Chicken dinners and electoral polls…

What with the busy weekends everyone is planning on having, we decided to get together for dinner with friends last night, and watch the leaders debate on TV3.

I did the dinner, and I kicked its ass.

Claire wanted to have pasta with a nice olive oil & lemon juice sauce, and pepper & shavings of parmesan. I vetoed this idea, not because I’m president and get a deciding vote, but because I was cooking, and she wasn’t even in the house. And goddamnit I wanted a great big roast.

It being 3pm on the day of the dinner, I grabbed a fresh chicken, some yams, a couple of parsnips, red & white taters, pumpkin and a big golden kumara, and scrubbing, peeling and chopping, I was actually worried that I’d massively overcatered, with two big roasting dishes full of veges, I was sure we’d get though maybe half, a quick spritz of olive oil, and into the oven they went, alongside a third dish with the aforementioned chicken, itself with a dash of oil, freshly ground seasalt and pepper.

Now, obviously I wouldn’t have mentioned the fear of over catering if I hadn’t been wrong, everything went. It was all good. Nice and crispy on the outside, steamy and tender on the inside.


Chicken, coated with fresh ground seasalt and black pepper.


Golden Kumara, Potatoes, Red Potatoes.


Pumpkin, Yams, Parsnips.

The game didn’t go so well for me, well, it didn’t go well for anyone that isn’t Karl, he won two games of two. Oh, and in as much as there is a loser, I was the loser.

Tomorrow, I don’t know what’s happening, we’re voting, obviously, but after that I’m not sure, we might try and get a few friends over to eat popcorn and drink booze and watch as the results feed through, or we might do that, and I’ll also go and help out Dylan with his thing – he’s producing an election results special for Triangle TV.

And, what can I say but fuck the polls, what the hell is going on when you can release the results of 3 polls on one day and have them pretty much all be weird and different:

  • Herald-DigiPoll
    • Labour 44.6
    • National 37.4
  • One News/Colmar Brunton
    • National 44
    • Labour 38
  • 3 News TNS
    • Labour 40.5
    • National 38.7

Some of the polls also look really bad for the minor parties, with none of them making the threshold, and only those with the foresight (or luck) to win an electorate seat getting in, while other polls have some of the minor parties on up to 8%.

So once again, fuck the polls.

Oh, and please, even if you’re a right wing nutcase with no connection to reality, VOTE. It’s easy. It’s fun*. So do it.

* $fun = ‘not actually fun usually, but it is perfectly painless.’;