Witters from Down Under
Created | Updated Oct 22, 2008
Having moved from Scotland to Australia in 2005 to find out if she had fallen in love with the country as well as her husband a decade ago, she decided that the answer was 'yes' and intended to stay.
However life has always had a marvellous way of changing her best-laid plans. And it happened again. An unexpected work opportunity presented itself in mid-2008: one too good to miss.
As a result the Witter from Down Under is now coming from the land of the long white cloud - New Zealand.
Please join us and read Frenchbean's commentary on a new country, a new city, a new job and new friends.
Check-out Chick
Hello Everybody 
Herein lies a cautionary tale. Beware the contents of organic veg boxes, for they may have Unexpected Consequences.
Until I have a house and garden I decided to subscribe to an organic veg box scheme. I receive $30's worth of fruit and veg every second Wednesday, most of which I can select, but which contains the odd surprise substitution.
In my first box, there were 12 very ripe kiwifruit, in place of spinach. I like kiwifruit, but one or two a week is my usual consumption. This dozen required to be eaten in a few days.
Each day I ate two for my lunch. Very delicious they were too.
However, I can now categorically confirm that they have a similar effect on the bowels as prunes at a dose of two a day. Suffice it to say I'm 'relieved' to have finished them.
I have just discovered that they are also considered to be an aphrodisiac. If only I'd known…
Having emailed the organic supplier to point out that such a superfruity was more daunting than exciting, I was surprised to find six giant apples and nine huge tangelos in this week's offering.
Ha bloody ha. Funny joke. There's evidently a campaign to keep me moving regularly.
By the way, I also received -
- Two bundles of silverbeet
- One avocado
- Two beetroot
- 14 carrots
- Six potatoes
- Two parsnips
- ½ a pumpkin
Not bad for $30. A fortnightly delivery will suffice.
Talking of food (no, no, not me… surely not?) I caused a minor rumpus in a local supermarket earlier in the week when I picked up and tried to buy a corn-fed free-range chicken. Not a feathered flappy chicken of course, but a dead one – plucked, gutted, carefully packaged and ready to cook.
When I got to the front of the queue at the checkout with my basket of stuff, everything bleeped through the beam as usual until it came to the chook. My argument that if it wasn't a recognised bleep and the number wasn't on the system then it was free, didn't wash with the increasingly flustered and flappy checkoutchick.
She called the supervisor, who couldn't help.
She called the butchery department and got no reply.
She called the cool store department and received more silence.
The Chief Head Honcho Supervisor was summonsed.
After 15 minutes the news came through that it was $14; not free as I had continued to suggest.
Anyway the reason for this tale is not to bore you with my disruptive influence upon supermarket queues, but to spread the word that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is having a positive impact on Kiwis' shopping habits.
Hurrah for St. Hugh!
His free-range chicken vs. battery chicken series is showing here at the moment and all of the local supermarkets (I've checked) are now stocking free-range, due to an 'unexpected increase in demand' (quote from the CHH Supervisor).
I was the first person to buy one, hence the confusion about the price.
To get to the real nub of the matter; how did my Rangateiki corn-fed free-range chicken taste?
I roasted it very simply with salt and pepper worked into the skin with a little olive oil. That way the taste of the meat would be able to shine through. And it did. It was one of the best commercial chickens I've found.
However, it couldn't hold a bar to Charlie I'm afraid. Charlie is my benchmark since eating him at Skipi Hat in Greece last year. Charlie casserole converted me to raising my own roosters for meat sometime in the future – as well as hens for eggs of course. In separate free ranges.
However, until that day, Rangateiki will do me just fine. And now that they are in every supermarket, I'm expecting prices to come down.
My New Zealand learning continues apace.
This week I have found out that:
- Clematis, fuchsia, and hebe are NZ native plants. Who'd have thunk it?
- There is a magazine on sale here called "Go Boaring" with a cover photograph of a hunter with a dead wild pig across his shoulders. I didn't buy it.
- Possums eat 20,000 tonnes of foliage a night (not each, but in total)
- 75% of the NZ population of Australian Crested Grebe is found on one lake in the area, which is dangerous because if that lake becomes unsuitable, all those birds have to relocate
- 20% of the world population of NZ Scaup are found here on Bromley oxidation ponds – and are susceptible to the cleaning of the waterways.
- Those ponds also support 7000 Australian Shoveler, 4000 Grey Teal, 2,500 Paradise Duck, 2,500 Canada Goose, 1000 Black Swan.
Spring is springing here with trees bursting into bright verdant leaf; ducklings chuntering around the rivers, shepherded by vigilant parents; swallows ducking and diving over insect-rich grassland; and the snow gradually melting from the Southern Alps.
Ain't life grand?
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