... and we're back

I'm not sure why I've not been at the blog lately, have been struggling with an explanation for a while now. I could say I've been too busy, but that would be a lie really, and I suppose I could say something about being happy, which I am, but none of that would seem like a genuine reason for apparently having nothing to say. Truth is, there's been numerous times over the past six months or so where I've thought 'I should blog about that', but the thought of going through the process of rekindling this blog kind of put me off. I like continuity, you see, and feel I'd need to fill in the gaps between then and now before writing anything new.

But I'm not going to. Otherwise I'd never get around to starting again. Surely through the likes of Twitter, Facebook and the rumour mill (or because you've visited recently), you know about the kitten and the wedding and all of that, so no need to post about any of that, and what a weight off my shoulders is that?

So here we are, happily married and settling into a cosy Sunday evening in our house, with a chilled weekend (involving a visit to the zoo!) behind us and a productive week of good things ahead of us. At the moment we're furiously saving to have a new oven installed, one with gas hobs, so entertainment has to be of the 'free' or 'extraordinarily cheap' varieties for a while. It'll be worth it to have some degree of control over what I'm cooking, plus we received a number of excellent cooking vessels as wedding gifts and I'm keen not to screw them up on those horrible electrical elements.

It's been a good weekend for food, even with our crappy oven. As the weather here's turning cooler, my thoughts have turned to comfort food (although it's still around 20C at the moment), and so on Friday evening I made tartiflette, that amazing French Alpine concoction of potato, bacon, onion, white wine and cheese. It was phenomenal, even with raclette substituted in place of the traditional reblochon - the latter being entirely unavailable in Auckland and the Kapiti Cheese Co making a great raclette.

I'm slowly getting my head around the food here. It helps that we live close to the Westmere Butcher, one of (if not THE) best butchers in Auckland. The Auckland Fish Market is also just a small detour from my journey home from work, so that helps too. The Kapiti shop is across the road from my office building, and I'm beginning to build a list of places that usually have what I'm looking for.

Funnily enough, that list is potentially not what you'd expect. Self-styled 'speciality' food stores like Sabato and Nosh tend to fail me every single time, with shelves groaning under the weight of super-priced olive oils and comedically useless condiments, but not a single hard to find ingredient in there I couldn't have bought in Tesco in the UK. They seem to exist solely for fabulously wealthy people to spend a whole heap of cash whilst not buying any actual food. What bugs me the most is the cynical pricing, basically an attraction in itself to a certain type of customer. I'm still deciding whether or not to continue this rant over on Eating Auckland.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that stuff is good. We're headed back to the UK for a visit over next Christmas, and the knowledge that that's there helps a lot from day to day. The days straight after the wedding were weird, with no 'big thing' on the horizon involving seeing friends from the UK, but Christmas has taken its place. Here's looking forwards to that...