Ponsonby Posting

Spent the weekend at home , for a change. Our Hauraki Gulf trip had been cancelled due to heavy rain on Friday. As it left from Half Moon Bay I was not too disappointed but we did not do very much with the day apart from the usual meandering along Ponsonby Road looking at the shops in the morning and a visit to the food hall in the evening.

In between I made a second batch of peach chutney from a new NZ book from the library, Pick, preserve and serve by Chris Fortune - this recipe containing cinnamon , cloves and grated fresh ginger and tastes very delicious. Our Golden Queen peach tree is laden this year and so far the peaches have been spared brown rot and attacks from the birds.

Sunday we sallied forth to Newmarket to look at whiteware seeing our frig had leaked a trail of water across the kitchen floor during the night and by the time we had got from the Warehouse at one end of Broadway to Farmers at the other end we succumbed to a 10% discount offer on an already reduced price on a new stove and frig and ordered these to be delivered Tuesday.

Peaches

Spent the weekend at Waiheke where I passed a good part of each morning preserving these peaches. It involved a lot of peeling and eating and needless to say was I pleased when the morning's quota was done. Took a couple of kilos home to turn into peach chutney which I did this afternoon. It is rich fruity chutney with preserved ginger, raisins, spices and onion from the Edmonds Cookbook. The rest left on the tree next weekend will definitely be just for eating!

Once Upon a Time

Two exhibitions I enjoyed last week and today are the fairy tales and fantasies for children one in the library and the gardens in art exhibition, Enchanted Gardens, at the art gallery.

The fairy tales one spans the 19th-20th century mainly and it is very interesting to see the different ways different artists have illustrated the same book eg Peter Pan by Mabel Lucie Atwell and Arthur Rackham. The contemporary illustrators bring a new dimension to old favourites. A lot of these books are familiar to me from my own childhood - eg the Fairy books by Andrew Lang and the modern fantasies and animal fantasies from E's era.

The Enchanted Gardens exhibition was a treat - beautiful flower photographs by Ernst Haas, flower paintings by NZer Karl Maugham, garden sculpture, engravings, even a knitted tea cosy by Heather Nicholson, (knitting guru), shaped like a house with embroidered flowers climbing up the front of it.

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

Well not the mists, but the rest is apt. Went to Orewa on the weekend and my neighbour up there offered me some damsons from the high up branches of her tree so D picked some and I made a batch of delicious damson jam the next morning. Also made some damson chutney a couple of weeks ago with some of last year's (frozen) harvest.

Over at Waiheke I will be leaping into action and doing something with the peaches - bottling, chutney probably. we are going over for Waitangi weekend.