Saw this great photo on stuff.co.nz just now – we have a few lonely big mountains in NZ and they look stunning when they stick straight up out of the earth covered in snow. This is Mt Taranaki – if this is covered head to foot then it must be really white in the South Island.

While Nikau is closed, they’ve started up a blog, medicine for those of us that are pining!

I’m so excited to see that I’m featured in their list of ‘Stuff we like’!!

Our favourite winter comfort food at the moment is a pilaf – we usually do a great pumpkin/almond/ginger one but this is a bit more ‘pilafy’ in my mind because it’s got currants in it. It’s from the Quick Smart section of this month’s Cuisine - Chicken Pilaf. The Mister was a bit dubious at first ‘what are currants anyway?’ and I thought the turmeric might remind me too much of dinners at my student flat but it’s delicious (as an aside I never realised until now that there was another ‘r’ buried in tuRmeric!) A big old pot of rice, chicken, carrots, pine nuts, currants, onions, garlic, chicken stock. If we could get a small apartment-sized packet of celery, not some huge trunk of it, then we might include the celery as well but to date have left it out!

It’s very important to do as the recipe says and leave the lid on the full time and not lift it under any circumstances!