$15 Dinners Round 2 Sat 30th June

Kerry Buying For Phil and Ryan.

Terahiki fillets
Clams
Chicken livers
Kiwi Fruit
Parsnips
Short grain rice
Tomatoes
Marshmallows


As before there was plenty of 'what the hell will I do with that?', 'why did you buy this?' etc, etc, but before long Phil was searching the interweb for recipes and inspiration and came up with this impressive Menu.

Kiwifruit Vodka Collins
Winter Vegetable Chowder
Warm Chicken Liver Salad
Seafood Paella
Fresh Fruit Salad

photos of the food plus Phils face as he was trying to prepare the chicken livers!

A Pint of Kiwifruit Vodak Collins for my mate, and some delicous Vegetable Chowder.



'Chicken Liver Face' and the finished article mmMMmmmmm!


Seafood Paella & Fresh Fruit Salad with a piece of Whittakers Mocha dark Chocolate to garnish!

Next up will be Phil and Ryan buying for Paul and Sebastian.........

Winter 2007 $15 dinner series

Round 1. Saturday 2 June

Paul and Sebastian buying for Kirsty.
The bag included:-
Beef Sandwich Steak
Smoked Ruby Fish
Green Peppers
A Bag of Noodles
B0k Choi
a Persimmon
and a Coconut

He was being quite kind on her as it was their Wedding Anniversary.......

Once the Victim has been given their bag of goodies there are usually a lot of menu suggestions from the audience who now in turn have become victims as they will have to eat whatever is prepared for them.
After a bit of internet research and general discussion our Menu was presented to us:

Chilled Coconut Milk, Vodka and Lime Shots
Sticky Sesame Beef and Tempura Vegetables with assorted Dips
Thai Fishcakes with Salad and Dips (Love those dips!)
Beef Noodle Soup
Persimon and Coconut Pudding Flambe

There you go...5 Courses for 4 people for $15.

There are only a couple of photos from that night as we weren't prepared fully, it being the first event in over a year.
Here we have the Sticky Beef and Battered Veggies followed by the Coconut and Persimon Pudding covered in Brandy and ignited!

Next up, Kerry buying For Phil and Ryan - Watch this space...

Hello World

I cant believe its been that long since I posted something, come back after a year and its all changed - blogspot now run by Google!
Google are taking over the world, confirmation right here folks.
Looking at the history of the blog it would appear that its very much a winter sport, it rains a lot here in NZ in the winter so we just don't do going outside very much.
Another winter sport that we have resurrected after an absence of a year is the $15 Dinner series normally coincides with the Rugby season, although this year it also coincides with the Americas Cup, as I write this we have just lost the 5th race to Alinghi cos a sail blew out on the Black Boat and they cocked up getting the new one up. Most of New Zealand are tired from staying up all night or waking up in the night to watch the racing live (its starts at 1am here!) I prefer to set the TV in the bedroom to wake me up at 7am and have it on while I get ready for work - they show the highlights from 7-8am on the morning after a race.

$15 Dinners -
We draw names out of the hat - Paul, Kirsty, Phil and Myself.
you have to spend $15 or as close to as possible on a carrier bag (or 2) of random grocery articles for your victim (whose name you drew out of the hat) and they then have to produce a meal with at least 3 courses for the four of us. We normally have one alcohol course (I prefer to get that one out early on in the proceedings so people don't care (or know) what they are eating later on!
This year the boys have teamed up with their Dads to buy and cook so tonight I am buying for Phil and Ryan. Paul, Kirsty and Sebastian will be turning up later armed with sleeping bags, duvets, toothbrushes and beer.
We have a full evening planned - drinking, cooking, 1st Bledisloe Cup Game (Wallabies/All Blacks in Australia), drinking, eating, drinking, Americas Cup race 6, drinking and bed.

I will take photos and upload them tomorrow when we surface of the evenings events and food.

'The Hurricanes Handbag Incident'

Not news to Kiwis, I know but worth a mention for the rest of the world.
After the Super 14 Rugby Final in the fog - (see previous post) the defeated Hurricanes went out for a quiet beer or two, some of them ending up at the Jolly Poacher at 7.30 in the morning. Chris Masoe apparently tripped over someones outstreched leg, thought they were doing it on purpose so he punched the chap! Tana Umaga tried to teach Chris a lesson in a friendly sort of a way by picking up the nearest thing thing he could find and belting Chris over the head with it ! - better than using his fist I would say. It was a handbag belonging to a girl who happened to be sitting at the bar minding her own business.
You can imagine the press after that - 'Handbags at Dawn' etc etc.
When the girl whose handbag had been used discovered that her cellphone had been smashed in the attack she got a bit upset so the Hurricanes Management offered to pay for it.
One of her friends got the idea of auctioning the bag and cellphone on our wonderful online auction site 'Trade-me' thinking someone might be interested in the rugby memorabilia angle.

Well it went ballistic - bigger than the 'dophin in a swimming pool' auction or the 'Time Machine auction'
See details here http://www.trademe.co.nz/Sports/Sports-memorabilia/Rugby/Other/auction-58555525.htm
finally sold for $22,750.00!!! after causing so much web traffic the the Trade-Me servers apparently crashed.

There you go, thats what we do here for Entertainment!

The Super 14 Final......Fog, and the Drinking Game

OK for those foreigners out there, Super 14 used to be Super 12.

'Super 12 Rugby commenced in 1996, with Australia, New Zealand and South Africa forming SANZAR (South African, New Zealand and Australian Rugby) to administer an annual provincial 12 team competition and Tri-Nations Test Series between the three countries.

A provincial series, Super 12 Rugby consists of five teams from New Zealand, four from South Africa and three from Australia (NSW, Queensland and the ACT), and each team plays all the other teams once during the yearly tournament. Bonus points are given to any team scoring four tries or more, putting the emphasis on strong, attacking rugby.'

There you go, thats the official word.
This year they let another 2 sides in, one from Australia one from S.A.

The Final was between 2 NZ Teams , The Hurricanes, from Wellington (North Island) and the Crusaders from Canterbury (South Island). Its always a good excuse for a few drinks and of course this time was no exception.
We packed the car with Wine, Beer, and Duvets and set off for Paul and Kirsty's house via the sauasage shop.
The rugby ground (Jade Stadium in Christchurch) was enveloped by fog which made it challenging for the TV Crew and anyone else trying to watch apparently a lot of the spectators left before halftime as they couldnt see it! we made up up for the lack of visuals by enjoying our own little drinking game.
Write down all the players names on bits of paper, put them into a 'hat' and distribute between the participants. We ended up with 3 or 4 each.When your player gets a mention you have to take a drink. Phil and Kirsty drew short straws - one of Phils names was Piri Weepu he got injured twice, and got involved in all sorts of stuff on the field and the commentators couldnt stop talking abpout him, Kirstys downfall was Dan Carter (how many women can say that I wonder?).

See below some pics showing the action:-

Highlights of the 2006 Super 14 Final

Weepu opens the scoring for the Hurricanes from long range.		Carter’s second successful penalty from three attempts gives the Crusaders the half time lead.
Casey Laulala crosses for the only try of the game.		Richie McCaw doesn’t infringe at the breakdown, honest.
Skipper McCaw triumphantly holds the trophy up as teammates look on.		The crowd goes wild in the stands.

The Family Sting Ray

The tides were good, the sun was shiny and off we went via the fish shop to get some bait to spend the afternoon messing about in boats ('Sedan Delivery' our 1985 Tracker 7.7m Yacht to be exact). Recently repainted lovely bright yellow with a black bum. (Mr Mad said we would get attacked by whales if we had a black bum!!!) Theres one in every boat yard, Mr Mad that is, not a whale. The fishing was lousy in the spot we chose out by Little Manly Beach up the Whangaparoa Peninsular, although we saw loads of fish on our lovely new Navman fish finder/Depth/Speed/Temp thing on the way there and back, they all buggered off when we stopped to fish. Phil caught a couple of little (too little snapper) but then got seasick as it was swelly, so back up the river on a rising tide we went and tried our luck on the mooring. Lots of people catch decent fish up the river.
We had got through most of the bonito bait when something ran away with my line. I promptly gave the rod (Ryans) to Phil so he could do the 'old man and the sea' bit and reel in the giant huge snapper that I had caught. It took forever, the fish ran away with the line, came back, sat on the bottom for a bit, swam up and down the river by which time we had decided it was probably a ray but we weren't prepared for the SIZE of it!!!! it was at least as big as the dinghy from its pug nose to its long whippy tail, anyway thats enough writing lets have some pictures, the first one is Phil being Heroic and the other one is the Fish. We had to cut it loose in the end - Phil got it close up to the boat and I reached over and cut the line just by the hook.
almost as good as the 'Cuttlefish incident' but bigger and less squirmy.

My what a long tail you've got!
We called it the family Stingray 'cos I hooked it, Phil played it and it was Ryans rod.

The hugest lightning storm in years!!

Yesterday morning the whole house was shaking, car alarms were going off down the street, the birds were flying in circles and dogs were howling!! - no, it wasnt one of Phils farts. we had a really intense thunder cell right over us, a house half a mile away was struck by lightning we watched the lightning forks hit the ground on the other side of the valley it was BIG. Ryan collected hailstones and put them in the freezer for phil to see when he got home from work. the stream at the bottom of our road was up to the top of the bank, Awaruku road was closed by a flood, we had to go round the long way to school. It was a really localised storm as Kirsty and Paul 5 kms away just had some rain and heard the thunder.