Cooking for Kiwis

No posts until today because I have been licking my wounds.  I tried to impress the Department of Preventive & Social Medicine faculty, staff, and students by making breakfast pizza for morning tea on Monday.  In my previous experience in the workplace, coworkers absolutely adored the person who brought in breakfast pizza to share; I think I've even heard of a few people getting promoted simply because they brought in such a treat.  Yet, instead of accolades, requests for the recipe, and guarantees that the rest of my three years in the Department will be smooth sailing, a few people said it was a "nice" idea.

I actually called out my co-advisor when I noticed he hadn't tried some, but then I had to confess that my flatmate didn't say it was very good either.

I grabbed the overnight pizza dough recipe from Epicurious.com.  Surely, with a 3.9/4 rating, it would be the best pizza crust they have ever tasted.  Topping it with scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese, and diced tomatoes, green peppers and onions could only tantalize their taste buds even more.  To be honest, I was expecting to create something so delicious that it'd overwhelm people to the point of recreating that unforgettable scene Meg Ryan had in "When Harry Met Sally."

I'm pretty sure I wasn't the problem here.  I tested out a very basic peanut butter blossom cookie recipe a few weeks ago and thought it tasted like crap.  Seriously, how does one screw up a recipe with the most delicious ingredients known to man: peanut butter and chocolate?

I blame the ingredients.  The peanut butter isn't the same as it is in the U.S. - there's not enough sugar.  The flour I used was actually wholemeal flour and had a flaky consistency instead of a powdery consistency.  Not good when the texture of your cookies or pizza dough is at stake.

In any event, I'd like to give myself an "A" for effort here based on the before picture:

And the after picture:

I am determined to redeem myself.  How can the girl who once hosted Muffin Mondays at the Office for Aging be known in New Zealand as the one who bombs breakfast pizza?

Please, dear readers, take pity on me and send me your fool proof recipes.  Preferably recipes that don't get warped into something-that-could-have-tasted-good-if-it-weren't-for-the-fact-that-I-have-to-covert-cooking- temperatures-and-measuring units-and-use-non-American-made-food-products.

Cheers!

AOTEAROA (NEW ZEALAND) 2012. Shot with Fujifilm Finepix X100.

Brownie points if you can find the bit of footage from Dunedin.

No challenge too big or too small.

My flatmate, Kate, knows that I still have trouble crossing the road (yes, even after two months!), so what in the world would possess her to trust me with getting us safely to Larnach Castle in the rental car?

It came down to it being a beautiful day in Dunedin and us having three hours left before the rental company would come pick up the car.

Besides, what could go wrong when you have great little reminders to "Keep Left"?

I'd like to say that I adjusted quickly to driving on the left side of the road, but that would be lying.  Luckily, the only casualty was a little piece of curb when I lost concentration trying to figure out how to attempt a traffic circle.  Kate tolerated my slip up well.

It took a great deal of concentration to keep my side of the car as close to the center line as possible.  On the left side of us was just about a foot of shoulder before the road dropped off into Otago Harbour. 

For reasons unknown to me, every cyclist and his brother was out that day.  Eventually, we found ourselves in a worst case scenario: cyclists on my left, car on my right, and cyclists to the right of that car.  There were way too many people trying to share the same width of road, so I took the next logical step. I braked to a full stop.  Kate tried to coerce me into applying pressure to the gas pedal, but I didn't trust my ability to stay perfectly straight.  Soon, all was well with the world and we found a place to pull over and catch our breath.

In no time, I was in a driving "zone" - Kate didn't have to wave me back to the center of our side of the road and I even mustered up the courage to drive around a tractor chugging along at about 15 kilometers per hour - hot damn, I was a rebel without a cause!  

We arrived at the castle and expected to be able to hop out, take a picture, get back in the car and be back to Abbey in time for Sunday brunch.  Alas, there was a $12.50 charge per person to get out and walk around the grounds.  Being a self-proclaimed cheapskate, I winced at the thought of parting with the money, but did it because I just knew that people reading my blog would love to see what the heck we were trying to drive to.

So, here it is:

No, really, that's it.

I think the best description for it is "cute".  Hey, they can't all be Neuschwanstein Castle.

At the very least, it had a nice view.

I believe we spent a grand total of 22 1/2 minutes on walking around taking pictures.  That's because it was very important to get back for brunch.  They serve the most amazingly crispy/greasy/delicious hashbrowns every Sunday for brunch - they are just not to be missed. 

The ride back was uneventful. 

Interestingly, and annoyingly, the one thing that just had to be done when we got back was lock the keys in the car (car rental company rule).  This was easier said than done.  Just why we had so much trouble is beyond me.  When I don't want the keys locked in the car I have no trouble locking them in, but on this particular day when the keys needed to be left in the glove compartment and locked into the car it was a real P.I.T.A.  

Kate tried and tried. I tried and tried.  We had all sorts of combinations going on with the locks on the doors and the lock on the driver's side.  Nothing worked.  Luckily, a fellow Abbey resident walked by and I figured he could outsmart the car.  And, he did.  Yes, at first he gave us a quizzical "You want to do what" look when we asked him, but the sense of relief on our face when the keys were finally locked inside left him with a sense of satisfaction.  I think I saw him puff out his chest with pride due to the fact that he could do what we couldn't.

Oddly enough, after our adventure Kate said I'm ready for the campervan on our grand finale trip in November.

"Drowsy Day" Day Trip

My super wicked uber fantastic flatmate, Kate, hired a car from Abel Rentals for the day. Yay!  The cost was $64 and we found three other people to split the cost of the rental and gas ($50 at about $2.20/liter) with us.

Alex, a fellow New Yorker, did a marvelous job of driving.  I think the "Stay Left" stickers on the windshield and dashboard helped, too.  We all got a chuckle out of him accidentally turning on the windshield wipers when he intended to use the turn signal, but I secretly knew I would have done the same.

We had a lovely drive to the Moeraki Boulders, just around an hour outside of Dunedin.  Maori legend suggests that the boulders are the remnants of a wrecked canoe.

It was low tide when we arrived.

This meant that there were some interesting things to find, besides the boulders.

We didn't have to walk far to get to the boulders.

They are not manmade.  Hard to believe, huh?

Some of them were really weird looking.

Often, people just chose to walk around, shoot a few photos, and call it a day.  Boring!

The night before, as I laid in bed trying to fall asleep, I tried to think of something different to do when we got to the boulders.  This is all I could come up with: 

I envisioned it looking way cooler than that, but I had a helluva time trying to stay in place because my feet kept slipping.

The shadows told us the sun was getting closer to the horizon; and, it was time to go and look for penguins.

We drove to Bushy Beach since it didn't cost anything - we'd have to pay at the other place.

We were mostly interested in the yellow-eyed penguins, but we saw some other local residents.

Hard to see, but the white dots are penguins...

Here's a closer look:

And, another look:

I really enjoyed Bushy Beach because you could see the penguins and enjoy the ocean.

There was a rumor online that the blue penguins sometimes walk across the parking lot of the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony.  So, we set off to see for ourselves.

On the way, we saw a ton of birds on a pier.  Some of us less knowledgeable dorks thought they were penguins, Kate set us straight - they were shag...

...enjoying the sunset...

The sign gave us hope, but we didn't see any blue penguins.

So, we took a walk down the pier.

I guess the shag didn't like having more company.

Well, one of them didn't mind us.

On the way back, we stopped at Lockies Takeaways for fish and chips to complete our road trip. Yum!