22 April 2009 – It’s the boys mums birthday and I think this bracelet I made suits her style a bit more than the cupcake necklaces.

24 April 2009 – The Boy and his friend led me on some crazy tiki tour to get to the I’m On A Boat party. We ended up not lost, and with some good photos. Choice. This is Wellington Harbour.

24 April 2009 – And this is the view of Petone from Oriental Parade.

24 April 2009 – Some crazy hippies spitting fire at the party.

25 April 2009 – The Boy’s dad is in town and takes us to Lone Star for dinner. This steak is absolutely humongous.

25 April 2009 – My plate of Lone Star mussels, and my other plate with potatoes and salad. Too. Much. Food!!

26 April 2009 – And then the weather turned to shit and it’s been raining pretty much ever since.

27 April 2009 – It’s that time of year when everyone remembers that they didn’t fix the leaks from last year, and they still haven’t gotten around to resealing the doors.

My last post was almost 3 weeks ago?! That’s fucking ridiculous and perhaps just the kick up the ass I need to show me how lazy I’ve been. The best cure for writers block is to just write something, anything, “they” say. So it’s worth a try.

Friday night saw my first party at 361, a K party (dress up theme, not ketamine sharing) in honour of my inhabitation of the flat. Smarty pants flatmate Jason set the up the photobooth he created to capture everyones costumes/inebriated states.

Here are a few goodies.

L to R: Kiki of Kiki’s delivery service (aka flattie Kate), Kermit (aka Michael), Karen O (aka flattie Sophie), Karl Lagerfeld (aka Laura), Koala (aka Emma); Kanye (aka flattie Jason), Karl Lagerfeld; Kleptomaniac (aka Stacey), Kate from Lost (aka ME); Klytemnestre (aka Jo).

L to R: K’ Rd hooker (aka Hannah), Kramer (aka Finn), Karen O; KGB officer (aka Karen), Jo; Me, King Midas (aka Ella, she was originally gold in another language but I can’t remember the language), Kate; Kaleidoscope (aka flattie Brendan), photobomber Stacey.

L to R: Laura (omg isn’t she perfect as Karl?!), pieces of Kermit; Karaoke queen (aka Beth), Stacey; Kelly (aka Kelly), Jo, Kink (aka Bad Tom); Kate, Sophie, Emma.

L to R: Kid (aka Anna), Jo, Tom; Flatties pre dress up – Me, Sophie, Kate, and photo bomber Jason; Me, Karen, Jo, Kim Thayil (aka Lisa); Michael, Laura, Me.

Witty, informative and tasty as a ma’a fucker – The boy

Apologies for the lack of posting yesterday. I was being fed and wined at Elements Cafe in Lyall Bay for the boys Xmas function.

The event is called ‘What’s Cooking?’ and is held a couple of times a month. It’s a relaxed cooking class where the owner of the restaurant, Scott (who is a chef) demonstrates the cooking and feeds us immediately after with dishes prepared in the kitchen (here’s one I prepared earlier!). While we are waiting for the food to arrive the wine speaker Drew tells us about the wine match for the meal.
It’s all done with a large amount of wit and humour, Drew is American and Scott is Australian so there are a lot of digs at their own cultures and comparisons made to the Kiwi culture, it’s highly instructional at the same time.

Scott offers to unveil any cooking secrets we want to know.

He wants cooking to be fun and easy, and tries to make us see that it doesn’t have to be as hard as it sounds in the recipes. “Blanche means plunge into hot water and refresh means plunge into cold water”!

The main course was pork belly, I don’t eat pork so some beautiful gurnard fish was prepared for me along with the jersey benne potatoes and asparagus (Scott raved about Jersey Benne potatoes, it’s something all of you who live outside of New Zealand are missing out on!). The fish was especially delicious. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. The wine match with this meal was a red, I don’t drink red wine but Drew was still very fun to listen to. He is REALLY into wine, he taught me that Malbec, a type of wine I’ve never heard of is “sexy”.

Desert was a meringue with cream, strawberries, and sugar syrup. It was so delicious! Even the boy liked it and he’s not a big fan of sweets. Some of the other guys in our group loved the meringue so much they stole the demo meringue off the table and scoffed it without knowing how old it was.

The wine match was a Coney “Ragtime” Riesling. It was delicious! Highly drinkable, and I don’t usually like wine.

In all it was a great night. I didn’t know what to expect when we went in but I was very impressed by everything including the decor.

Be sure to check out Elements Cafe next time you’re in Lyall Bay.