Just when you thought it was safe … Things have been quietening down a lot on the Christchurch earthquake front lately, with shakes coming both less often and being less pronounced when they do occur. Until the wee small hours of this morning when we had a 4.1 and 3.7 in quick succession, both centred right on Christchurch and very shallow, 5 km and 6 kn respectively. And another jolt just 10 minutes ago, rattling through like a freight train—yup, they really do sound just like that!<\/p>\n
So that makes it 4101 quakes in total since 4 September, although some of them are so slight that most of us really don’t notice them anymore.<\/p>\n
But quakes and shakes aside, yesterday was a great Christmas Day, plenty sunny but not too hot because the easterly was blowing—which in Christchurch comes in off the ocean, so always cools things down a bit. And you will be pleased to know that the menu that could all either be grilled or chilled<\/a> was a great success. The eye fillet (mignon, not tournedos) in particular was a great success: marinated, cut into 5 individual steaks, seared in the pan then finished under the grill, before being served with a mushroom sauce. And the dessert of lemon & limoncello mousse served with fresh raspberries simply engendered the universal accolade of: “yum.”<\/p>\n And the wine? Only NZ wines were served: the Quartz Reef<\/a> Methode Traditionelle from Central Otago<\/a> (as the aperitif); Pegasus Bay<\/a> Cabernet Merlot from Waipara<\/a> (just north of Christchurch) with the steak; and the Mission<\/a> Ice Wine (from Hawkes Bay<\/a>) with the mousse and raspberries. They were all wonderful—carefully selected, of course! \ud83d\ude09 —but I particularly note the ice wine, which had a luscious caramel note, reminiscent of the topping on creme brulee. Again—yum!<\/p>\n Continuing the food and poetry theme that has characterised Christmas on ” … Anything, Really”<\/em> so far (although it “might” be prose tomorrow …), Keri Hulme<\/a>, author of the Booker Prize-winning and internationally renowned novel, The Bone People<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, sent me this poem just before Christmas and had kindly allowed me to share it with you. The food referenced in the poem is traditional NZ food or kai associated with Keri’s Maori heritage; the singer, Ana Hato<\/a>, was very well known in NZ in the 1930s and 1940s in particular.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n These dough balls are sticky ka hoki mai ano come little Maori maiden Home home (c) Keri Hulme<\/p>\n Reproduced here with permission—and thanks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just when you thought it was safe … Things have been quietening down a lot on the Christchurch earthquake front lately, with shakes coming both less often and being less pronounced when they do occur. Until the wee small hours of this morning when we had a 4.1 and 3.7 in quick succession, both centred […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10,14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-general","category-other-writers","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2920,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions\/2920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A Poem, while listening to a dead but wonderfully alive voice, Ana Hato<\/h4>\n
\nbut the oil is hot
\n… Now is th’ hour
\nI’ve left them to rest
\ntaua, but
\nI wont add the golden syrup
\njust a bit
\n— o muttonbird fat
\n“ka mate hoe te aroha’
\nhow
\ncan I combine the sacred
\nwhile Ana sings beautiful
\nmoe mai e tama profane–<\/p>\n
\nthe kumara & dough
\nwith the good greens\u00a0 she could not
\nget enough of
\ndying so early<\/p>\n
\n–o! hear them sing!
\nAue! Aue!<\/p>\n
\nwairua e<\/p>\n