Day 81 - a Kiwi cookery lesson

Obviously we've already reminded ourselves how good the local fish and chips is and yesterday the girls had a Kiwi classic biscuit : lolly cake (crushed malt biscuits held together with butter and condensed milk, and studded with coloured sweets rather like the nasty 1970s "shrimps" and "bananas" of our youth), visible when you cut a slice from the rolled log)

But today was just right for mid-afternoon tea in the garden.

So : it was savoury muffins (bacon, cheese and red pepper) followed by lamingtons (sponge encased in chocolate for traditionalists, or raspberry jelly, and rolled in desiccated coconut - usually split in half and served as we would a scone); depending on whom you believe, they were either named after Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901, or are a Kiwi invention (but, as we'd like to stay in our nice comfy little house, we're staunchly backing the Kiwi version of events)

Next, the incontrovertibly Kiwi hokey pokey* ice cream cornets - vanilla with solid honeycomb-cum-toffee-cum-fudge nuggets.  Finding the HPs obviously require all your concentration. 

And we ended the day with another Kiwi icon : sausage sizzlers with mash and peas (and naturally I had a kiwi fruit for dessert), all accompanied by a large glass of that other Kiwi stalwart : excellent Marlborough sauvignon blanc!

Other iconic Kiwi delicacies that we could've had include colonial goose (apparently leg of lamb trussed up and stuffed to remind the newly arrived settlers of home), pavlova (today was too sticky a day but I've high hopes), chocolate fish (more of which in the run up to Christmas)...

* Though at risk of eviction, I should for completeness say that "hokey pokey" isn't Kiwi at all - believed to be of Cornish (or possibly Italian) derivation ...