Avoiding Drama Ends with a Melting Moment, and Yummies all Round…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, the hungry Kiwidutch clan are visiting the small New Zealand town of Paeroa and have made themselves comfortable inside the Tui Coffee Lounge for lunch.

I’m delighted to see the cabinets well stocked with traditional Kiwi favourites: Custard Squares, Chocolate Fudge Slices, Rocky Road, Peanut Brownies, Lolly Cake and Lamington’s to name but a few.

As well as the sweet cakes and biscuits on offer there is also a cabinet full of sandwiches and rolls, and a warmer with plain and stuffed sausages, patties, chicken and the like.

As with the café we visited back  in Kaikoura, I was sorely tempted by the stuffed sausages but I remember that pies won’t be on our menu once I get back to the Netherlands so once again I am indulging just because I know I will miss them later.

Ok, Let’s be honest here, I’m also indulging because they taste good too LOL.

Kiwi Daughter picks out a brown coloured biscuit (cookie) that she assumes has large white chocolate chips in it… She’s never seen one of these biscuits before, clearly hasn’t looked closely at it  and she wants to take a sneaky bite before we get to the cashier… horrified I tell her urgently not to…  and luckily she feels guilty so she obeys.

I’m not upset because of the impending sneaky bite, I’m freaking out because I now see that she’s about to unknowingly put a Peanut Brownie in her mouth…  …and she’s got a severe peanut allergy.

Fortunately drama is avoided, the offending Peanut Brownie becomes part of my lunch and Kiwi Daughter gets to pick out an item without peanuts in it’s place.  She goes for a Melting Moment, Little Mr for a large Chocolate Chip biscuit and Himself for an Apricot Slice.  Yummies all round.

The little foodie devil that sits on my shoulder wishes I had a place like this just around the corner from where I live…  my little foodie saint thanks God that I don’t … Life just isn’t fair… why can’t all these mouth-watering goodies contain the same calories as rice crackers and celery sticks?

Today we  indulge…  the fasting can be put on hold until we get home and settle back into a routine loaded with fresh vegetables..

Yes, I know your mouth is probably watering… mine is too and I’m just remembering the taste. This post is torture to us all.

Fed and happy,  family Kiwidutch manage to find a small gap in the cloudburst to get back into the van, we have places to go, appointments to keep.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Mashed potato-topped mince meat pie…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Melting Moment and Chocolate Chip Biscuit…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Apricot Slice and Peanut Brownie…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Maybe No Longer a Dairy, but Still has the Charm…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

This part of my retrospective journal of our New Zealand tour has us still in Paeroa, the rain is still tipping it down and by now a van load of Kiwidutch tummies are rumbling.

We are on the lookout for something easy and fairly quick, with close-by parking so that I don’t have to negotiate too many puddles with the crutches.

Just a short distance after the war memorial we spy just the place… a café, diner sort of place and there is parking almost directly across the street so that will do nicely.

It’s called the “Tui Coffee Lounge” and is housed in an old fashioned shop with a corrugated iron verander out the front over the pavement.

Actually I’d lay odds on the possibility that probably this building used to be an old fashioned supermarket or dairy  in decades past, one of the ones like the “4-Square” variety because they too have this very distinctive shape and style. In fact their style within New Zealand became so iconic that there are even books made documenting the remaining ones that are still dairy’s and supermarkets.

… and to explain: a Dairy is a small corner shop that stocks groceries and is open not only during the day but  often early in the morning, later at night, and at weekends, in small towns they were the supermarket as well, but they are definitely the place were you would head to pick up a newspaper, and ice-cream, a hot pie from the pie warmer and any small grocery item that you’d run out of at home and needed in a hurry.

It’s plain and functional inside, a little sparse perhaps:  the right hand side full of cabinets of food and drinks and the left hand side with rows of  tables and seats… but it’s dry, comfortable enough and a great place to have a really “kiwi lunch”.  Even a first glance at the food has my heart singing too, as many of the items I see in the cabinets transport me back with memories of my Grandma’s kitchen and her amazing trays of baking.

Himself and the kids spy a well stocked pie warmer cabinet so they like it here already too…  but before I show you the food, let’s take a little peek at the place…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

No, Sorry Little Mr….  Not a car you can play with…. (it’s a door-stop).

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Seeing is One Thing, Tasting is Quite Another…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

In yesterday’s post you may remember that I said I would reveal today what the  ”Cafinated Coffee and Tea House café” owners menu recommendation for me was… well to be really honest I didn’t take too much convincing because back in November 2011 I had already seen a photograph of one these and was already super curious about this flavour combination.

Fellow Foodie blogger Raymund  posted his recipe version here: http://angsarap.net/2011/11/22/peaches-and-cream-cheese-muffin/ and while, ok his uses  peaches and this is the apricot version the principle is almost identical.

Basically the recipe is plain buttery vanilla  muffin with piece of either peach or apricot on top but with a dollop of cream cheese embedded into the centre…

I never thought that the cream cheese would go so well like this but wow was I mistaken!  These are fabulous.

I adore apricots anyway so this would have been a hit without any extras but the cream cheese takes this to a whole new level and gives it a real sophistication that’s rather unexpected.

It’s also a good time to tell you one of the few jokes our kids know, and which I will probably now not forget in my lifetime because they told it to every friend and family member at least twice this trip and to Himself and I about 400 times.

Naturally it’s an obligatory  fact that every parent must stoically try and pull a surprised face  and laugh as hysterically as possible upon delivery of the punchline each and every time the joke is told, and truth is that eventually Himself and I naughtily added  a bit of a additional “grownup”  joke to see which of us could feign the most surprise and laugh the best without the kids twigging that this was an additional game that they weren’t part of.

Don”t blame me for the corniness of the joke,  it came out of a Christmas cracker, or  very cheap kids joke book or the like and it goes like this:

Question: “Where do baby apes sleep?”    Answer: “In an apricot of course!”

Yes I know… it’s baaaad. Believe me it’s even worse when you’ve heard it about 500 times in one holiday. What we do for  our kids (and to stay sane on long car journeys).

Now that I’ve tasted these muffins I can tell you that not only do they look good, they taste amazing too… Raymund has a recipe in his link if you’d like to give it a go yourself. Let us know if you like them too.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Coffee ….Make it a Double?

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

I’m still taking you on a retro tour of our 2007 visit to the Island of Sal in Cape Verde.
On the less dry islands of Cape Verde they grow a limited amount (but excellent) coffee  and the extremes in sizes of the vessels they arrived in had me laughing…

…admittedly the strength of these two cups differed enormously!

Himself’s after dinner coffee…. that IS a demi-tasse cup…. so the cup itself was as big as a shot glass and it was less than half full!

…there was even a  dinky little plate that came with it…

Himself, like most Dutch, drinks his coffee far stronger than is usual in many countries outside Europe , and after seeing the size of the cup it was no surprise that this little coffee (called a “bica“) was mega-strong indeed. It compared well to they way the Greek’s drink their coffee, which Himself also likes.

However, if you are from outside Europe then there’s a high chance that this coffee would come as a bit of a shock.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

..Then compare this to Kiwi Best-Friend’s  morning brews…  first coffee I’ve ever seen served in beer mugs ! (they call this one a “galã“)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)