GOOD Friday

This morning I pilfered some apples from the trees of some friends - three varieties, and about 3kg of apples. I sat down at lunch and peeled and cored, then turned into apple pie filling.

Made some pastry, and baked a pie!

I'm not sure how well it will re-heat tomorrow (when it will be eaten), but it smells pretty amazing right now.

I spent the whole afternoon in the kitchen - as well as the pie, I made an apple crumble, two gingerbread loaves and a lasagne. 

 

I was going to attack these plums (=plum sauce), but didn't realise I was all out of onions. Might be a job for Sunday afternoon.

Kedgeree

Smoked hoki kedgeree for dinner last night.  Makes an excellent breakfast too....

24 hours in Akaroa

Inside the Red Zone

As a PR exercise, they have re-named the Red Zone the "Rebuilding Zone", which is total crap, because veryone who lives here knows that there is not much rebuilding to speak of yet.

A couple of days ago, a video was released of new footage from inside the cordon, which sadly  shows the current state of our CBD.

You can see it here.

I particularly like the bit around the 2:22 mark where he records a tourist bus inside the cordon. I reckon the guys at the front of the bus are all tourists - snapping photos etc, while the few people up the back are residents - their faces are grim, and they seem a bit stricken by the site of everything.

And on a less depressing note...

Matt just sent me this pic, snapped at the top of the Port Hills, where he is taking Boo for a run at dusk.

A fairly typical scenario.

 

This is a relatively new building in the suburb of Addington. And by new, I mean built in 2010. It is actually a fancy carpark which services several large office developments.  Since the Feburary 2011 earthquake, it has been unused, presumably while awaiting repairs. The small, narrow, leafy surrounding streets have been chock full of parked cars from 8am to 6pm every day.  

Today I drove past and realised that they have actually started demolishing it (see the far right of photo). I'm not sure it was ever open for more than a couple of months, but it is obviously uneconomical to repair.  

It's just a reminder that the demolition process is so far from over - not only do all the old crumbly damaged buildings have to be taken down, but so many modern buildings are also awaiting destruction - often they are not irreparable, but the cost of starting from scratch is cheaper than repairing.

Pickles

I went foraging a couple of weeks ago. Well, more like raiding...of vegetable gardens.  I came back with giant zucchinis, some amazing capsicums, and lemons and tomatoes.

I made pickle.

Yum.

Pop-up

Ah, so yeah, I went up to Auckland for some rest and relaxation last week.  Sorry to those I never told beforehand.  I had an awful cold, with heaps of snot, so you didn't really want to see me anyway.

While there (aside from catching up on some sleep), I had the BEST Vietnamese noodle salad (above); took a nostalgic walk across Grafton bridge:

...saw some crazy French pyrotechnics and projected animations (kind of cool, kind of 90s):

..and went to a bar where the barmen kept stopping to play tunes on the piano:

Thank you Auckland. I needed that.

Something we would never normally do...

It is grey and dull here in Christchurch today, so we packed up the kid, drove to Lyttelton, and took a ferry across to Diamond Harbour.

Ferries are fun, and cheap entertainment.  So was the wander around Diamond Harbour - the last time I was there was circa 1994, when we drove over one Friday night with a cask of Miami wine cooler, and one tent between five of us. I remember slept in the car. 

Times have changed.