food, glorious food.

Now comes a very important blog post, while I could tell you about adventures and show you picture of volcanoes and shit, I'll give it a rest. This blog post is all about FOOD. Now with 28 days, 2 finals and one excruciating day of traveling left I thought I'd reflect of the food stuffs that have kept me afloat since Ive gotten here. Here is a list of the best and brightest of New Zealand college kid cuisine:

Indomie Noodles

These noodles are kind of like the New Zealand replacement for Ramen. Believe me, Ramen just doesn't exist here, not in the correct form at least. However, these noodles go above and beyond the call of packaged noodles. They come with seasoning, and assortment of 3 weird sauces and just when you thought it couldn't get better, dried onions.
Also, these noodles cut straight thought the whole "broth" shit. Yes, you drain the water and just make this kind of spiced noodle slop. I will miss you Indomie, I will miss you so much. Did I mention that they have a BBQ flavor, because they do.

Mine never looked this good, but like, you get it.

Tim Tam

Tim tams are an act of god. Various fillings sandwiched between two cookie wafers and then slathered in mild chocolate, these things should be outlawed. Tim Tams are a big fucking deal here, even Australia liked them so much they decided to name a koala after them.
They have replaced Oreos as the cookie that you eat an entire sleeve of in order to fill emotional voids.
I was taught that the best way to enjoy these cookies is to bite two corners of the cookie and use it as a straw to sop up hot cocoa or warm milk. When it passes through it turns the cookie into a gooey mess that melts in your face. What will I do without it them? Lose 15 pounds, that's what.

Toasties

Toasties are glorified grilled cheese sandwiches. Cheese, meat, fruit, or veggies are all grilled and slathered in between two pieces of thin buttered bread that is then toasted on a griddle until perfections. The best part about these things is that if you find them at a good truck stop, they're about $3. A personal favorite, and a combination that has changed my troubled relations with grilled cheese is ham, cheese and pineapple. What can I say...

Sushi Pac

Now this is a chain that really needs to catch on. Cheap, fresh and delicious sushi for insanely cheap prices. I've grown accustomed to what i affectionately call "the log". A 4 inch tube of sushi roll, unsliced that is meant to be eaten as if one is an animal. At 2 bucks a pop, they're a complete steal. They even have a twitter which i follow and a facebook pace. This has filled the void that Kumo left when I came, lets hope that Kumo can refill that when I return. Sounds kind of sexual almost, which makes sense based on how I feel about sushi in general.

Pascals Pineapple Lumps

These little nuggets are squares of pineapple flavored marshmallow covered in milk chocolate. When I first had these I was pretty put off. They were chewy, sweet and made my face hurt but after receiving some advice from Niamh, I gave them a second chance. She advised me to throw them in the freezer for a few hours. This makes them crunchy and snappy and straight up delicious. Lovely little lumps.

Meat Pies

Meat pies are about 10 bites worth of heaven. At about the size of the palm of your hand its a pastry bowl filled with some sort of combination of meat and cheese. Yes they are as incredible as they sound. I have learned to bypass the yellow colored gas station versions, If you want a great pie, its all about the tiny mom and pop bakery and don't you dare buy one from a place where there aren't at least 3 burly men in short shorts standing in line ahead of you. When it comes to pies, you've got to follow the locals, they don't fuck around with their national cuisine.


Ok with all of this praise, you may ask, where has New Zealand gone wrong? For as many wonderful things that Ive had, i've had some equally disgusting concoctions.

Watties Tomato Sauce

Nasty. The first time I had the sorry excuse for ketchup i was enjoying y first set of fish and chips. I not only had to pay for ketchup, it came in a can and more resembled tomato paste than ketchup. Over the past few months, I must admit, I've grown accustomed to its bland taste but you better believe that I'm ready to get Heinz back in my life. Watties, GTFO.

Spaghetti on Toast

What, WHAT? yeah, this is a thing. Imagine making a perfectly good piece of toast, putting it on a plate and right before you eat it, a small child run over and dumps a can of spaghettios on top of it. Think about how that would taste, think about how you would feel. No one deserves that abuse, certainly not toast, a breakfast staple for centuries. Fuck that, fuck tomato soup with pasta in it and fuck the person who ever thought that it was acceptable.

Meat Flavored Potato Chips/Snacks

This is wrong on so many levels. Going through the aisles of my local super market for the first time, I noticed the over whelming amount of snack food modeled after real food tastes. Burger Rings? Chicken flavored rice crackers? Crackers with bacon INSIDE of them? Honey baked ham flavored potato chips? This has to stop. Imagine a snack food, covered in the seasoning packet from your favorite Ramen. Yeah I'm crying too y'all.

BBQ Sauce on Pizza
Ok I'm a pizza snob (who isn't?), I shouldn't even start this fight with New Zealand, but when i order a mushroom artichoke pizza, and you serve it to me slathered in barbecue sauce I'm going to start crying. After this fiasco its safe to say I haven't ordered pizza here again. I have been abstaining form possibly the most delicious food ever based on principle. There is one halfway decent place that models itself after New York pizza, but there was something fundamentally missing from the pie. What was it you may ask? Italians. Seems they've avoided this place like the plague and all ran straight to Melbourne Australia. I blame these Italians for New Zealands national acceptance of spaghetti on toast. I cry for my people every day here. Perhaps ill move back and show these guys how it's done.

Smellington (Wellington) Roadtrip weekend

Took a nice long road trip to check out the country's capital for a few days. Eight hours to be exact. The city was beautiful, had lovely people, a wonderful art scene and some amazing food.


We spent the weekend in open air markets, meandering through museums and eating in parks. The first full day, we found a farmers market out by the water. There I found the most delicious dumplings I have ever had in my short life. Even though they were a bit pink still when i bit into them, these dumplings made me feel invincible, and certainly wasn't going to wast the 4 dollars i had paid for them on the slim chance id get sick.

The culprits of my stomach cramps, but just look at them. Could you have said no?

After lunch we headed to the museum. The Te Papa museum in the heart of the city must have been one of the best museums i'd ever been to. With a different part of New Zealand themed information on each floor we spent hours wandering inside. There first floor had corridors for natural history, ecology, history, art, and culture. My favorite exhibit must have been the immigration exhibit. Part of the exhibit was a large filing cabinet that corresponded to an individual who had actually took the plunge and came to New Zealand, with our without their families. Inside of each drawer there were pictures, personal items, diaries and passports all collected through centuries of immigration to the country. How brave these people must have been to abandon their homes and start again anew in a place that was actually a world away. The rest of the exhibits were breathtaking as well, lots of interactive sets and even a earthquake simulation house! how fitting, haha. That night after returning to our room i realized exactly where the worst place is to be when one is having "digestion problems". The top bunk of a bed, when a very large and scary german woman is sleeping underneath.

A completely acceptable dinner of bread, cheese, Italian salami, grapes and of course some fermented grapes as well.

The next day I woke up feeling much better, swore off the dumpling and we wandered around the suburbs of the city, checking out an independently owned art gallery in lower hut. Who knew there was such a thriving arts scene? The three of us had a great time, if it wasn't for the loud German girls in our hostel on the last morning. They had woken up at 5am to leave and woke us all up. Why you may ask? Because Germans are incapable of whispering. It's almost a fact at this point.

On our way home we stopped in a quiet town named Bulls. This place did justice to its name as the entire town had a strong smell of cow manure. However rank the town itself was, they did have a lot of pride and humor for their odd little town. They named things around the town in bull themed puns. For example, the bank was renamed "bankabull" and the bathroom "relieveable". I guess you'd have to have a good scene of humor to live in a place that smelt like bulls. Despite the smell, we found a great bakery that had wonderful mince and cheese pies. We devoured a few before heading back on the road to Auckland.

How witty are these guys?

This trip was a ton of fun, though the 8 hours of driving was pretty grueling. Wellington was a lovely city and almost what I had expected Auckland to be like. Definitely worth the gas money for a visit, if not for those dumplings, mmmm. Unfortunately its getting a bit too cold here to continue hiking, and while its great visiting cities, I'm already homesick for the mountain trails.

Holi Holi Holi

This past Sunday I woke up at 5am to get to the Airport and pick up Stan. Waiting in the terminal I realized it is the nicest thing to just sit and watch people, trail beaten, walk out of customs and be bombarded with hugs and kisses by friends and family. When Stan came out of the doors I pranced around a bit before running over and giving him a big hug and kiss. It’s so nice and also a bit surreal to have him here. He’s been hanging out with me for the past week.
When we got back to the appt on Sunday I made it a point to ice the poor fellow before he settled in to take his jetlag nap. I know it’s terrible but hearing that groan and resounding “FUCK YOU” was completely worth it.

I realized as Stan lay slumbering in my bed that Sunday is Holi, the Hindu festival of colors. For Holi, people basically throw colored powder and dye at each other as a way to cast away the grays of winter. While it doesn’t make much sense to do this in the southern hemisphere since we are slowly entering fall at the moment, the tradition remains strong within the Hindu community here. I quickly found a festival in New Lynn, rounded up Stan, Brittney and Navah and took a bus out to the soccer field it was being held in. We sat around, watched a few demonstrations by the local Hindu study group and were ushered out onto the field for some color slinging action. Holi by far is my favorite holiday. Anything that involves getting messy, mischief and silliness is bound to be a good time.

After the festival we got a bit hungry and after wandering around a bit by fate, again, we found yet another noodle canteen. Stan had his first box O’ noodles and was pretty satisfied. The sight of the four of us doused in colors chomping on noodles would have been a shot a photojournalist would have killed for. We took the bus home and Stan and I rested up before going to a get together at The Loft, the yoga studio by my house. We listened to a speaker, danced Hare Krishna for an hour and got full off of delicious Indian food. Mmmm.

Stan and I have been having quite a few adventures here and while I still have class, he’s been out and about exploring on his own too. It’s nice to have a familiar face here too. We’ve been cooking (and drinking) up a storm all week and ill be sad to see him go this weekend off to his first woofing post. We’ve gotten rained out of our plans to go to the Coromandel this weekend, but as I’ve learned from my level headed neighbors, there is always something else to do.

Beer like urine

The New Zealand Equivalent to Naddy Ice: Double Brown

Tongariro and Julia's First Brush With Death

Over the past few weeks I'd been hearing about the Tongariro great walk down in the central North Island. Looking online the NZ department of conservation suggested that we take "great caution" and to make sure that we were in "fine physical fitness" before we embarked on this trip. Obviously, we aren't fucking Lara Crofts here but we figured that we would probably be able to do this shit. Of course, after renting the car and the hut space I end up getting a full blown sinus infection. I spent 2 days in bed and woke up on Thursday, the day we were supposed to leave, feeling like hell. As the girls started packing to leave i go so upset that I decided, fuck it. I couldn't see straight, I was wobbling all over and I can't even tell you how many tissues i was going through, but I got up, packed my bag and decided to go for it.

I slept in the back seat all the way there, and we didn't arrive until 6:45, with a 3 hour hike ahead of us and 1 hour of light, we decided that our only choice was to just hardcore that shit up and get going. Tissues in hand we started out on the trail, we've up and down on dilapidated paths, in and out of trenches and over river beds. While the sunset was beautiful out there after it was gone we still had 2 hours of night hiking to do before we could even think about stopping. I was delirious, blinded, staring at my feet and guiding myself by the light on my god damn cellphone. After 2 hours of hiking in the dark we FINALLY found the hut, busted in, and passed out.

The next morning we set our for the most challenging part of the trail, Tongiriro Crossing. I was still feeling like shit, drinking as much water as i could and breathing shallow, but after last nights ordeal I wasn't about to give up during the best part of the hike. After an hour or so of hiking we made it to the base of the mountain. Looking ahead, we had what looked like a million stairs to climb to get to the summit. Next to the first step was a sign that said
"ARE YOU FIT ENOUGH?"
It featured a series of questions that you should ask yourself before willingly embarking on cardio hell. At the end it said:
"if you said yes to any of these questions, CONSIDER TURNING BACK"
I laughed at first and then as we started climbing these god forsaken stairs i began to think "HOLY SHIT, AM I FIT ENOUGH?" We climbed for hours, HOURS, I'm telling you, and its not an easy thing to do without a 25 pound pack on your back. We took a stop at the base of mount Doom AKA where Frodo returns that ring shit and ate lunch. We started out again and eventually the steps turned into rock face and i began to CLIMB THE ROCKFACE ON MY HANDS AND FEET. While much of my balance had returned to me by this time, i was still one bad step away from death. Finally I summited the crossing took my pack off and laid in the sun. The girls took a quick summit hike of Tongariro but feeling the fatigue of hiking with a fucking sinus infection i just took a nap in the sun until they returned.

After they returned we set out back down the crossing, passing by the beautiful Red Crater and shimming down to the Emerald Lakes. The rocks were loose and sandy on the steep decent and extremely difficult to keep my balance with the awkward pack on my back. The lakes were beautiful but the department of conservation failed to mention that the reason that the emerald lakes are green is because of SULFUR. We Finlay got down to what we thought was the bottom and went started on the last section of "trail" to get to our hut. The trails for this section were non existent, the only thing that helped us stay on track were the white trail heads as this was the worst foot trail we had been on all day. After coming down our final mountain face we set out in a volcanic tundra, with black sand, red grass, and sharp tall rocks all around. It took longer than expected to get to the hut but we settled in for the night and decided to do the next 2 days hike in one day.

Waking up early the next day we left the hut by 8 am and completed the next 3 hour hike right on time. We moved through tundra, and shallow mountain faces. We screamed all the lyrics to Brand New's Deja Entendu and moved through a series of gorges until we reached the last hut. We ate lunch and started back out to finish up the last 5 hour hike. We were exhausted during this last part, with the hot sun beating on us we took a moment to take our packs off and splash some of the cool fresh river water over us. We finished the hike with an hour or so to spare and made the long drive home to Auckland.

Figuring that we deserved some noodle canteen, we headed through Taupo and once again by the grace of god, found it without the aid of anything other than our collective "inner noodle compasses." That night, because we are fucking hard core, we made it back to Auckland, took showers and immediately went out. By the end of this weekend, my sinus infection was completely gone. Cure? 3 doses of wilderness Kesha, 8 oranges and 56km of ungroomed terrain.