Catch Up Post
No, not that kind of ketchup - Sophie insists on calling that "to-mah-to sauce" now anyway. At least Wattie's, the big national brand of tomato sauce, is owned by Heinz so we're keeping things somewhat in the family! Anyway (sorry, this post is already meandering and we're still in the first paragraph) I've been keeping a list of things I've wanted to blog about and it's not getting any smaller, so I thought I'd wrap up a few of them in one fell swoop while Brandie is out for "ladies night" at a friend's house.
Marmite
"NZ's original yeast spread" (as opposed to Vegemite, the Australian brand) looks like the most delicious dark chocolate icing you've ever seen. Only it's really salty and loaded with vitamins. Kids here eat it on sandwiches like we eat peanut butter back home.
Unlike Steve, I love it. Total convert. Slap a little on a cracker with some avocado and maybe a slice of tomato, you've got one tasty treat. You just have to go into it realizing it's not some new version of Nutella and it won't be a shock. Some Kiwis claim Vegemite is less strong and more enjoyable (probably at risk to their citizenship), but I'm happy to stand by New Zealand in this case.
Weet-Bix
I'm a cereal hound, ask anyone: my favorite part of college was having cereal with every meal. So it came as a major surprise to discover that the most-beloved breakfast cereal of New Zealand (the packaging claims 330 million are consumed in NZ each year) was completely inedible. Add milk, instant slop. Even crumbling it over yogurt you wind up picking more out of your teeth (it turns chewy and sticky) than in your belly. Thankfully I've discovered Vogel's line (including my favorite, the delectable Summer Crunch) or I'd probably have sworn off cereal altogether by now.
Maple Syrup
Growing up, I walked past maple trees hung with buckets every day on the way to the bus stop. Our neighbor at the bottom of the road collected gallons of sap and boiled it down every year to sell for a pittance (by NZ standards) every spring. It never occurred to me (or even if I was told this directly, it didn't stick) that nearly all of the world's maple syrup comes from North America, and must be shipped everywhere else. Now that we are here, that fact is painfully apparent: the stuff is expensive! My sister just shipped us a bottle (32oz of Vermont's finest) that would easily have cost us NZD$40 - thank you, Sarah Boo! We'll be savoring every drop.
Heating
Last winter (the northern hemisphere one, with average lows of 15˚F and snowfall often measuring in feet), my step-brother updated the thermostat in our house so we could set different temperatures depending on our schedule. We usually warmed up the house in the morning by bringing the heat up to 70, ran it on 68 for most of the day and let it run down to 66 at night. Brrr, right? We thought we were being pretty conservative and energy-conscious.
Fast-forward to Winter #2 (southern hemisphere, with 90mph winds, sideways rain and occasional frost). Insulation is only just catching on here, and most houses rely on multiple space heaters cranking round the clock to call themselves habitable. Some people just "harden up" and go without, like my office-mate who remarked one day "I woke up this morning and looked at the thermometer: it said 41˚ so I went back to sleep." That's inside his house. On the other hand, there are horror stories involving unsuspecting transplants like us getting billed $1000 for a month's worth of utilities.
Josie is still prone to lose her covers in the middle of the night so we're not quite ready to go without heat altogether, but neither are we living with the extravagance of 70˚ mornings: the house is set to 16˚C most of the time (right around 60˚F) and on special occasions we crank it up to 17. Our extraordinary house (thank you Marilyn!) has insulation and central heat, and we still have a pretty hefty utility bill.
Books
Ok last one here before I bore you to death: cheers to anyone who's still reading! I've mentioned before I have a bad habit of buying books - the bulk of our move from California probably could have been sent book-rate and saved us a few bucks. New Zealand has wholly cured me of this, at least for the time that we are here: books are prohibitively expensive (close to NZD$30 for a nice paperback) so we've been hitting the library pretty hard.
That's it - back to my list, and I'll try to upload some new pictures before calling it a night here. The girls have both been sick for the past week or so, so sleep has been more precious than maple syrup here and I'll probably regret staying up even this late tomorrow! Sophie seems to be mostly over it now, but Josie is still having a hard time and waking up every hour or so in pain - she was already up once while I was writing this.
Marmite
"NZ's original yeast spread" (as opposed to Vegemite, the Australian brand) looks like the most delicious dark chocolate icing you've ever seen. Only it's really salty and loaded with vitamins. Kids here eat it on sandwiches like we eat peanut butter back home.
Unlike Steve, I love it. Total convert. Slap a little on a cracker with some avocado and maybe a slice of tomato, you've got one tasty treat. You just have to go into it realizing it's not some new version of Nutella and it won't be a shock. Some Kiwis claim Vegemite is less strong and more enjoyable (probably at risk to their citizenship), but I'm happy to stand by New Zealand in this case.
Weet-Bix
I'm a cereal hound, ask anyone: my favorite part of college was having cereal with every meal. So it came as a major surprise to discover that the most-beloved breakfast cereal of New Zealand (the packaging claims 330 million are consumed in NZ each year) was completely inedible. Add milk, instant slop. Even crumbling it over yogurt you wind up picking more out of your teeth (it turns chewy and sticky) than in your belly. Thankfully I've discovered Vogel's line (including my favorite, the delectable Summer Crunch) or I'd probably have sworn off cereal altogether by now.
Maple Syrup
Growing up, I walked past maple trees hung with buckets every day on the way to the bus stop. Our neighbor at the bottom of the road collected gallons of sap and boiled it down every year to sell for a pittance (by NZ standards) every spring. It never occurred to me (or even if I was told this directly, it didn't stick) that nearly all of the world's maple syrup comes from North America, and must be shipped everywhere else. Now that we are here, that fact is painfully apparent: the stuff is expensive! My sister just shipped us a bottle (32oz of Vermont's finest) that would easily have cost us NZD$40 - thank you, Sarah Boo! We'll be savoring every drop.
Heating
Last winter (the northern hemisphere one, with average lows of 15˚F and snowfall often measuring in feet), my step-brother updated the thermostat in our house so we could set different temperatures depending on our schedule. We usually warmed up the house in the morning by bringing the heat up to 70, ran it on 68 for most of the day and let it run down to 66 at night. Brrr, right? We thought we were being pretty conservative and energy-conscious.
Fast-forward to Winter #2 (southern hemisphere, with 90mph winds, sideways rain and occasional frost). Insulation is only just catching on here, and most houses rely on multiple space heaters cranking round the clock to call themselves habitable. Some people just "harden up" and go without, like my office-mate who remarked one day "I woke up this morning and looked at the thermometer: it said 41˚ so I went back to sleep." That's inside his house. On the other hand, there are horror stories involving unsuspecting transplants like us getting billed $1000 for a month's worth of utilities.
Josie is still prone to lose her covers in the middle of the night so we're not quite ready to go without heat altogether, but neither are we living with the extravagance of 70˚ mornings: the house is set to 16˚C most of the time (right around 60˚F) and on special occasions we crank it up to 17. Our extraordinary house (thank you Marilyn!) has insulation and central heat, and we still have a pretty hefty utility bill.
Books
Ok last one here before I bore you to death: cheers to anyone who's still reading! I've mentioned before I have a bad habit of buying books - the bulk of our move from California probably could have been sent book-rate and saved us a few bucks. New Zealand has wholly cured me of this, at least for the time that we are here: books are prohibitively expensive (close to NZD$30 for a nice paperback) so we've been hitting the library pretty hard.
That's it - back to my list, and I'll try to upload some new pictures before calling it a night here. The girls have both been sick for the past week or so, so sleep has been more precious than maple syrup here and I'll probably regret staying up even this late tomorrow! Sophie seems to be mostly over it now, but Josie is still having a hard time and waking up every hour or so in pain - she was already up once while I was writing this.
Sooo.. Bob Miner might have been living it up had he been able to tap the NZ market when he tapped his maple trees?
Yeah forget natural gas rights - maple syrup is liquid gold! If only Mr. Miner had had an international exporter, Howard Hill might have been paved by now.
By the way, it took a LOT of restraint not to throw in a certain infamous story about Grandpa and maple syrup collection..
Thanks for sparing me, I owe you! I was reading with one eye, kind of waiting for the sins of my youth to be exposed to the wide world web.