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.

Christmas 2009

In a break from the tradition of the past 2 years, Christmas 2009 was spent at home in Queenstown, with Andrea's family visiting.

It was great to catch up with the Jarvis clan via Skype just before lunch and we're really looking forward to seeing them for a very belated Christmas catch up in February. It's great to be able to see everyone "in person" even if it does sometimes take a while to get both our videos working!

It was an interesting experience hosting Christmas, as not only were we hosting the meal but also providing the accommodation. A very full house eventuated, including tents on the back lawn and beds in the landing upstairs.

The full house consisted of Andrea's Mum and Dad, Step-Grandfather John, sister Rachael, her husband Dave, their toddler Jeremy (JJ), aged 18 months, Andrea's brother Stephen and other sister Jen. 9 adults plus a toddler and a cat all up.

Naturally JJ dominated most of the photos as the adults preferred to take photos of him and stay in the background. It was his first Christmas that he could actively participate in and present unwrapping had been mastered before he got to Queenstown (complete with sound effects of "Wowee!") thanks to other family gatherings.

We (together with Jen) bought JJ some skis for Christmas, the type that have velcro bindings and are used with gumboots. Jen is a ski and snowboard instructor up at Snowplanet and has offered lessons as soon as he turns 2. He seemed pretty impressed with the gift (although not really sure what to do with them as yet), and from the looks of this photo won't have too many problems getting into the right position for the giant slalom or maybe even some ski jumping in no time.

Greg unfortunately had to work for much of the time that everyone was here but did manage to take a few days off to head into the bush with Dave. They ended up coming out a day early when the weather packed in and delivered on the Christmas snow we keep hearing so much about. This photo is the day before the snow arrived, looking across at the Mt Earnslaw glacier fields from the top of Sugarloaf pass (1200m above sea level).

And one of the waterfalls on the other side. These were trickles the last time we saw them but there has been a lot of rain for this time of year and apparently water wasn't hard to come by!

And since he's by far the most photogenic of the lot, here are a few more photos of the little guy.

One of a little poser on the stairs

And one in his natural state: running and giggling