Our dining room  at home, currently resembles a bike shop as Rick and Courteney get organised for her trip to Australia - bike bags, wheel bags, rollers and all sorts of assorted screws and bits and pieces are awaiting being packed. They'll drive up to Auckland soon and stay overnite near to the airport, so she gets a good nites sleep before leaving in the early morning, and Rick will head for home, hopefully getting back in time to get the kitchen organised before the start of the cookschool at 10am.

 Courteney needs to talk and discuss, and challenge every little step of the way, so its a prolonged and very vocal process. I'm not quite sure how she copes in Australia without her father on hand to do her bidding! Trying to keep within the weight parameters with packing is causing alot of discussion currently... and I have noted that she's a lot more focused on keeping things as light as possible now she knows that the charge for excess luggage will be coming out of her bank account, rather than ours.

She'll be racing in 2 Tours, one in  Canberra and one in Adelaide, as part of the NZ U19 squad - a big challenge for her that she's very excited about. The local cycling club have fund raised for her, for this trip - and their generosity and enthusiasm for Courteney, has meant a huge amount to Rick and I.  There's alot of people out there who feel they have a vested interest in how she goes, and rather than feeling that as a weight, I think she's using it as a spur to dig deep. And from our perspective theres nothing quite like seeing one of your children decked out in NZ colours to make the heart swell pretty significantly...I'm sorry I'm going to miss the spectacle of them all at the airport tomorrow morning.

We had the second in the current series of Wine Options last nite - and I'm including the picture below of the current score board totals, purely becos we are currently top team,  and I have a nasty feeling that our hold on that position might be a little tenuous! Its been a number of years since we've featured in the top places ( not that we're competitive!), so we rather enjoying our short burst in the sunlight, while we can. Although I am trying really hard not to crow! Doug initially sent me thru the photo at the end of the first week, when their team was beating us by .70  of a point, but he's finally relinquished the one he knew I wanted - which I think is a far better look!

Good friends of ours, the Leighs and Gerrands started Wine Options back in June 1997, and Brenda dug thru her notes to inform me that the first wine, back then, was a 92 Grove Mill Lansdowne Chardonnay.

The format has changed over the years, and now the 8 teams all bring a wine, for which they've devised 5 multichoice questions, and we get to try the wines one by one, in teams, and answer the questions, which cover the obvious, ie

'What grape type is this?

a. Chardonnay
b. Viognier
c. Pinot Gris

 through to some other rather more escoteric ones.

All intended to be good fun, and I have to say it is. I find the process fascinating, becos you are trying wines with absolutely no idea of what it can be - although sometimes we do focus rather too much on what the various people are most likely to have brought- and are therefore reliant on your palate and nose and wine memory, or, as sometimes happens, pure guess work. You can be right, absolutely spot on, and you can be horribly and utterly wrong. There is no room for big egos, and I've also learnt to avoid saying ' this is definitly a...' becos you have a reasonable chance of being 100% incorrect. And then looking like a total prat.

Wine is such a huge field, and I have a tendency to get in my comfort zone and stay drinking only the styles of wine that I like, so its good to be challenged occasionally, and to try things that I wouldn't normally in the ordinary course of events - all becomes useful gist for me when I'm working on the restaurant wine list.

We have the Dog Point Winemakers dinner here next Thursday - and will sit down probably tomorrow nite when Rick gets back from Auckland, and try the wines and then start compiling food matches that we think are going to work with them. They are extremely elegant wines, so we want the food to complement rather than challenge the flavours of the wines, and that will take a bit of fine tuning.

Whereas with Wine Options, we do a very simple dinner for everyone, once the questions are over and the scores are tallyed - the tables all get joined up, and people open other wine they've bought, and we help ourselves to large platters of food - fish pie last nite, followed by sticky toffee pudding - lots of starch to soak up the alcohol!
Easy, nice and satisfying. A bit like the nite in general really.

I'm not sure what the acreage of the land we have here is - but by  comparison to what the lady who wrote this book lives in, in inner city Oakland, USA, it is substantial. Which makes me now feel incredibly lazy, becos we could/should be doing so much more with it, if what she has achieved is any sort of guideline.

She and her partner, started with a beehive, and a vegetable garden created from raised beds placed on the concrete pad on an empty lot next to the flat they were renting. They then got chickens for their eggs, and progressed onto 'meat' birds- birds intended to be dinner; chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys. Rabbits were next, and then 2 pigs, completed her progression into what she called being an 'Urban Farmer'.

Her ideas of living sustainably, make my occasional self pat on the back when I remember to take the green bag over to the supermarket, somewhat pathetic.

Our only foray into lifestock was a couple of years ago, when we bought 2 piglets from friends and kept them for a few months, always with the intention of getting them slaughtered for the meat. Owning a restaurant with a regular supply of food wastage, made feeding them easy - just a twice a day committment that we had to make. Novella's experience was far different as she describes her epic effort to keep the pigs fed in the middle of a city, without resorting to processed animal food. They 'dumpster dived' every couple of nites. That is, fossicked for food that had been thrown out from restaurants and bakeries, in the bins out the back, and when she decided the pigs needed more protein, from a fish shop.

Not something I could ever imagine myself doing, I'd be totally paralysed by the fear of what people would think,  but that doesn't mean I don't respect her for the choices she made. Quite extraordinary really.

What she did, and what she achieved, in an area better known for driveby shootings is nothing short of amazing, and it is impossible not to be inspired.
 
Rick's been building a raised garden down in the old pig pen, when we now also have the worm farm, becos its an enclosed space that we can keep the dogs out off, which is handy when you don't want vegetables trampled underfoot by overly energetic animals - but we've been pottering along on that without a real sense of urgency. Having read this book, I now feel embarassed at the amount of bare land that we could be using so much more productively, and I'll be going for a wander with the dogs in the morning to take stock...

The book is a delight - and I've just discovered her blog, so will be checking in with that for regular updates, just to help keep myself motivated. Hmm...

I've been working my way thru this book for over a year, its been over at the restaurant in amongst the stack of books in the bar, and is what I dip into, either early in the nite when we're waiting for customers, or, on the rare occasion these days, when I'm locking up, on those nites when tables are comfortably ensconsed and drawing out their departure.

It is a beautifully written, wonderfully descriptive selection of his personal top 102 restaurants in Paris. He covers all styles of eating, from the 3 star, thru to the corner bistros. It is his passion for good food  and a warm welcoming ambience that define what is a good restaurant. Not how fashionable it is.

It came as a shock to Rick and I, when we finally made it to Paris some years ago, that it was possible to eat badly in a city that we thought would never cede to average restaurants. But our first dinner out was awful, and we had all our illusions shattered, so after that we only ate at restaurants recommended in Patricia Wells " Good Eating in Paris". And even then my husband insisted on walking past the restaurants we were planning on going to that nite, just so he could do a visual check. Certain signs of seriousness reassured him, like white linen on the tables for example.

Ironically for all that,  probably the best meal we had was a lunch, when Rick dragged the girls and I into Guy Savoys 'Les Bookinistas", which we had stumbled upon quite by chance, and for which I didn't feel anywhere nearly dressed up enough. But the food was sublime and the service impeccible even though our clothes and walking shoes clearly denoted us as touristes!

We got caught by one of Patricias recommendations becos it had obviously changed hands since the book had been published, but we still fortunately had a very pleasant meal. I guess thats the problem with any of these books - there are no guarantees that when you get to go to the restaurants mentioned that the ownership is going to still be the same as when it was written about.

But this book is a rhapsody about eating out well - surrounded by an educated public who love good food, and understand how to behave in restaurants.  His descriptions of the other diners are delightful:

''The Japanese trio sitting next to us were, in fact, the most elegant people I'd seen in a long time, and studying them occasionally while we nibbled gougeres, and discussed the menu, I was reminded that elegance is the art of omission, something almost everyone else in the room appeared to understand, too. A handsome older southern woman in a simple but immaculately tailored black dress with a square neckline wore a simple choker of turquoise beads nearly the same color as her eyes, and her distinguished, rather leonine hsuband sat on the other side of Bruno. ...Together, our neighbours formed a quietly glamorous tableau that only heightened the implicit exclusivity of being seated in this cosseted dining room with caramel colored wood paneling and polite modern art on the walls.:'

Other customers, decor, wait staff, food and the ambience are all examined and described in fascinating detail, and his passion for the art of eating out and eating well, is beautifully captured. A perfect book to dip in and out off, as I've been doing, and I'm quite sorry its come to an end.

But something tells me it will be retrieved from the book shelf when our next trip to Paris becomes closer to reality, and a long list will be compiled, becos I share his enthusiasm totally!

This book arrived from Amazon yest morning, and by 6.30pm when I headed over to the restaurant I'd devoured it, while perched in an armchair nursing a snoozing puppy, with the afternoon sun streaming in on us both. All very pleasant. 

As was the book - although it made me cry ( which is easy to achieve - as my daughters regularly tell me somewhat disparingly ' you even cried when Bambi's mother was killed".  But of course!). And that meant I had swollen eyes when I went over to work, which meant I got one or two sideways looks...

The story of a cookschool held in a restaurant kitchen on the Monday nites that the restaurant is closed - and each chapter focuses on one of the class participants and their reasons for coming to the classes, which are run over consequtive Monday nites for a number of months, and what life changes they go thru.

Delicately written, in a light feminine style, it reminded me a little of "Like Water for Chocolate" , where an awakening appreciation of cooking and of food, is seen as something that can wrought other significant changes in peoples lifes. As fond as I am of flavour and food, I don't necessarily believe life  and relationships can be quite so easily  sorted thru a shared love of good food. That felt a little contrived, but the writing was sweet and the underlying premise was lovely, and I must have had some underlying emotion bubbling away that needed a release, cos I wept at the sad bits, and felt much better for it!

Sweet and lovely reading - and totally appropriate for what I needed yesterday!

Well 2 quiet nites actually. I knew when I cleared the answerphone after being closed Monday, and we only had 3 messages that it didn't bode well for the week.

You can kind of get a feeling for how things are going to go depending on the level of bookings, and by lunchtime yest we only had one booking for last nite and one for tonite. The rest of the week was looking a bit better thank god...
Is it this icy cold snap thats come thru? Is it becos the hyperbole around swine flu is making everyone wary of being in a public place and catching some thing contagious? I don't think so. Regardless of all the extravagant claims in the media I really find it hard to believe that people would be modifying their behaviour to that degree, at this point.

I've worked the restaurant with Nicki tonite - and actually enjoyed the pace. We picked up a few more bookings and then had 3 casuals during the nite, ie. tables that walk in without a booking, which tonite just wasn't a problem. The heatings been on all day, and Rhonda pulled the curtains before she went home in the afternoon, so the restaurant was warm and toasty. I swear my toes got frostbite though when I walked over from the house. It is so very cold out there.

Times like this I am extremely grateful for our beautiful, heavy curtains, that take all the glass chill away from the windows.

And nites like this can be rather enjoyable - once I get beyond the notion that no-one loves us anymore. The tempo in the restaurant is different - and sometimes that variation can be stimulating, just by sheer virtue of the change.

 Ricks been working on a number of recipes - for Diane Ponzio's lunch on Sunday; the cookschool series which starts next week, wine options which begin on Monday nite; and the Dog Point dinner that we have in a couple of weeks - so he's been doing lots of reading and giving recipes to the guys in the kitchen to trial - there's time in the day for that when nites aren't as busy as normal, and its an important part of research for the restaurant.


The pace slows down, and you get some contemplative time, which once I've adjusted to it, can actually be rather refreshing. And today its been very useful, becos I've been on puppy babysitting duties - being around as our little boy gets to socialise with the 2 older dogs and discovers that the rules have changed from when he froliced with his siblings. The hierachy is different now, and his performance as an energiser bunny is met with some disdain by the older dogs. But they're sorting it. He's also having to learn the house rules, and I'd forgotten just how much attention they demand, when they're inside.

He is, however, no longer sleeping in his kennel...

So - quiet nites do not have a positive impact on the bank balance, and that is one aspect that always makes me wince. But I also figure that since you can't do much about it, you may as well focus on the positives, and enjoy the space to consider other stuff.

And that for me now means curling up with John Thornes book about intuitive cooking...

Been a big kind of day. We drove down to Turangi with our last 2 puppies in order to rendevous with people who were driving up from Paraparumu and Palmerston North to take them home. I felt like we were engaged in some kind of illicit transaction as handfuls of cash were handed over for canine merchandise, and things fetched out of the boot of the car...

We'd got there early so we could run and feed them, prior to the continuation of their journey in new cars with new people, going to new homes. And even though I knew that the time was right for them to embark on this next stage, I have to confess that the heartstrings were definitly plucked at the sight of those little faces with quizzical looks being whisked away...

But all 6 puppies have gone to homes of Weimaraner lovers - people who adore the breed as much as we do, and who were  delighted with the puppies - and what has been a pretty intense 8 weeks in our lives, has come to a happy conclusion, for which I am very grateful. There was a week or so there, where we still had 2 to sell, and we were beginning to wonder what exactly Plan B was, if we didn't get takers before they turned 8 weeks old. As much as we love dogs, we didn't think it was necessarily a very wise idea to keep 3 siblings - the need for dominance would have made life a bit tricky, not to mention just the sheer physical output required to keep 5 dogs happy.

So we're very happy with the outcome - we now have 3 dogs, which will become 2 in the near future, cos the older girl isn't going to be with us for too much longer, and that is a number we feel comfortable coping with.

The little boy that we've kept is currently having a cuddle on Courteneys knee - enjoying his first evening in the house. The 2 older dogs have eyed him warily as he tried to snuggle up on their beanbags - the mother dog will allow it, but the older dog is most indignant, and he's gradually getting the message that that is no go territory.

Rick is adamant he's going back out to the kennel to sleep tonite - an opinion his daughter is debating  somewhat vigorously with him, but I get the feeling she's on a hiding to nowhere.

We came home via lunch in Taupo at a new Deli that an long term customer of ours, Joan McBeath, has opened, Salute in Horomatangi St, which was just delightful. Deli/ cafe - with a small selection of Italian wines, and Bollinger, by the exquisite glass full; a range of cheeses including the marvellous Clevedon Buffalo line that I'm currently raving about to anyone who will stand still long enough to listen; and a lineup of lovely provisions - all presented in a simple, elegant space with opera music playing, and the most gorgeous hand basin in the bathroom that I have ever seen. We will go back...

Came home and took our little man for his first run down below with the 2 older dogs - his first excursion out into the wide open space, all of which he took to with total aplomb.

Its going to feel very strange getting up tomorrow morning to only one little body, urgently bursting to get out of the kennel - not the tumble of puppies that we've been used too, but am sure he, and we, will adjust pretty quickly. In fact the little tyke is currently showing no signs whatsoever of missing his siblings...

When we bought the restaurant back in 1986,  it looked like this,

There was a small gravel courtyard to the rear (with that nasty grey gravel, and nasty plastic chairs and tables that I refused to use - I can't remember what happened to them, but I know I am always bemused to see in photos of otherwise very cute French cafes in rural villages in France the ubiquitous ugly plastic chairs! ), and surrounding the area were large banana palms, that gradually become bedraggled and ugly as the frosts and winds got to them. They also had the added disadvantage of attracting mosquitos to the pools of stagnant water that formed where the enormous leaves connected with the trunks, so after a couple of years we pulled them out.

We're very adapt however at throwing weeding debris over the bank at the edge of the courtyard, and I suspect that as a result of that habit, we've had self sown banana trees crop up down in the gully. Prominant enough to attract alot of comment-especially from overseas visitors who think they're some sort of NZ speciality. We have a bush full of glorious NZ natives, which I point out to these people, but sometimes they take some convincing that the bananas are a recent addition.

 Right at the moment there's a veritable miniforestation of them, and I took a photo one afternoon when I'd parked in the restaurant carpark and was walking over to the house, and was stopped in my tracks by the way the light was shining on them. Quite lovely.

They're not fruiting ones - we were given some of those by friends, years ago, but they never developed any fruit. I suspect the climatic conditions just weren't conducive to it developing, but we haven't minded their presence a little further away from the seated area, just becos of their visual impact.

Last nite the guys tried out a recipe, as a special for the nite, that Rick had seen in Bruce Aidalls,  Complete Pork Cooking,   where a shoulder of pork is wrapped in banana leaves and slow roasted. We're continuing to get whole carcasses from Free Range Farm, and are been made to come up with interesting ways of using the meat, which is making us cast our net wide. Not a bad process at all really.

Not sure who clambered down the bank to pick the leaves - but when I got to see the pork it had been tied in to neat bundles and roasted for about 4/5 hours. The meat was beautifully tender, and ever so slightly perfumed. A simple, lovely way of eating this magnificent pork. I bought some of the crispy end pieces back over to the house to munch on as I got the puppies supper ready. Just what I needed at the end of a Saturday nite that hadn't been busy becos the bloody All Blacks were playing at 7.30pm. We had our Saturday nite on Friday nite - when everyone decided to come out, so they could be home in front of the TV on Saturday. Hopeless really!
But tonite, Sunday nite, is looking pleasantly busy also, for this time of year, and I suspect that is  also related to the fact people didn't eat out last nite, which is the traditionally busy nite of the week. Ah well maybe things will average out respectably over the week anyway...

Reading is something that I simply have to do. I pick up a book most nites before I sleep becos I must. And I've never really considered why that should be, but am just very thankful that access to a constant pile of books and magazines is never a problem for me.

This afternoon Rick and Courteney, who's home for the weekend have gone of to do one of the local cycling club races, and I'm about to head down to the worm farm below with a bucket of slops and the dogs for company, but prior to that I've had a quick flick thru my latest pickup of weekly magazines - with which I could quite nonchalantly while away an afternoon, regardless of how much housework should rightfully be requiring my attention.

The magazines I get are a mix, but for obvious reasons mostly food and wine related. I get something different from them all, on a whole host of levels, and usually come away  from a reading session with a renewed sense of satisfaction that our careers revolve around such an immensely satisfying field. We've been around a long time now and its not unusual to be reading about people we know or have met - and the trajectories that people take in their lives can make for interesting conjecture. Conversations between Rick and I, along the lines of ' wasn't he the guy who was at...? I wonder what happened there and why...'etc, happen quite regularly. Its amazing the amount of airbrushing that goes on, as people recount their lives for publication.  Not that we gossip of course!

There are however aspects to some of the magazines that catch and annoy - I've been quoting in the current cookschool series, my sense of irritation at the latest Metro, where it mentioned 'our' top 50 restaurants in Auckland for the year, and then proceeded to prattle on about what 'we' think restaurants should and shouldn't be concentrating on. All in a tone that I personally find smug and patronising. But I read it and I absorb, and move on. As you do.

The Australian magazines are very firmly into the cult of the chef as a celebrity - so many of the younger guys are working prodigiously hard to parlay their year or so of working with Jamie Oliver into a mega media career for themselves. It all feels so contrived and determined and branded. And like bloody hard work really. Simply to stay fashionable and in the public's eye. It is the complete anthithesis to what my husband considers important, and I respect him enormously for that sense of values.

Which may be in part why I have loved this book so very, very much. John Thorne is simply the best food writer I have ever read. I would put his eloquence and wit ahead of even Elizabeth David and MFK Fisher. I suspect it was the journal Art of Eating which led me to Mr Thorne in the first place becos he doesn't feature much in mainstream food media, mainly I suspect becos he is the complete opposite of fashionable and stylish.
Postively plodding in fact. But oh, what gloriously detailed minutiae of detail you gain from every small step that he takes.

This book is an exploration of cooking in America, which if I had have known that at the start would possibly have stopped me picking it up, becos good food and America seems to me to be a contradiction in terms, unless you're talking about Alice Waters or Thomas Keller.

How wrong I was.  And how thoroughly and critically John Thorne covers the subject of food from an anthropological and historical point of view. But also from the perspective of the very honest pleasures to be derived from pottering around in a simple kitchen, cooking food for the sole purpose of nourishment and satisfaction. Not to impress - to show off your access to rare or exotic ingredients. No,  simply for the love of creating something that is going to taste good. The ultimate of all food really, I would have thought.

He writes with an eloquence that makes me almost weep with envy - whole passages I've gone back and reread, becos the subtle, underlying humour sometimes needs a little cajoaling to come to the surface.
There is nothing slick or shallow in this style. It has demanded quite a committment from me to read thru all the essays - the print is tiny and the writing requires you to sit up and think about what you're reading. It demands a response - and I've thrived on that.

He has made me question a whole heap of my attitudes to what I cook and why, and I have found that process totally invigorating. A little bit like a spring clean, when you get to sweep away the debris and reestablish a core set of values, set by you, and not  by what you think others may expect of you.

He has totally altered my perception of food in America - I won't let myself get carried away with trite generalisations about fast food and massive agribusiness anymore. It has been a pleasure to be so informed. And the only thing that makes the fact I've finally come to the end of the book bearable, is the fact I had the foresight to order anything else written by him at the same stage, so I have 'Simple Cooking' sitting by the bed, waiting to be picked up. Bugger!  And I have also just discovered that he has a website, from which I've ordered his magazine. A girl can never get too many magazines I figure!

The wind has dropt a little and the sun's come out, so will take this load of slops down and see if we've managed to cajoale the worms to move from the original bed into the second one that Ricks just dug.