Life: Wild Winter

Hello my lovelies! It’s been pretty wild out there. I’ve been very grateful to be working from home. I’ve replenished my soup supply. I’m planning how to spend a little of my tax refund. And I’ll be hanging out with Zoltan and the crew at Doppio this week.

So the storm of the year (apparently) came and went. It put a dampener on activities. But was followed by a gorgeous Saturday. It was awesome to be working from home. It was a pretty smug time. I have lived in a variety of houses since moving out of home. Of varying quality and warmth. NZ has a serious problem with the quality of rental properties. It’s a complicated issue to fix. But what it means is a lot of us have lived (and still live) in uninsulated, poorly maintained, freezing homes. We currently live in a spacious, warm, dry home for which I am extremely grateful. There’s no better feeling than being inside while the weather stays outside. I roasted a chicken. I made soup. And we ate a lot of toast.

Excitingly, my tax refund from last year is larger than I thought it would be. Because I was only earning for half the tax year I overpaid. When (little) windfalls happen I like to take a little for a treat and put the rest away. It’s how I always treated bonuses at work. Most of it gets saved. But a bit should be enjoyed. There are ALWAYS books that need to be added to the collection. I’ve been spreading my book dollar further by buying second hand when I can. And my current bread obsession has opened up a whole world of things to add to my kitchen kit. At the moment I am feeling small bread tins, a new mandoline and maybe a book or two. Also a little PSA. Don’t buy an adjustable mandoline. It seems like a good idea but it’s not. Blades that you can change, sure. But you don’t actually need those almost undetectable differences in thickness. The mechanism just makes the body weak and the slices are uneven. And it’s difficult to slice harder things because you can’t apply any pressure. Second PSA. Careful with fingers. Duh.

I’ve been slack the last few months with my conversations with food people. If you remember I committed to hitting up the awesome folks around Wellington who are involved with food to tell me their stories and talk nerdy about food. They give me with a lot of energy and inspiration and I miss them. With the addition of different paying work to my schedule and just plain being useless and inert they have fallen away. So I’m super excited about spending time talking to the guys behind Doppio this coming week. I raved about them in a previous post. As I move in a more dough oriented direction it will be great to chat and maybe get some tips. Yay!

Stay warm. Treat yo’self. Talk to someone interesting. Look after each other.

xx