Insults fly across the blogosphere!

Insults fly across the blogosphere!

The world of sausage obsessive bloggers is a small one. An excellent blog emanates from England, Rate My Sausage. I consider this blog to be one of the best sausage review sites on the web. However in his latest post the writer asks for a comment from me, and worse to come, he calls me an Australian! A man can only stand for so much, this besmirching of my character goes too far.

For my response to this insult follow this link.

England Masticated

England Masticated

Today I went to see New Zealand playing England in the ICC’s Cricket World Cup. While NZ were the favourites, no one would have predicted the humiliation that was forced onto England. However I guess if minnow teams are going to be part of the tournament then you have to expect some lop sided results.

 

 

 

 

 

NZ destroyed England to have them all out for 123 in around 30 overs. Tim Southee produced NZ’s best ever one day bowling figures of 7-33. Then Brendon McCullum came out with a 25 ball score of 77, including the fastest 50 in World Cup history. It was all over so quickly. What a game! A great crowd, inside a sold out stadium, coupled with magnificent Wellington weather.

 

                                     

I brought some English pork sausages to game. I had hoped for mastication both in the stands and on field. The NZ cricket team delivered and I managed to play my part and do this in the stands. These snarlers were brought from Cameron Harrison in Kelburn, they are pure pork. They are a standard pork sausage where meat is the dominant flavour. The sweetness of the pork is stronger when eaten hot, however it does linger when eaten cold at the cricket. A good pork banger that will have a wide appeal. Kids would love these.

So the English pork sausages were like the English cricket team, masticated, and well pulverised, before being vanquished.

Cost per kilo: $16.99

Mexican Chorizo Sausages – Heritage Meat Company

Mexican Chorizo Sausages – Heritage Meat Company

On a pleasant warm summer’s day I went with a few work colleagues to another colleague’s place for lunch. He has five acres of land just north of Otaki. His whare is positioned on top of an old sand dune and he can survey his estate from this high ground. He also gets a great view of the Tararuas. In a piece of serendipitous irony another work mate said his father used to be a sharemilker on this particular piece of land and as a boy he would have clambered over the hill when it was a dairy farm.

I took cherries and snarlers for the lunch. The cherries were from Central Otago, the snarlers came from Palmerston North. We had a very enjoyable summer’s lunch in relaxing surroundings.

 

 

Heritage Meat Company make quality sausages. A range of these are sold at Moore Wilsons and my favourite variety is their Romanian sausage. Sadly Moore Wilsons have not stocked this for a number of years. When I enquired why they told me they did not sell enough of this variety. My taste is obviously different from the masses.

 

 

The Mexican Chorizo went down well and all the sausages disappeared quickly. This is coarsely ground sausage, a good sign. It has an initial slightly acidic taste on the palate, then the chilli and paprika kicks in. When I ate one the snarlers as it came out the pan, the heat of the sausage was at the top end of what I would enjoy. The following day as a cold sausage, the heat was not as pronounced. This is a pork snarler where the initial taste of the meat is soon dominated by the heat of the spices. These are a very good Mexican Chorizo that both I and my work mates enjoyed on warm sunny afternoon.

I would purchase these snarlers again.

Cost: $10.84 for six sausages

An Attractive Coal Range

An Attractive Coal Range.

While staying at Pep’s Cottage in Raglan there was an old coal range in the house that had great visual appeal. This coal range now fulfils a decorative purpose. Our family lived in Timaru for a period in the 1960s. I was a pre-schooler and we lived in an older house. The memories I have of this house are the large sash windows, you could climb in and out of them; riding the trike along the hallway; the outside toilet; and the coal range.

As kids we had to go outside at night and use the toilet before we went to bed. We stood as a group as we each used the toilet and then headed back into the house and off to bed. Other memories of the house include the big black coal range in the kitchen. Mum used to stoke it up as she used this for cooking. I can remember looking into the bright fire as the cast iron lid was lifted off a stoking hole on the hot plate which formed the top of the range. When my parents sold the place in 1967 the people who brought the house wanted to know what they had done with electric stove. The new buyers were obviously modernists.

 

 

I am currently reading Kai to Kiwi Kitchen – New Zealand Culinary Traditions and Cookbooks. This book states that the first import of a coal range was in 1865 by Lady Barker in Canterbury. By the 1880s coal ranges were being manufactured in NZ and these replaced the earlier "colonial ovens" that were a simpler and cheaper device used for cooking. Nearly a century later the coal range was still in use, but as time has passed they usually now fulfil a decorative function.

Next year we have booked a couple of weeks at Pep’s Cottage. I am sure the coal range will still be in place a reminder of how our forebears cooked.