My new favourite bridge: the Pukeko Bridge

Built to protect the access rights between blocks of land that the new Northern Tollway slices through, slightly controversial as it cost a couple of million dollars of public money and you can only get over it with a key, but isn’t it just the loveliest thing?

It’s so wonderfully slender, the asymmetry is very odd looking.

It’s the Hillcrest Rd bridge, I don’t know who calls i the Pukeko Bridge, but some news articles assure me that’s a name some know it by, and it suits those long spindly legs.

Pav

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.

The Firebird

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.

Christmas Eve Dinner

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.

Anna Nicole

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.)