Packing

"This carry on bag is a little small. Have you got anything more comfortable?"

Next stop, Auckland.

Greg's birthday present

Greg went through to Haast on Friday with a friend to go hunting and sea-run salmon fishing. The salmon fishing didn't go so well - they landed a few trout but the salmon weren't playing ball. The hunting, however............

Mowing the lawn

Greg was mowing the lawn last week. Burton "helped".

"No, Daddy, you can't have your catcher back. Then you'd have to move me... and look... I'm ever so cute!!"

Early morning wakeboarding... again!

It's becoming a bit of a habit, but we're not complaining! On Tuesday morning we decided to head out for a wakeboard before work. The lake's generally at it's best first thing - even if it is cold! The weather has been pretty much perfect for a fortnight now so we're making the most of it.

There aren't any photos of Greg as he decided that with him heading out rabbit shooting that evening, he didn't want to be too tired so gave it a miss this week. Andrea made the most of it and had twice as long on the board as usual!

A few photos:

The lake was a bit ripply. Hehehe

Photographic proof of the world's smallest wakeboarding jump. In Andrea's defense, there were bigger jumps on the other side of the wake but the photos of those all came out blurry.

Carving it up

We also took Greg's workmate Mike out - it was his second time on a wakeboard (the first being last week) but he was managing to cross the wake by the end of the morning - this photo was as the sun came up over the Remarkables.

As far as the rabbit shooting went, Greg ended up getting back home at about 1.30am - and the Cardrona farmer was delighted at the tally of well over 100 rabbits.

Goat Curry, anyone?

We've been shooting a few goats quite close to home but up until tonight, they have mainly been old billy goats, which aren't any good for eating.



We'd just finished dinner tonight (Friday) when the phone rang and our friend Rex from up the road phoned to say he'd had a call from a local farmer who had come home to discover a number of young wild goats in his back paddock. By a number, we were expecting maybe 10. We arrived at the paddock to discover a large herd of 30 to 40 goats. In about 30 seconds flat Greg and Rex dispatched nine of them, much to the delight of the farmer.



We loaded up the back of Rex's truck and headed off to salvage the meat, and we currently have a fridge full of hind legs (all about the size of a small lamb roast). Unfortunately we were unable to track down the wild fallow deer that's been hanging around, but maybe next time.... There was certainly lots of sign around!

So, Goat curry for dinner tomorrow night.... and probably every second night for about the next 3 or 4 weeks! Good thing Andrea's found a whole heap of goat recipes to try out!

Morning!

We went wakeboarding at 6.30 this morning (Tuesday) which has the added bonus of views like this:

The water was like glass (especially first thing) and we both got a good ride in, along with teaching a couple of others to wakeboard and then throwing them around on the biscuits. One of the perks of Greg's new job is that we can borrow the demo gear any time we want, for free - including kayaks, wakeboards, executive carving skis, snowboards, mountain bikes, fly fishing rods etc etc so we had a play on a few new boards this morning too! Lots of fun.

Return of the Rainbows!

It's been a while since we've been fishing and caught Rainbow Trout. There have been plenty of Brown Trout around, but the Rainbows have been somewhat elusive. It's not just us - everyone's been commenting... and of course the Brown Trout don't taste half as good as the Rainbows.

Anyway, we went out fishing a few days ago now that the lake has finally flattened off enough for us to get the boat out. For the first few hours it was looking like another fruitless effort, but right on dark we hooked up three fish in ten minutes - one of each, a Brown, a Rainbow and a Quinnat Salmon. The Rainbow was quickly dispatched and thrown into the chilly bin to be taken home! The others were released to fight another day.

Burton was delighted at our catch. Fresh water fish is one of his most favourite things (but not saltwater fish), alongside ham (but not heated or cooked), lamb (medium rare, he'll take the fatty bits we don't want thanks) and steak (eye fillet only, rare). He started going nuts as soon as we parked the boat back on the grass - he must have smelt the fish on our clothes. He spent the next 10 minutes sitting up perfectly straight next to the kitchen, you could almost hear him saying "See, I'm being awfully good!"

We've been searching for a nice way to cook trout that doesn't involve 2 different types of cream and cold cubed butter (although the tarragon cream sauce is nice, it's definitely a "sometimes food"!) and Andrea stumbled across a recipe for salmon fish cakes using mashed potato that she thought might adapt well to smoked trout. Sure enough, it was delicious and we're pleased to have a new recipe that's so easy! And we've got more fish cakes in the freezer for another easy meal.