:

xmas day handmade lime mayonnaise, xmas day finely sliced fennel, celery & toasted almond salad, boxing day hummus, more hummus, oliebollen (NYE/birthday doughnuts) holiday mushroom pate, more hummus(!), carrots grated in seconds, thai beef salad dressing…

I love processing stuff! thanks Tom! (I love Tom!) xxx

GRAINWAVES - a food puzzle resolved

the mysteriously textured foodthing in the previous post was correctly identified by Ves as a Grain Wave. She even guessed correct with Sour Cream and Chives flavour! But she also had a Kiwi advantage…

as Grain Waves are a beloved kiwi snack - well, beloved by me, and Vesli, at least!

They are super crunchy, thick waves of grainy crispy goodness, and are pretty irresistible.. for those not in NZ, if you are traveling to Aotearoa/NZ any time soon, I highly recommend doing so, and making your way straight from the airport to the nearest Dairy (=cornershop), Foodtown or Pak’N'Save and grabbing yourself a bag.

or…. you can buy them online! woot! AND apparently, you can buy them in Sydney!!

and just because the Bluebird advertising theme has been buzzing around in my head the whole time I’ve been writing this post, here it is for you to enjoy too:

the ad on youtube (I can’t seem to embed it, such a noob!)

a food puzzle

dear puku readers,

as we plunge headfirst into the holiday (and birthday!*) season, the foodblogs around the blogosphere are full of cookies, mince tarts, the Northern hemisphere’s ubiquitous turkeys, stuffing, revolting canned(!) pumpkin pie and sweet potatoes with marshmallows(!) and the Southern hemisphere’s altogether more appetising prawns and seafood, lush salads, cold hams and turkeys (ok, we are preparing stuffing too), berries, stone fruit, mangoes and melons (soaked in bubbly, of course!).

here at the puku, we are a little bare on holiday trappings so far.. my apologies. I will blog some seasonal food things, but I am a bit behind the ball, and seasonal eating is only really beginning today for us, although I ate my first mango of the season on Friday, so that’s a start, right?

in the meantime, and as a distraction perhaps, I am posting a photo of a mystery foodthing**. I will update with the full story soon.

any guesses?

MERRY CHRISTMAS, SEASONS GREETINGS & CHEERS, XXX Z
* mine!  ** I do know what it is 

what the smoked fish did next, a Fable.

the smoked fish became PIES.

I have oddly vivid memories of being a very small child living on Waiheke Island, and my favourite thing to eat when I went with my mum to Oneroa (the only place on Waiheke (”why-heh-keh”) with a largish grocery shop when I was a child, although I understand now there is a SUPERMARKET. WTF?) was smoked fish pie at some hippy cafe (long closed). (the whole island was hippy in those days actually. not anymore!).

I can so vividly remember eating smoked fish pie, which I’m sure some people do not consider a very child-friendly food, but then again apparently I also demanded (garlic and parsley laced) omelettes, so I definitely did not suffer from ‘white food syndrome’ as a child!

anyway, I could tell you how my pies were made, but since I didn’t take ‘during’ photos (I was actually too busy having lie downs every 5 minutes, because being up with my recently surgery-ed leg for that long was still very tiring and painful), and in fact it is ridiculously easy, so instead here is a diagram demonstrating the pie-structions.

which leaves me time to tell you another riveting smoked fish pie related story. Once upon a time, in 2002, while living in Nelson Bay a princess (me) went along to the really quite wonderful Red Ned’s pie shop to grab some lunch. I asked Mr Red Neds (AKA Barry Kelly) if he had plans to make my favourite, his Smoked Haddock Pies any time soon, as I had a pie hankering which his teriyake kangaroo, honey-lime-chilli scallops and prawn, fiji curry steak, nor any of the other 50-odd regulars just wouldn’t fulfill.

Mr Kelly looked at me for a minute, then told me to come back in the next couple of days. He had just been pottering around the bakery, mulling on which pies to enter in the upcoming pie competition, and yes, my favourite would just fit the bill, so he would make some for the competition, some for the shop and one for me (I am a princess in this story, remember?).

Needless to say, because I have extremely good taste, my favourite pie not only took out the Gold Medal for Gourmet Seafood Pie, but also Gold Winner Overall. Best Pie In The Competition. seriously - check out their awards list! The day after the competition Mr Kelly called me in to gave me a complementary Smoked Haddock Pie, and the whole village rejoiced. well, ok, mostly the Red Neds peeps. and me!

the end.

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.