use real butter

I’m sleeping fitfully at night, which means, not well. By the wee hours, my brain can’t think anymore and so the natural thing to do is go lie down and sleep. Except I go lie down and continue to write and make figures and revisit sections already written – all in my head. I wake every hour or so with clenched jaw and then I’ll remember that I still have to write things like a dedication, biography, and acknowledgements… I just might have a swig of booze tonight before I go to bed and see if that helps my sleep. Heck, it might help my writing too.

Because time is tight, our menu this week is filled with quick dinners that are the equivalent of junk food like hot dogs, hamburgers, pasta, tacos. I love that stuff and we don’t have it that often.

We left Dunedin 36 hours ago. After barely making our international connection in Auckland (yes, stupidity knows no barriers in the airline industry) everything else went over without a snag and now we are home.

Feels great! It was snowing in Denver and a cool 32F (0C) – so there is still more winter to be had. And I thought we were going to miss it all… As is now tradition for me and New Zealand, I caught a cold after spending that night in the cold, damp, fog in the Catlins. Of course, I didn’t let that stop me from going kayaking the following day and freezing my patootie off that afternoon which added nicely to the congestion. But wait – there’s MORE! With my cold in full swing, we did complete the Rakiura Track the next day, although it wasn’t a record breaker… just 34 km (21+ miles) in the damp, cold, and sometimes clouds. I wasn’t liking that hike toward the end, but that’s fun #2 for ya.

I only shot about 600 photos on this trip. Those long death marches seem to kill the shutter bug toward the latter half of the day. And our weather was almost 100% cooperative (i.e. not pissing rain) this time! Certainly, there wasn’t much to shoot in the way of the food which was really disappointing. And I don’t say that just because we (I) were (was) fed like kings (queen?) in Sydney thanks to Kell and Jerad. I think the places we tend to gravitate to… the sticks… just don’t have much of interest to offer culinarily. Auckland had some good fare, as did city center in Christchurch. Maybe next time we’ll have to venture the way of Wellington and wine country – but that’s not our thing. Cities are not our thing. Having said that, I think Sydney is by far my favorite city in the world. It’s clean, ped and public transport friendly, lively, international, green, breezy, delicious, and very pretty.

More ponderings later. For now, some photos to highlight our activities in New Zealand over the last 12 days…

**Jump for more butter**

I made up a recipe on the fly tonight while preparing dinner. We were having pad thai and… I had a fresh batch of asparagus on hand. My fridge is usually stocked to the hilt, so I found some tofu and then swiped half of a flank steak intended for a meal later this week – I mean, we’re trying to EMPTY the fridge, right? The flank steak is sautéed with peanut and tamarind sauce with a hint of sugar, fish sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil. I think I’ll omit the soy sauce next time. I fried the tofu and mixed it in at the last minute with the sauté. I like it! This goes in the quadrille notebook of keeper recipes.