Seasons | The Daily Post

This week, let’s embrace the season: share an image that embodies the world or the weather where you live.

Source: Seasons | The Daily Post

Every January, the Department of Conservation and Project Tongariro host the local Mahi Aroha Summer Programme, a month-long calendar that encourages people into the outdoors and showcases local conservation projects…DSCF9471The first activity each year, on New Year’s Day, is the family kite day…
DSCF9481Even though the first of January is technically in the middle of summer, true summer here often does not kick in until February….
DSCF9486Pleasant but overcast days like this are common for this period of the season…DSCF9476

…and are no obstacle to everyone getting out and having a good time…DSCF9487

A bonus this New Year’s Day, was the first mistletoe in Whakapapa Village…

Pour Some Sugar on Me | The Daily Post

Source: Pour Some Sugar on Me | The Daily Post

What is your favorite sweet thing to eat? Bread pudding? Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies? A smooth and creamy piece of cheesecake? Tell us all about the anticipation and delight of eating your favorite dessert.

I like dessert and while I am probably to be the first of the group to opt for dessert when dining out, I’m more a savoury than sweet kinda guy…that being said, this prompt could have only one response…a family favourite, our butterscotch pudding…

What really floats my boat with this one is the crunchy caramelised crust that goes so well with cream and, if available, ice cream – if you have to choose between one or t’other, go for the cream…When it is about three-quarters done the caramel flavour will waft across the living area from the kitchen, building anticipating…I normally drop it in the oven just before serving up the mains – the bake time provides just enough time to eat the main, enjoy some good conversation and let the previous course settle before serving it up…

Now, yes, I did make this one specially for this post – none of that “here’s one I prepared earlier” malarkey – and, no, it doesn’t mean that I fell off the dairy-free wagon…just jumped off to quickly check the tyres…

What you need

1 cup of flour

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder (or just use self-raising flour if you lean that way)

60 grams of butter melted, 30 grams of butter

1/2 cup of milk

pinch of salt

1/2 cup of sugar (sounds like a lot but the original recipe demanded a full cup)

2 tablespoons of golden syrup

2 cups of hot water

What you do

Heat the oven to 180 degrees

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar milk and melted butter together.

Pour into a greased pan.

Mix the hot water, golden syrup, and 30 grams of butter together until the syrup and butter have dissolved into the water.

Pour this over the dough in the pan.

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Fan bake for 40-45 minutes or until golden brown and crusty on top.

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Remove the pan from the oven and let sit for five minutes

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Serve with cream and ice cream (vanilla preferred). Now, this being a (probably temporarily) dairy-free home, a couple of minor issues arose. As a part of a related programme, we had, at some time last year, replaced the the white sugar with raw sugar. Shouldn’t make a difference and didn’t but adds to the “it’s healthier” ambience of the dish…

There was also no cow in the fridge…only varieties of not-cow milk…vanilla almond milk volunteered to take the plunge and in it went…also didn’t make a difference to the finished product…a good lesson learned…

This is the most popular dessert in this household and production is only second to the dateless/sauceless version of Dinner Dates that I knock up when attacked by the late night dessert munchies…the recipe will happily feed six people and has been doubled with a good result…It freezes well and the source caramelises even more when reheated…a real winner and now done healthier…

Live to Eat | The Daily Post

Some people eat to live, while others live to eat. What about you? How far would you travel for the best meal of your life?

Source: Live to Eat | The Daily Post

I love good food but if I was travelling any distance for it, it would almost definitely be about the company, not the food…even if it was a gratis meal at a top restaurant or a weekend at one of the more exciting food fairs, the company would still be the key…

I had a great breakfast at Kokako when I was in Auckland recently…a brilliant vegetarian combination and only five minutes walk from my hotel…but the company made it…

Their photo...we were too busy eating and chatting to pic...

Their photo…we were too busy eating and chatting to pic…

Walking from Otaki Forks to Field Hut is the furthest I have walked for a meal – and through a blizzard to boot…

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…but it was still about the company…

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To consider the question, if you can make good food, you don’t have to travel far for good food; while one might enjoy one’s own company, that only goes so far…I would only go so far simply for a meal…I would go a long way for a meal in good company…

…the venue need not be that flash…

RNZIR Sect Comd Cse 1993 08

…so long as the company compensates…

RNZIR Sect Comd Cse 1993 19

Childhood Revisited | The Daily Post

What is your earliest memory? Describe it in detail, and tell us why you think that experience was the one to stick with you.

Source: Childhood Revisited | The Daily Post

stingray

These guys…

Hiding behind the couch…

Really scary…

Live on a mountain far from the sea…

Weight(less) | The Daily Post

This week, share a photo of something marked by its weight

Source: Weight(less) | The Daily Post

In 2011, I was working at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

Just outside one set of the base gates, is the Air Force Armament Museum.

Just outside the Museum building, is (literally) the Mother OF All Bombs.

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The accompanying plaque really says it all…

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30 feet long…40.5 inches in diameter…21,600lbs…

Dear RNZAF, please note the second of the recommended delivery platforms…just open the door and tip it out…

Inside the Museum are many of its relatives, large and small, smart and not so smart…

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Trio | The Daily Post

Image

What comes in threes? Submit an image for this week’s photo theme, Trio.

Source: Trio | The Daily Post

DSCF0765Twins 177

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Three burgers = company’s here!!

Seven Wonders

The WordPress Daily Prompt: Khalil Gibran once said that people will never understand one another unless language is reduced to seven words. What would your seven words be?

Every once in a while the Doctor Who writers smack the nail fair on the head…

Blink was one episode so clever in its inception and execution; the one word test from The Snowmen another…subtle, challenging, provoking…

Seven words.

In no particular order.

Love.

Trust.

Help.

Feed.

Follow.

Lead.

Protect.

The challenge is not whittling a list down to seven but building it up…I stalled at four (not saying which four) for quite a while.

If eight words were allowed, the eighth might be ‘you’. But ‘you’ becomes redundant…

Treat | The Daily Post

Source: Treat | The Daily Post

This week’s photo challenge theme is “Treat,” an intentionally open-ended prompt. This week, share with us a photo of something that you consider a marvellous treat.

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Doing dinner with my youngest daughter and her partner….

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Any and all time with the twin terrors….

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Kiwi sign outside the office…

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About once a year…someone else gets a treat too…

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Geeking out with my oldest daughter each once month when her Nerd Block fix arrives…

 

 

Happy Place

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In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Happy Place.”

Queenstown aerobatics Jan 98

In a most happy place over Queenstown 1998

One of my all time favourite ‘desert island’ books is Wilbur Smith’s Eagle in the Sky. “He’ll be in the sky” are Debra’s words when he disappears near the story’s end…well, the book’s end anyway: Eagle is one of those tales that you hope never ends, that David and Debra go on and on…

eagle int he sky cover

As much as I love aviation, I never got round to learning to fly but when I need to go, I go for height, up a hill, onto a mountain, some place high and quiet where I can look down and think.

Tongariro Apr 04 - 1

My other happy place is at a keyboard or holding a pen, using words to seek and maintain balance, to put my feelings some place where they become tangible and malleable. I can’t promise the words will always make sense or that later on I might not remember the emotion behind them but they lie as reminders of places I have been, journeys I have made, people I have been…words as much a sanctuary as a windy hilltop or craggy peak…

Happy place does not necessarily mean tidy place!!!

Sky of blue and land of green

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Right to Brag.”

Tell us about something you (or a person close to you) have done recently (or not so recently) that has made you really, unabashedly proud.

What has this got to do with a Yellow Submarine..? The honest answer is not a lot…when I thought of this subject under this challenge, my mind latched on this line from Yellow Submarine…it is actually “Sky of blue and sea of green” which makes sense from a  nautical point of view but not from the perspective of this story…

I am blessed with a very talented staff in the place where I work. In that place we occasionally pick up some rather challenging jobs. One of New Zealand’s Great walks is close to here. For the upcoming season, the managers want to export their booking system so that walkers on the trail can update and change their bookings once they are on the trail. This often happens if bad weather causes walkers to abandon the walk or where walkers are making good time and opt to skip a hut or camping location.

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The tool of choice provided to us for this task is a rather chunkalunky ruggedised 7″ Android tablet…so chunkalunky that we used plate holders as stands for them…

This is a short story really. One of my talented staff took on this project and in a couple of weeks, and despite some serious illness along the way developed a full system that allow the booking system to be accessed in the Park; these chunkalunkies offered quite a few technical challenges as they hated the local mobile networks necessitating a number of back end work-arounds, lots of cussun’, bad words and torn hair…

The package included development of all the manuals and delivery of training to the ranger staff who will be using them over the summer season…boring story I know but a great achievement for a young staffer on her first independent project…and coming back to the topic of the challenge, I am quite rightly very proud of her achievement…