Best 'Oh My God' Meal Ever!

How often do we eat a meal, during which "Oh my God" is uttered far more than it ever has been in the bedroom?

I had just such a meal at the Millhouse Restaurant (Millbrook Resort in Queenstown, New Zealand)...

The journey from shaky Christchurch to Queenstown was in reply to an overwhelmingly insatiable desire for the salt caramel tart a foodie friend had told me about. I had been in discussions with Millbrook regarding the salt caramel tart and was promised that it would be prepared for me if I booked in and came down.

I booked.

I came.

I was hungry.

Showing an unusual capacity for self control, I did not order three courses of salt caramel tart, but I did abandon the idea of an entrée, because I wanted to reach dessert with enough hunger left to fully—with reckless abandon—enjoy and appreciate every moment of the salt caramel tart.

My husband, however, is not a sweet tooth kind of guy, so he ordered the oysters for the entrée., which were beautifully prepared, and beautifully presented.

(I am assuming he was well aware that I would not be sharing a single molecule of my long awaited for dessert!)

For the main he ordered the lamb, which was again beautifully cooked and presented.

Visual appeal is a huge factor when dining out. First we must be aroused via the eyes, and then via the aroma, before we fully release ourselves into the taste experience. Yes, it is like sex...there are steps to be fully comprehended and appreciated. You can't rush it, you can't skip steps, certainly not when you are in a truly good restaurant.

Being a vegetarian can be limiting when it comes to dining, and it is not often I find myself getting gastronomically aroused, but when I saw the Blue Cheese Ravioli, I felt a certain excited anticipation rising! When it arrived it was not what I had imagined, it was more, it was a story on the plate, from the bed of paper thin overlapping slices of beet, to the salad leaves of the matching colour, roasted hazelnuts, scattered quarters of roasted baby beet, small coin sized baby beet chips, snow pea shoots, halves of yellow cherry tomatoes, and then the glory of the blue cheese ravioli. On slicing into the ravioli, which were perfectly cooked, the inner thick creamy blue cheese filling oozed out. The combination of blue cheese ravioli and beetroot is a perfect partnership.

It was only a year ago that I first tried blue cheese, and came to understand the unique flavour – and also came to understand why people adore this cheese! The blue cheese ravioli filling was not too strong, in fact the balance was perfect, any stronger and it would have overpowered everything on the palate, too subdued and it would have been an ordinary cheese filled ravioli…but this ravioli filling was the perfect balance for the rest of the dish.

On to the dessert, the very thing we had driven all the way to Queenstown for (my husband still thinks the weekend was a romantic getaway, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that the trip was all about my lust for a tart!)

The tart arrived at the table.  A chocolate lined base, filled with salt caramel, topped with swiss meringue, and sitting atop a bed of apricots and a berry coulee. The apricots were intense, a perfect match to the rich sweetness of the tart. The berry coulee had a twang to it, but it sang a different note to the apricots, and it too was the perfect balance to the tart.

Eating the tart was one of those experiences where you know you are grinning like an idiot but you can’t help yourself. All you want to do is cry out “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

Gastronomically orgasmic!!!

The wait staff were all friendly, and prompt, the environment was relaxed, and food arrived at the table at a good pace. Everything was cooked well, with the flavours carefully thought out, and each plate was presented to look as good as it tasted.

The menu prices were fairly standard for a good restaurant, and the whole meal, plus a glass of wine cost $134.

Of course our city will rebuild!

We are a city that has been somewhat ravaged. And what has every ravaged city, in the past, done? Rebuilt. Almost every city that has ever been ravaged has been rebuilt.

What Christchurch has the chance to do, is to build something special. We lost almost the entire CBD, and so we have the chance to have a custom designed and custom built CBD.

 In front of a vacant site.

We have entire suburbs that are pretty much unliveable, and so there, also, we have the chance to create something new and special, something for the people of Christchurch. That may be a forest, with cycle tracks and walkways. It may be a nature reserve, a place created in honour and memory not just of those who died and were injured, but also in honour of every single person who helped, every police office, every soldier, every builder, every plumber, every road worker, ever man who dug and repaired the sewerage system, every person who delivered a port-a-loo to the suburbs, every doctor, every nurse, every counsellor, the lady in the street who hugged you, every single person who helped! The land that can never be built on again—for we surely can never be so stupid as to assume earthquakes won’t happen and liquefaction doesn’t exist—and so this land needs to be put to use in a way that honours what has happened.

Re:Start in the CBD!

September 4^th 2010 started a cycle of seismic events that, even at this point of writing, has not stopped, and is likely to continue for decades (on a dwindling scale). Where once our city was still, now she rocks, and rolls, and dances and sways. This is the new ‘normal’ for our city. And we are beginning to accept that, to find a way to not be affected by these events quite so much, so that we can carry on without the constant burst of adrenalin, and get past that fight-or-flight response. That is a lot easier to write than to do, I know.

These days, in a shopping mall, we will stop if a 5.5 aftershock barrels through the city, and we will wait to see what happens. Will it build into something bigger, or will it stop? Will we need to run? Will it fade away? And when it fades away we get back to what we were doing and carry on shopping, unfazed—no doubt making a mental note to check www.geonet.co.nz when we get home to see how strong the shake was and where it was centred. These days a 5.5 hits and no one cries out, panics, or screams. If it begins to build into something bigger then yes panic will set in, but…let’s be honest here: if the mall was going to fall down it would have done so by now!

I guess this building was damaged!

Our city was ravaged, our emotions were ravaged. Do we rebuild as stronger people? Take a look around our city, at what has been done with some of the empty land where rows of shops have been demolished. We have temporary cafes set up, we have a ReStart shopping area in the CBD that is built with colourful shipping containers, and it is thriving! We have shipping containers used as display windows to hide the empty land behind. We have shipping containers creating a barrier between the roads and where rocks may fall from the cliffs above in the event of aftershocks. We have art on blank walls. We have gardens where there would otherwise be an empty plot of land. With the great Kiwi ‘No. 8 wire’ mentality, people have done what they could with what was available! We pulled together to create, and we support those creations. We are a people with initiative, creativity, and above all, a strong sense of identity and purpose. We will rebuild this city, and we will be so utterly proud of it!

Lyttleton Petanque Club, where one a fabulous deli and cafe stood.

A city whose people coped with streets of liquefaction, ruined sewerage systems, broken water systems, port-a-loos in the streets, water tankers in the streets, schools that doubled up with one school there in the morning and another school—whose own premises were badly damaged—in the afternoon school session, we coped, and we did what needed to be done, because there was no other choice.

Some people think Christchurch people should just abandon the city and move elsewhere. Fair enough. But, who is going to buy our houses? Where are we supposed to get the money to buy another house in another city? Where are we supposed to get jobs? Christchurch is our home, and we will rebuild it. Since when did Kiwis walk away? The CanDo attitude is rife in this city, and always has been.

The ‘Greendale Fault’ ruptured on 4^th September 2010. It had been still for sixteen and a half thousand years…but think about that time sixteen and a half thousand years ago. Earthquake and aftershocks. It happened then, it is happening now. This is nothing new. The earth has always moved. It is perhaps incredibly naïve to expect the Earth to not move!

This is the art on the side of a building.

Christchurch will be a stronger and more beautiful city. The people of Christchurch will be stronger, closer, more resilient, more self sufficient, and we will support each other.

People may ask, “Where were you when the quakes hit?” and in the answer “I was here, in Christchurch, for each and every one of them”, there is a solidarity, a brother-sisterhood, a unification amongst people. We were united by earthquakes and destruction.

2012

 So far 2012 has been all action! And much of that action was way overdue.

The outgoing…

• Kitchen – cupboards cleaned out. Unwanted, unneeded, and out of date stuff all tossed! (Why do I buy polenta when I know no one else in the house likes it, therefore I am never likely to use it?)

Organised!

• Wardrobe – old and unwanted clothes cleared out and put in the mission bins. (Seriously, was I ever going to wear that 1980s coat ever again?)
• Desk area – everything filed, tidied and put away. (No more piles of papers on the floor.)
• Shed – rubbish cleared out, tidied and swept.
• Gardens – weeded, planted, and seedlings growing. (Cherry tomatoes ripening as we speak!)
• Baking – lots of baking done, mostly by my gorgeous daughter! Never-tried-before recipes attempted and conquered!

Cupcake

I had been itching to go through the cupboards and have a good clear out! I had some stuff that expired four years ago!

Including old televisions and a lot of weird ‘shit’ we took 300 kilograms to the dump!

The incoming…

Seriously big desk and chair!

• New desk – a good, big, solid desk that I can happily work at, with drawers so I can file things away and keep my work area tidy. I plan a year of amazing writing!
• Office chair – good leather one with support for my back and a head rest so I can sit, close my eyes and let the story come find me when it needs to! (Chiropractor care has made me very aware of my spine and posture and the kitchen chair I have been working from for years was just not doing me any favours).

What is the benefit of all this? I have a clear space, a simplicity, around me, in which to let my thoughts and ideas flow forth to fill this space. I plan of doing lots of writing this year. Last year I—like everyone else in my city—assumed that eventually the earthquakes and aftershocks would stop, and then I could get back to normal…but now we know that this is going to go on for decades. It is time to make this reality my normal, to work through it regardless, to be unaffected by it. (At least if a big one hits and I have to dive under my desk, my new desk is one I would dive under—whilst the old one was so rickety you would only dive under it if you wanted to die!)

Pinwheel scones ... so utterly delicious!

This is the first time in my life that I have ever had a really good desk, and a good chair. This is the first time I have said ‘I deserve this’, instead of thinking I should make do with whatever we had. I deserve this.

We often say ‘this is my year’ but we seldom hurl ourselves into that year, and into the work with such abandon that we make it our year. It really is time to dive in deep, to swim deep, to explore the depths of whatever I am capable of.

Macaroons ... done and dusted (and damn delicious!)

We do not know what we are capable of until we try, until we give it all we have to give. I want to give everything to all that I do! Everything!

Yes, I got a tattoo

In many native cultures tattooing, or marking of the body is a part of the culture, respected, honoured, cherished. In western cultures tattoos and body markings sometimes have a negative image. 

I want to show you a tattoo that I have recently had done. It is likely the only tattoo I will ever get, but it carries huge significance for me. 

I have wanted a tattoo for a very long time, but was worried about what other people would think, and so I bowed down to the preferences of other people…in other words, I honoured the wishes of others, whilst not honouring my own. 

The last sixteen months have been a period of massive personal and spiritual growth for me. I feel that, for the first time in my life I truly came to know who I am. And you know what? I love who I am. I am a good, kind, loving, caring person. I work hard at everything that I do, and I support people to the best of my abilities. I love greatly. 

The time had arrived when I truly wanted to get a tattoo done, and so I spent a year researching. I knew what I wanted but could not find any design that I liked, and so I went to see some tattooists, and discovered that not all tattooists are artists, and that they were not able to design what I wanted. Via a friend I did find a tattooist who was also an artist. He lived in another city, but I go to that city twice a year and was planning to be there in five months time. I told him what I wanted, gave him examples that contained elements that I liked, explained the meaning behind the design I wanted done, asked lots of questions and then let him loose! Each time he came up with a design I explained what I wanted changed, what worked, and what did not work. When I looked at the fifth design I knew he had ‘nailed it’! I felt the movement in the design, saw all the elements I wanted. Next question was colouring, and on this I simply asked the Universe to guide him. I finally saw the coloured draft the day before I was due to fly out, and it was beautiful, stunning! 

This is a commissioned tattoo, a one off, a design that belongs to Matt and to me. 

Getting the tattoo inked in was a very primal experience. I had given this tattoo so much thought that the pain was never even a consideration, the only things I cared about was the design and the permanence. A tattoo is something we carry with us for the rest of our life. One day I will be 70 years old with a tattoo (assuming I live that long – and there is certainly no guarantee that I will). Some people might stop and ask themselves ‘Oh, gosh, I will be old and saggy, maybe I should not do this tattoo at all.’ That is a valid argument. But…I cannot live for something that is so far ahead. I cannot, and will not, live thinking about when I am 70 or 80 and not live now! We must live now! I know that I would reach 70 or 80 and regret the things I did not do in my life. I would rather look at that tattoo on my 80 year old body and still be in love with it, than look at my naked shoulder and think ‘I wish I had just done it, because I know I would have cherished it, enjoyed it, been proud of it, loved it!’ And then I would realise ‘I let everyone else’s judgement stop me from doing something I had always wanted to do,’ and I would be ashamed! Ashamed because I had (have!) spent years teaching people to be true to themselves, and yet was not true to myself. I may be many things, but I am not a hypocrite. 

Dragon energy and Phoenix energy are powerful energies that I work with, and have worked with for a long time. I tend to have strong Phoenix energy (no surprise there!), but I love them both, honour and respect them both, and will continue to work with them. Their energy is imbedded in this tattoo. I also admire that the Dragon and Phoenix are popular in, and a part of, Chinese culture. By marriage, the Chinese culture is a part of my life, and I both admire and respect it. 

The actual tattooing process hurt more than I thought it would. But thanks to meditation experience, focus and martial arts I managed to get through the three hour process! The last thirty minutes were extreme, and the last ten involved a lot of deep karate breathing! Afterwards my tattooist said that it was a big tattoo for a first one! He also told me that most people can only take two hours, and that if I had not wanted it all done on one day he would have done the outline one day and another day/week he would have done the colouring. I, however, needed it all completed in one session as I was only in the city for one week, and had a martial arts grading eight days later and needed the tattoo as healed as possible by then. 

As I write this (eleven days later) the tattoo still has one tiny patch that is healing, but the rest is looking perfect and the itching is lessening! I am proud of this tattoo. It is sexy, classy, artistic, beautiful, and meaningful! I can cover it up if I do not want to show it off, or if I am going to a corporate dinner with my husband. 

copyright Hazard ink / Robyn M Speed

People who know me well are not surprised I got the tattoo done, and the overall consensus is that it is an amazing, beautiful work of art. People who know me well love that I am who I am, that I live from my heart and Soul and honour myself whilst still honouring everyone else. 

If I am to live on this Earth as the divine being that I truly am, then I cannot hide. I cannot hide my passion, my faith, my love, my joy, my desire, my power, my strength, my gentleness, my devotion to humanity… I cannot, and I will not. Let me show you how much passion and love a person can truly live with! Don’t look at me and judge me, look into my heart and Soul and know me. I am one in a million, I have been told this many times. 

And if you want to see what difference one person can make to the world … my answer to that is: I already have! When we exist true to our Soul, when we love from our heart and Soul, we light up the recesses of humanity and we allow healing to take place. We light up the darkness and we let the light shine in, revealing the truth within each person that has always been there.

We need to be doing better than this

I read a very sad thing this week. The suicide of a 14 year old boy. He was gay, and he was being bullied, and he just could not take it any more.

I don’t care who you are, and I don’t care what your religious beliefs are, we are ONE people on ONE planet, we are a global community, and we should be looking after each other.

I don’t give a rat’s arse what your sexual preference is, because it makes no difference to me (and it shouldn’t to you either!)…

And before you leap on your pulpit and bash me with your ‘books’ let me point out: your religious beliefs will tell you that God made this world, that he made each one of us. Right? Do you believe God is an idiot who makes mistakes? He does not make mistakes, and being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, is not a choice it is who a person is. And it is perfect!

And—while I am on a rant—Jesus taught the path of unconditional love. Unconditional love. I am assuming you know what that means! It is not possible to say you follow Jesus and to be filled with hate. It is against what he taught.

We, as parents, need to be doing a much better job of raising our children. We cannot teach them to be bigots, and homophobic bullies. But, we must also understand that a lot of bullying comes from a powerlessness at home. So think about helping your children to meet their need for a little power in their own lives. This can be as simple as some small responsibilities followed by thanks and praise, so that they feel good about who they are, and feel appreciated.

I have seen bullies in school yards who were acting out because of what was going on at home. So, again, I say that as parents we need to be doing a much better job! Consider the impact you are having on your children with how you live your life.

Being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, straight, is a part of who we are it is not all of who we are. The double standard has got to stop! Look at your news and your streets, and it seems that a straight man who beats up his wife and children is accepted as normal (what the?), but a gay boy, or a lesbian couple is just so wrong? Come on, this is sheer craziness! What is important is what kind of person you are. That is what matters. Are you loving? Are you kind? Are you helpful and compassionate? Are you funny? Do you make me laugh? Do you inspire me? This is what matters.

A 14 year old boy…Was he kind? Was he smart? What was his favourite food? What were his favourite movies? What kind of music did he like to listen to? What were his favourite books? What did he want to be when he grew up? Questions that should have been so much more important than the fact that he was gay.

He was gay. So what? Being gay does not mean a guy is going to try and jump every guy he comes across. And being lesbian does not mean a girl is going to put the moves on every girl she ever meets. They are not sexual predators! They simply have a preference.

This gorgeous 14 year old boy should have been accepted for the person that he was, and encouraged to reach his full potential in life. And he needed that from all of us. And we let him down. We let him down.

We need to be better parents. We need to teach better values. We need to love our children a whole lot more. We need to take care of each other as the global family that we are.

Give your pets your best

Okay, so we make the choice to have pets, and so we know what we are getting ourselves into. The joy, the laughter, the games—the vet bills!

What we really don’t think about—and we should not ever let this affect our decision to adopt a pet—is how we will handle it when they die.

My answer to this is really pretty simple: give a hundred percent of your love to your family, friends, and pets, because to give any less is a betrayal of them and of you. Obviously I am talking about the core people in your life, not those who exist on the outer fringes (friends who are really just acquaintances and distant relatives).

Anyway, we were talking about pets…

We don’t think of them dying, and if we do we convince ourselves it won’t be that hard. Fact is, it is hard! It’s really hard when they die.

Oscar died today. Oscar was a beautiful blue budgie. He was my son’s pet, adopted when we moved back from four years living in Singapore, (daughter adopted a cat). Leaving school and friends a second time was hard (the first time was when we left NZ to live in Singapore), and so I asked the children to think about adopting a pet, to give them something to look forward to, to make the journey ahead more appealing! We arrived back in Christchurch 17^th December 2004, and adopted the pets the very next day. Oscar was a hand reared budgie so was completely tame. He developed a real knack for sitting on my shoulder and removing my earrings!

He was a funny bird, and a chatty bird. I never walked past his cage without looking to see where he was and saying hello. And when I came down in the morning I would always talk to him, something like “Good morning Oscar. I will just feel these nagging cats first, then I will uncover you/I’ll uncover you as soon as the heat pump warms this room up a bit more”.

I might be in the kitchen making a cup of tea or cooking, and I never realised until now how much a part of my life (our lives) the sound of him eating his seed was. It was a background sound that was there, as was the sound of him sharpening his beak on the grit perch. His chattering in the background was a part of our lives. His calling to the birds outside in summer was a part of the noise of summer.

Part of the background of our lives has gone, and the space this little bird filled so completely, is empty.

Feeling as I do now, does this make me rethink the whole ‘pets’ thing? Is it worth it? You know what … it is worth is. I would rather love Oscar and grieve at his passing, than have not had him in our lives. I would rather feel my heart break, than have never heard his chatter. Yes, he was so worth it!

If you are going to adopt a pet, give them all of your love, so that when they do pass away, you will know they had the very best of you. Don’t hold back your love in anything out of fear of being hurt. Pain in life is inevitable and unavoidable. It will happen. But what you can do, is make sure you tip the scales the other way, the way of laughter, joy and love, so that they far outweigh the pain.

I look back over Oscar’s seven year life and can celebrate the day he did 60 flips round the perch! I can celebrate the way he loved seed pressed into peanut butter which was spread over a cracker! I can celebrate that he could say ‘Hello’ the same as three different people—he could also say ‘whatchadoin’, ‘budgie buddy’ and one day he called the cats name so perfectly we couldn’t believe it was him! He went crazy over silverbeet! He loved a piece of toast. He could repeat a number of different whistles, that we had taught him. We really did not teach him lots of English words and whistles because we loved the sound of him too! We loved his chatter! We loved the way he would watch whatever anyone was doing in the kitchen. The day he started to go downhill, he still watched me making the birthday cake for my son (Oscar was his budgie).

Every creature has a life span. And I believe we are honoured when we get to take care of a pet for their entire lifespan.