"Kiwi" Christmas fare

Well, actually, I think it’s here already—and although I’ve been putting off the day, this morning I bit the bullet and went ‘out there’ to get in all the Christmas supplies, namely food and wine. And because this is New Zealand, i.e. southern hemisphere and height of summer, and also—as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, hot-hot-hot right now—the main thought that informed my purchasing foray was that no way, under any circumstances whatsover, was I buying anything that required the oven to be switched on.  “If it can’t be served either grilled or chilled,” my thinking ran, “then I ain’t buying it!”

Garden fare--just in time for Christmas!

And I didn’t. But this being the height of summer, as mentioned above, there’s lots of great summer food that can be grilled, steamed, stir-fried, chilled, or served ‘as it comes’ that will still make the Christmas board festive. The foods I bought today include: strawberries, raspberries and cherries, sweetcorn on-the-cob, asparagus and snowspeas and bell peppers, new potatoes, oysters, and the meat–definitely for the grill, not the oven–is an eye fillet of beef.  There’s a few other things in the mix as well, but I still think I have the makings of a Christmas Day feast in all that, even if it is not traditional “trimmings.”

I did mention wine as well, didn’t I? According to the wine shop proprietor, Christmas is the one time of the year that both ‘bubbles’ (‘methode traditionelle’ to the more rarified out there, and real-deal champagne for those not on a budget 😉 ) and dessert wine (‘stickies’) are bought in large numbers—so of course I bought both. (“Chilled”—got it? [Winks])

And going outside of wine, just briefly, limoncello—so there can be limoncello & lemon mousse to go with the Christmas Day raspberries!

Some of you may be saying: hold on, it’s only the 23rd. Not so, I reply: this is not just the southern hemisphere, it’s also New Zealand, the first country in the world to see the sunrise—for me, today is Christmas Eve and more than time to be thinking about Christmas fare.

I also promised you poetry and stories for the season. Yesterday’s poem was A Nor’west Season. Today, I’m referring you to Helen Rickerby’s Winked Ink blog, where she featured my poem Christmastide as her Tuesday Poem.

Metrosideros excelsa; aka "crimson"

I was very pleased when Helen chose to feature this particular poem, because to me it is quintessential New Zealand Christmas—the heat, the vegetation flowering, the odyssies we all make to reconnect with friends and family around the country. Usually though, the pohutakawa doesn’t flower at Christmas; it’s just a little earlier, in mid-late November, early December. But the year I wrote Christmastide was anomalous for some reason and the pohutakawas were all flowering late, so my journey north, to Hamilton and then Auckland, was coloured crimson.

Worth a poem, I thought, especially as it was another really hot year. So click on the link and enjoy!