Entries from July 2004 ↓

Checked out the website for a new clothing store I’ve seen on my way to get coffee every day – and have discovered it is clothes for ‘realistically shaped’ women and has cat connections so will definitely have to pay it a visit. It’s Nelson based – MadCat Fashions.

Uh-oh, another cafe on the black list for serving soft toast and rock-hard butter – sorry Replete, but you’re in my bad books. Snaps for having peanut butter though, even though not offered on the menu.

A treacherous day on North Island roads which had the potential to disrupt our plans to drive up to Taupo but the Desert Road which had been closed by snow last night, re-opened at 12.00. After the obligatory latte at the Brown Sugar Cafe in Taihape (which is expanding) we encountered snow on the road just out of Taihape. Very exciting. I don’t remember seeing it so white although probably did as a kid.

I’m a sucker for cat stories and enjoyed one from Stuff this morning – about a cat who has a wool fetish and has been going around Johnsonville stealing socks and jersies off the line and stashing them under a bed at it’s house! (I would’ve provided the link but when stories are archived off Stuff or become a certain age the link doesn’t work any more – probably because they want you to pay to search archived stories – and that’s you’re only option because their keyword search is just a text box for purely asthetic reasons. It does nothing.)

Environment Bay of Plenty website finally offers decent updates on the flooding.

Concerned today about family in the flood ravaged Bay of Plenty – they have no water or power but the phone still works which is great because it’s so hard to get news coverage! There were no ‘news updates’ on the hour on a Sunday on NZ TV and NZ is obviously not big enough for a dedicated news channel. Also tried the web but all the main news sites were so slow with updates and the whole country seemed far more interested in the rugby victory the night before…GRRRR.

Such and awful day meant we were “allowed” to go to a girlie movie in the middle of the day so we saw the very enjoyable “Prince and Me” – good predictable romance. Also had another risotto experiment – this time pumpkin risotto – very tasty and very orange.

Had coffee downstairs at Rahzoo cafe (Waring Taylor St) this morning – a Supreme place – and it’s pretty good. Hard to tell from the outside but the coffee is consistent – again, lattes a bit weak so tried a flat white, but that was a bit strong. I still think Supreme tastes best when it’s a double or longer extraction in a latte cup. Went to our first film of the Film Festival tonight – ‘Super Size Me‘ – which was pretty interesting and the guy doing the experiment (Morgan) was very watchable. Some alarming statistics and footage of obese Americans. Also tried the new cafe Finc on Wakefield St – still suffering from only-been-serving-dinners-for-three-nights jitters but there is potential. The menu does not exactly suit my ‘bland’ palette but the mozarella and tomato tart was pretty nice.

Still reeling from the lack of orange day yesterday I decided that we had to have lovely orange pumpkin in our dinner. So taking a break from the norm, we attempted a new recipe even though we had guests coming to dinner. Chicken, broccoli, butternut squash and toasted almond risotto – was a huge hit. The only downside to cooking risotto for guests is that one of you has to stand in the kitchen stirring it the whole time. We’ve now had several great tasting risottos from our fab risotto book (with an orange cover under the dust jacket!) ‘100 Great Risottos‘.

I am now so synonymous with orange that today when I was wearing none (that was visible) everyone commented on it – and someone I know didn’t even recognise me until I was right up in their face! I want to know when Microsoft will put orange on their Outlook colour palette so I can write orange emails.