Category: Reckons

A perfect Christmas example of the traditional New Zealand pavlova. People who make a pav with anything other than strawberries have a tenuous claim of being a Real New Zealander. Kiwifruit on a pav is an abomination, people who perpetrate that foolish act deserve no better than death.

Probably the greatest gift I’ve received in 15 years, somehow Trouble managed to find a scarlet & white Adidas Firebird tracksuit. I’d tried to track one down several times and had no joy, and had no idea she’d even considered looking.

This tracksuit fucking rocks.

You have no idea how happy it makes me.

The turkey (and the meal displayed here) wasn’t Christmas dinner, but a meal I don’t usually celebrate – Christmas Eve dinner. The stuffing was completely outrageous, almost certainly the best I’ve tasted. And bonus, I made it.

I won’t tell you exactly how to make it, this isn’t a recipe post, but it starts with about two thirds of a cup of turkey fat, bacon fat, olive oil, butter, a little lemon zest & juice, and some parsley. A good cupped of mushrooms, and a couple of onions are sauteed, then about a cup of fresh parsley and 8 or 10 leafs of fresh sage, all mixed up then a whole pile of fresh breadcrumbs, 8 cups or more, then chuck it into the oven in a roasting dish for 20 or 30 minutes.

Amazing texture, incredible flavour, and unbelievably rich.

Here we find Anna Nicole in her natural habitat — she’s a 6KG Crozier’s free range turkey, which should apparently serve ~16, we had her at a meal for just 4, and then three other meals. This is a lot of turkey. Perhaps you can’t quite tell the scale, but that’s a very large roasting dish she completely fills.

As is appropriate for the season, Anna Nicole is wearing a tailored blanket of Freedom Farms free range bacon, stuffed with onions, lemons, and garlic bulbs, and liberally basted with butter & olive oil.

If you think you can see a woman’s face in amongst the vegetables, you’re not alone. I think this turkey may have been haunted.

(Naming? Obvious. She’s a dead bird with huge breasts.)

Just kidding, that’s plenty.

(FYI, this is the completion screen of Call of Duty: Black Ops. No spoilers, but you win.)

Japan knows how to make escalators sexy.

Escalator that did the neat trick of seamlessly turning into a travelator. Maybe this is common somewhere, but I’d never seen it before. Friggin cool.

Long exposure, which is bloody tricky to hand hold for 10 seconds, good thing the bullet train is so steady.

Without question the best sushi I’ve ever had, and easily one of the best meals I had in Japan. Well worth the wait to get in. The sushi is served directly onto the wood, no plates.

Oh my god it was so good.

Up at the crack of about 4AM to get to the fishmarket by 5, just in time to get into the Tsukiji fishmarket tuna auction. At the current rate of depletion, it won’t be going on for much longer, ‘cos they’ll all be gone. (The Japanese fleet has already depleted most of the Pacific Ocean, and is now destroying the Atlantic – that’s a long way from home.)