Home Grown and Canned Tomatoes

If you have been following my blog, or are new, I am referring back to my September 09 post and photo “Spring Garden”. This is what I’ve been growing all Summer long.




There is nothing more rewarding than going out to your garden and picking a handful of home-grown vegetables...because, after all, you are what you eat.


Since we live out in the ‘bush’ there is a small (big to some) price to pay for all the lush greenery: during the Winter, it is dark and damp. In other words, the sun doesn’t shine in the back part of the house, nor backyard (garden area) for about 5 months out of the year. I will complain about that topic on another blog post once Summer is over. Stay tuned folks!

To preserve the feeling of home grown tomatoes all Winter long, I usually grow between 5 to 10 tomato plants so that we are able to can our extra tomatoes and use them in all those rich Winter stews and sauces. Yum!

Here are a few photos of my canning helper at work.






Now we have a garden treasure to look forward to this Winter.

As you can see, we combined the yellow pear tomatoes with the other red tomatoes.

Mom's Visit- Part 2

Going way back to her first week here, I forgot to write about Muriwai Beach. We took her to Muriwai Beach, which is a 30 minute drive northwest from our house, to show her a 60 kilometre (32mi) stretch of black sand beach. While we were there we discovered a gannet colony (I should say that Holming knew it was there but my intentions were to see a pretty beach so I was SURPRISED!!!!). These gannets come here from Australia to nest then go back home in March. We got to see tiny baby gannets.

Oh, and got to see the lovely black sand beach too.

Continuing on about my Mom’s adventures, we went on the Rainforest Express, which is railway located deep in the heart of the Waitakere Ranges (the area we live in). The train goes over wooden bridges that we would normally not have access to, and passes through tunnels lit at night with a multitude of glow-worms (and housing the odd cave weta!). Since we wanted to see the glow-worms, which only glow at night, we took the twilight tour.

The train stopped at a picnic site where we stayed for a while to have dinner while the sun went down. We were able to walk up and view the Upper Nihotupu Dam

FYI, this is what a weta looks like......

So, we went down the North Island to Rotorua. Located on a volcanic plateau, the city is known for its geothermal activity, and features geysers and bubbling hot mud pools.

We also took my Mom to see a Maori village and show while in Rotorua. And wouldn’t you know it, the moment we arrived the sky opened up and it started to rain. I don’t mean just rain, I mean downpour! It was so hard to take photos as the rain was so heavy and we didn’t bring raincoats or umbrellas (just like the rest of the guests). These photos are of the welcoming ceremony which is called a powhiri. In real life the Maori people have real tattoos on their entire bodies, even their faces. It’s an amazing thing to see.

After the show we got to experience a hangi for dinner (soaking wet). It’s a traditional Maori method of cooking where stones are heated over a fire, then the food in a hole with the heated stones placed on top and the hole is covered with dirt for about 2 hours. Hey people, back in those days they didn’t have electricity or gas BBQs.

Rotorua has a nickname Sulphur City, because of the hydrogen sulphide emissions, which gives the city a "rotten egg" smell...... farty face over a steaming and stinky pile of rocks.


The next (and last) weekend she was here it happened to be Auckland Anniversary. We have a tradition of going to the Auckland Seafood Festival over this long weekend. We had quite opposite weather this weekend as it was very hot and very windy. Regardless, the food and wine were great! Tried oysters, whitebait fritter and (of course) green lipped mussels which were cooked in a wok over extreme heat then seasoned with butter, garlic and sweet chilli sauce (oh and lime juice too). What a feast!

Once we had enough we went to the Fishmart to pick up some ingredients for sushi as Holming was inspired! And this is when I get excited!!!

Yummmmmyyyy....

In addition to all the day trips we must have gone to the beach more days than not. And at all different hours. Got to see the sunset, the sunrise and just the sun in general. Have a look at the picassa web album for all of those beautiful beach shots.

Well, my Mom has been and left by now and words can’t express how much I miss her already. I can’t wait for her next visit so we can do more exploring!