Current Status: Holidays

351 Responses

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  • Islander,

    Yes Jackie - and much other luscious stonefruit as well-
    Danielle - the price is now between $8 & $11 a kilo, depending on variety, at roadside or orchard.

    One of the geat pleasures of summer.

    Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report Reply

  • Jackie Clark,

    they're $9.99 a kilo at my local shop, Danielle (used to be called Green Rebel - down the bottom of Landscape rd) - and they are yummmy.

    Mt Eden, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 3136 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    Not the same sort, though, I'll bet..

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg,

    My mum and I went halves on a kilo of hugely expensive Otago cherries just before Christmas. Worth every penny

    They were one of the joys of my trip back to NZ at Xmas. Now I need to find an excuse to come back during Bluff season....

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Grant McDougall,

    ...and yesterday it was onwards to...Sydney ! Mucked around at my brother's place in the morning, had a quick nosey around town in the afternoon, then met up with some mates at a pub in Newtown, hammered the Cooper's Ale into the evening.

    Today I trundled around the music shops, bought a couple of Sonic Youth and James Brown cds at a JB. But the real bonanza was at the Virgin store inside Myers on George St. There was a big table full of $5 cds.
    Most of it was crap, but I scored stuff by Ornette Coleman, The Wickerman soundtrack (the classic original, not the crap recent remake), Augustus Pablo's King Tubby's Meet's Rockers...and a bunch of other stuff that would've cost me a bundle a Redeye, etc.

    Tomorrow I'm off to the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival on Cockatoo Island: Nick Cave, Spiritualized, Harmonia, Silver Apples, The Saints (orig. line-up), and loads of other cult faves.

    Dunedin • Since Dec 2006 • 760 posts Report Reply

  • Isabel Hitchings,

    So, what sort of an idiot do you have to be to dress your three-year-old in his best and newest shirt and then let him eat dark red cherries?

    Christchurch • Since Jul 2007 • 719 posts Report Reply

  • Christopher Dempsey,

    So, what sort of an idiot do you have to be to dress your three-year-old in his best and newest shirt and then let him eat dark red cherries?

    ahhh, that fashion mused kicked in again - "hey that shirt is way too new, way too 'nice', way to conformist - let's irregularly stain the shirt!"

    Which is my weird way of saying don't panic and stain the rest of the shirt in dark red cherries. Lemons and lemonade and all that.

    See India Flint for observations on staining with natural dyes.

    Parnell / Tamaki-Auckland… • Since Sep 2008 • 659 posts Report Reply

  • Sofie Bribiesca,

    So, what sort of an idiot do you have to be to dress your three-year-old in his best and newest shirt and then let him eat dark red cherries?

    That's no idiot. That is someone who knows that clothes do not maketh the man. :)

    here and there. • Since Nov 2007 • 6796 posts Report Reply

  • Sofie Bribiesca,

    They were one of the joys of my trip back to NZ at Xmas. Now I need to find an excuse to come back during Bluff season....

    ....and when you find the excuse, 1/2 way down Dominion Rd will give you a fine selection for dining. The only booking that would be required would be Merediths but worth it I hear and after that, good cheap authentic cuisine and little shops with authentic ingredients.But you knew that eh?

    here and there. • Since Nov 2007 • 6796 posts Report Reply

  • Stephen Judd,

    Judd, Stephen, reporting. Fellow PAS commenter harvestbird and I, accompanied by our respective partners, had lunch at la Casa Tiso yesterday, in the heart of cosmopolitan Berhampore.

    Our consensus was that we can finally reveal that Giovanni is in fact John Teesdale, formerly of Te Awamutu, backed by a writing team comprising a surprisingly large number of PAS regulars. Thank you to all those who contributed - you know who you are. (For the record John does have a creditable grasp of Italian and can quote large stretches of Dante from memory.)

    Kind hosts provided a sumptuous repast including pizza, pasta and pannacotta, a menu at once alliterative and evocative of the long-running gag that is the Giovanni Tiso persona. Table talk ranged over the restrictions of a Te Awamutu education (your choices: liking rubgy, or league!), the width of the main drag in Invercargill (delusions of grandeur, or designed to allow a bullock train to turn?) and home birth (eminently sensible, except when it's not).

    Eventually we forced ourselves to leave so that Saturday's errands could be completed. It could be that we'll reprise the Tiso gag in the future, if we feel inclined.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 3122 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    I did wonder if Tiso was a contrived contraction of my favourite dessert.. :)

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    the restrictions of a Te Awamutu education (your choices: liking rubgy, or league

    Or sowing the seeds of Split Enz..

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    a contrived contraction

    Actually make that a mis-spelled one too..

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    So, what sort of an idiot do you have to be to dress your three-year-old in his best and newest shirt and then let him eat dark red cherries?

    A very smart idiot who had convinced the rest of the world that s/he has potentially fatal allergies to laundry power and clothes pegs?

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Our consensus was that we can finally reveal that Giovanni is in fact John Teesdale, formerly of Te Awamutu

    And to think that I let you into my home...

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Stephen Judd,

    I
    Was
    Tempted
    And
    I
    Fell.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 3122 posts Report Reply

  • Hilary Stace,

    Still reporting holidays. We have been lucky to have a holiday in the Bay of Plenty which coincided with a week of glorious weather. Every day the sky was blue, the sea ranged from clear aqua to deep indigo (and was warm!), and the land - grass, bush, corn fields - every shade of green. There was endless outdoor space and clear air, even in the few crowded places such as Lake Rotoma and Ohope Beach. The mountains from the desert road were the clearest I had seen for a long time.
    (BTW it wasn't all perfect and there were some incidents best forgotten eg one of our party had a painful bout of food poisoning, but it was pretty pleasant overall).

    Some highlights:
    -The Haiku Walkway at Katikati (in a park down behind the council building). One of my mother’s haiku are featured on the boulders.
    -The homemade macadamia and manuka honey icecream at Pacific Coast Macadamias which is just north of Te Kaha and overlooks a particularly beautiful beach on a coastline of beautiful empty beaches.
    -The official pardon signed by Governor General Dame Cath Tizard for the 1860s conviction of Te Whakatohea chief, Mokomoko, on display in the historic Anglican church at Opotiki (see www.dnzb.govt.nz for the full story).
    -The tea cosies and tapestry bags for sale made by the volunteers at the Shalfoon grocery museum in Opotiki.
    -The peaceful warm sunset at the Opotiki wharf.

    [Meanwhile the snippets of news we heard were about a war on the other side of the world where people had neither space nor peace.]

    And the best holiday read was a book a world away in every sense, ‘Stuart: a life backwards’, the intertwined life story of homeless sometime criminal Stuart and his biographer, Alexander Masters, which won the Guardian first book award in 2005.

    Wgtn • Since Jun 2008 • 3229 posts Report Reply

  • Jackie Clark,

    I love holidays like the one you've just had, Hilary. I hope you feel well rested. We live in a lucky country in a lot of ways, don't we?

    Mt Eden, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 3136 posts Report Reply

  • Hilary Stace,

    I should just add on the downside - a lot of the good things in NZ are not accessible for people who use wheelchairs. Just a couple of steps, an entrance too narrow, a path too rough, a blocked doorway - that's all it takes to create a barrier, and that's not fair.

    Wgtn • Since Jun 2008 • 3229 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    I did wonder if Tiso was a contrived contraction of my favourite dessert.. :)

    You know, even now that I've been unmasked... I really want to know what this dessert is. I can't work it out.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Jackie Clark,

    tiramisu......yummmmm

    Mt Eden, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 3136 posts Report Reply

  • Hilary Stace,

    Yes Jackie. We did feel lucky (most of the time). But you could also sense we were on the edge of something. There were lots of property for sale notices and mortgagee sales, especially in some of those new beach subdivisions with ugly Auckland sized houses on bare sections. And although most of the little towns looked thriving (unlike the last time I went through there in the 90s) there were some closing down sales and newly newly closed businesses.
    I also felt that the days of touring around NZ by car might be numbered.
    And the environment needs protecting to stay looking so nice. Lots of land clearing for dairying and unfenced waterways through cow paddocks in evidence. And many signs warning of toxic algal bloom, or not collecting shellfish and not spreading didymo.
    And why is all that corn being grown in fields labelled with its patent number?
    On the other hand some towns had resource recovery centres instead of town dumps and had good recycling practices. The tourists were the problem. But NZ needs the tourists.

    Wgtn • Since Jun 2008 • 3229 posts Report Reply

  • Islander,

    tiramisu - if made with real coffee & genuine ladyfingers...I used to (in my travelling days) test a restaurant for *desserts only* by tiramisu/zabglione/black forest cherry cake -which are the only desserts I like, obtainable from a restaurant (my mother makes brillant ones, but aue! she isnt cloned, yet.)

    Odd, that two of them are from John Anecdote (or whatever his name is)'s country-

    Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    tiramisu......yummmmm

    Ah! I see. But isn't it a bit of a stretch? I might as well say Sacha reminds me of sachertorte.

    mmmmhhh, sachertorte... damn!

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    genuine ladyfingers

    Oh, my mother is very particular in her definition of those. Not only from a particular tiny town in her ancestral land, but from a particular bakery. We used to buy them in huge boxes of about - I don't know, perhaps 500 hundred biscuits each? When she was a girl she devised a lovely variant on tiramisu in the shape of a flower (you cut the ladyfingers diagonally after they've been soaked, then you piece them back together matching thin end with thin end so that each pair of halves forms the shape of a petal - very ingenious).

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

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