Could this possibly be the most delicious meal ever?

I was put off lamb shanks the first time I tried them (at a cafe in Hahei some 10 years ago) - I found them unbearably stringy and sheepy (just like I still find pork far to piggy). Anyway, some friends of ours grew their own lambs last year and we bought one and put it in our freezer (after it had been butchered obviously). Well the whole thing was delicious. But I left the shanks until last. After getting a wonderful recipe from my aunt I set about cooking them last week. And blow me down if I didn't create the world's most delicious lamb shanks. Here's the proof:

Lots of lamb, carrots, apricots, prunes and port.


Needless to say, when I served it up with some peas and mash and glass of local chardonnay it was all I could do to get Matt to pause long enough to let me take another photo. And because I'm a lucky bunny, there were even leftovers for lunch the next day! Yummo!

Autumnal Boo

I tried really hard not to post another blog about Boo but just couldn't resist. There are autumn leaves everywhere and I just can't help but think she suits autumn so well...


Every morning we wake and go for a walk. As the days get shorter it is getting increasingly dark, and cold. The sun is still up by the time we get back though..leading to some excellent photo opportunities. Like this one:


And we had out first frost a week ago. Which looked something like this; just check out that sky man.


Boo Boo couldn't have cared less.

Signs around town

Signmakers of Canterbury, take a bow.

Le France

OK OK already! Lots of people have been asking for news of our trip to France and I have to admit I've been reluctant to post a blog on this....mainly because it meant trawling through our holiday snaps to find some good pics to put up. Turns out this wasn't so hard as I only took 48 holiday snaps over two weeks. However I did take 146 photos of French dogs on French streets and I had to pull them out in the process which made things a little harder.

Anyway, we had a great time, it was quite cold but not as bad as we were expecting and not as dreary as Christchurch in winter by any means. In Paris we avoided getting too close to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe and the Moulin Rouge. And down in Provence we spent a lot of time at markets (ah, savon de Marseilles) and drinking red wine. And that's about it.

Here's a couple of photographic highlights though:

The Citroen showroom on the Champs Elysees - our beloved DS:


The Vasarely art gallery/museum in Aix en Provence - this place was nuts - from above it was set out like a beehive made up of 8 hexagonals and each hexagonal was a giant artspace with ceiling height artworks by Vasarely - he designed the building especially.


The best bit though was that it was so unpopular and run down they couldn't afford to have the heating on and there was just this one guy in the whole building listening to an iPod and doing some uni study (not the guy in the photo - that's Ollie who was with us). It was freezing and we were the only ones there.

But this is one of my fav photos, taken in Paris:


And that's it. Any questions?

The last post featuring one of our animals for a while...promise.

A couple of months ago I tried to buy some new film for my Polaroid JoyCam camera only to discover it was no longer being produced. Sigh. However, I had a film rattling around somewhere and dug it out and starting taking pictures round the house. It has been slightly damaged with time and all of the pictures look particularly 'old' - for example, this one of Boo:


Then, I was reading a Hollywood gossip blog (which I will leave unnamed) and saw the announcement that Polaroid are actually ceasing production of all instant cameras. Oh dear. It's not all bad though - I got my hands on a Polaroid camera that takes 600 film so I'll get another couple of years worth of photos from that.

Pot

It's been a while since the last post and we intended to write the next one about our trip to France,, but it's just not happening, so I thought I'd continue the theme that has developed of publishing posts about the animal members of our family. So this one's for Pot. She's awesome - she loves living out here where there is so much space it makes her head hurt, and she is quite happy just sitting outside listening to all the birds she will never catch. Recently, we discovered that of an evening, Potty likes a bit of a spanking. Seriously. Don't even bother asking how we figured this out. But here's a video with the proof:


She just keeps coming back for more... Such entertainment.

Boo's Kitchen

We got a dog. She turned up at work as she had been found roaming and nobody came to collect her from the pound. She was pretty cute and I took a liking to her and now she lives with us. Her name is Colonel Boo Boo, or Boo for short.

She seems to be settling in well. She keeps up with Matt while he's training (and is much less exhausted than him when they get home), and she has taken a real liking to the DS:


She is a New Zealand Huntaway - Heading dog cross, which means she needs loads of exercise. I think she's quite good looking, so I have made her the face of my Beetroot Relish (which I made with my own beetroot from my own garden):

We are off to France next week so she is going to stay with friends, hopefully she remembers us when she gets back.

Someone though she got her name from this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u04KEg_rDHk

But she didn't, even though it's a cracker of a ditty.

Merry Christmas.