Hunua Falls

 Places  No Responses »
Apr 252012
 

Hunua Falls in the Hunua Ranges

For some reason I have always imagined Hunua as being a great distance from Auckland, so it was with some surprise that I glanced at a map last week and learned that it is just down the motorway. A voyage of discovery ensured.

The Hunua Falls themselves are very nice, and only 100m away from the car park, but the park itself is quite large and the tracks are well maintained.

Panoramic photo of Cossey's Reservior in the Hunua Ranges

We ended up doing a 3 hour loop (Massey/Cossey) that climbed up through native bush to one of the four reservoirs in the Hunua Ranges that supply most of Auckland’s water. The track itself is nothing too special, with only one or two good lookouts, but it is pleasant enough. Being a water supply dam, Cossey’s Reservoir is only viewable from a distance which is probably just as well. I don’t want to know what I am drinking.

Ambury Regional Park

 Places  No Responses »
Apr 122012
 

Some sort of wading bird at Ambury Regional ParkIn my quest to reach new parts of Auckland, I traveled the short distance to the jewel in the glittering crown of Mangere Bridge – Ambury Regional Park.

Parts of this park are a farm which is not very interesting for adults, but there is an excellent foreshore walk that takes in some nice bird sanctuary areas with a lot of wading birds.

Being flat and next to mudflats, Ambury Park is not the most scenic of places (and part of the park consists of the old sewerage settling ponds, now covered in suspiciously lush grass) but it does make for a relaxing walk in the sun passed paddocks of sheep and through small stands of native bush. I am glad I went.
Panoramic photo of the Pukaki Lagoon at Ambury Regional Park(click to enlarge)

Onion, Pear and Feta Pizza

 Food, my projects  No Responses »
Mar 112012
 

People seemed to like the first pizza post, so here is another one. Something a little different this time – very simple but delicious.
A Pear and Feta Pizza

Ingredients:

Base
1 Cup Flour
Splash of Olive Oil
Cold Water
Teaspoon of Salt
Teaspoon of Baking Powder
Topping
2 Medium Pears
1 Clove of Garlic
1 Red Onion
Tiny bit of white sugar
Enough Feta
More olive oil and a knob of butter
Water

Method:
Make a dough from the flour, oil, water, salt, and baking powder and kneed well. More detailed instructions are in my last pizza post. Heat the oven (and the oven tray) to 200°

Melt the butter with the olive oil in a frying pan. Slice the onion finely and gently sauté for 5-10 minutes until the onion start to shine. Add in just a little (half a teaspoon or so) of sugar and continue to cook. Add the finely chopped garlic and cook some more, don’t let it burn. Remove the onion mixture from the pan.

Peel, core, and slice the pears into wedges, removing the pips. Add a little water to the pan that the onions were cooked it and add the pears. Let the water boil down for a while to soften the pears then add some more butter and a little sugar. Sauté for a few minutes until the wedges are soft and just starting to brown.

Take the pizza base and put it on the heated oven tray. Top with the onions, then the pears, finally crumbling feta across the top. Place in oven and wait.

Homemade Pizza Recipe

 Food, my projects  No Responses »
Feb 192012
 

Homemade pizza sitting on a chopping block

I often make pizza from scratch, it is a great way of using up various bits and pieces I have lying around. Over the years I have tried various recipes for the base, but this is my favorite (and also the easiest). I am particularly proud of this effort because a lot of the ingredients came from my garden.

Ingredients:

Base
1 Cup Flour
Goodly splash of olive oil
Cold Water
teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
Toppings
Whatever you can find in the fridge/garden, in this case:
Tomato paste
3 baby leeks chopped
2 cloves of Garlic, finely chopped
2 small Tomatoes, very thinly sliced
Red Pepper, sliced
Mozzarella Cheese, sliced
Basil Leaves
Salt/Pepper
Olive Oil

Method:
Put flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl and pour in the oil (about 2-3 table spoons, maybe more). Pour in a little water and mix. If the flour is still dry, tip just a little more water in but go slowly – it is easy to make it too wet. You want a soft dough, not a cake mix. If you go too far put in some more flour.

Take the dough out and kneed it for a few minutes to complete the mixing, then wrap the dough ball in plastic wrap and let it sit for 30 minutes on the bench.

Put your heaviest (the heavier the better) cooking tray in the oven and heat to 220°C.

Take out the dough and kneed again then divide into 2 or 3 hunks. Roll out each hunk into a roughly circular shape a few millimeters thick. Put the bases on the hot cooking tray and add toppings.

Smear the top of the base with tomato paste, like you were spreading jam on toast. Next put the chopped garlic and leeks (normally I would use onion, but I just happened to have leeks). Slice the tomatoes as thinly as you can and add them along with the basil leaves. Finally slice the mozzarella and put that on top as well – it doesn’t have to cover everything.

Don’t try to heap too much on the pizza – it needs to cook quickly to get crispy.

Salt and pepper to taste and drizzle on a decent amount of olive oil. Put back in the hot oven and cook until it looks like a pizza. Serve with wine, salad, another pizza.

Tiger Slug – Limax Maximus

 my projects  1 Response »
Feb 022012
 

Side view of the Tiger Slug

I disturbed this fellow while gardening today. He took off at speed across my lawn but since he is a slug I had plenty of time to get my camera a snap a few shots.

This is Limax Maximus – the Tiger Slug (or Leopard Slug depending on whether you like the striped tail or the spotted mantle) and they are impressively large. My garden is full of them. Most slugs I kill on sight, but I leave the Tiger Slugs alone because they supposedly kill other garden pests. Besides, they give me a slow moving target to practice macro photography.

Front view of the Tiger Slug

Arrrggh, it’s coming right for me!

What I Did on my Holidays – Labour Weekend 2011

 Places  2 Responses »
Oct 262011
 

I have lived in Auckland for 14 years and never been further north than Waitangi. A trip north was long overdue.
Looking over the Hokianga Horbour towards the giant dunes
This is the view from Opononi, looking across the mouth of the Hokianga Harbour towards the giant dunes. For $25 you can catch a water taxi to the other side where you can get dropped off with a board perfect for sliding down the steep banks. It sounds painful, but the sand is very soft and you can easily control your speed if not direction.

On a whim, we went to a slightly out-of-the-way shop called Labyrinth Woodworks & Maze (that isn’t a link, it’s a time corridor back to 1996) which turned out to be quite a find. It is a small building filled with the most amazing collection of puzzles and brainteasers I have ever seen, curated by a very passionate puzzle-lover who was only too keen to demonstrate his wares.

A small Japanese Puzzle BoxI have wanted a Japanese Puzzle Box ever since I saw one in a book when I was a child. Now I have one – it takes 10 cunningly concealed steps to open. If I ever go back to Labyrinth Woodworks I will buy the deluxe 21 step box.

Down the road a little way is Waipoua Kauri Forest, home to some very large trees including Tãne Mahuta, which is very, very large indeed.
Tane Mahuta
This is a terrible photo-montage I stitched together using Hugin, it in no way conveys just how big this tree is. I kept expecting a bunch of blue-skinned Navi to show up to defend it.

Sunday night was spent in Doubtless Bay, which was also very nice but not quite as wild and interesting as the west coast. We did take the time to visit Cable Bay, a beautiful beach with pink sand. It is supposed to be packed in Summer, we found it almost deserted (which suited us just fine.)

Brandy in a Rifle Bottle

 Culture, Food  No Responses »
Sep 292011
 

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I have always thought that you can judge a drink by its bottle. The fancier the bottle the more wretched the drink seems to be a good rule to live by.

I don’t know anything about brandy and it might be fantastic, but I am going to avoid this one:

(sorry about the picture, it is not actually that colour)

Rangitoto Island

 Places  No Responses »
Feb 282011
 

Rangitoto Island, seen from the ferry
It has been many year since I visited Rangitoto – the can’t-miss-it island just outside of Auckland Harbour. With a fine autumnal day off work it seemed like time to return.

Although I had been there a few times before, I am always surprised by the size of Rangitoto – it seems much larger up close than it does from Mission Bay and the distances between landmarks is greater than you might think. Avoiding the tourists boarding the motorised summit explorer, we took the little trod coastal track that leads eastwards towards Motutapu. Trees have grown over much of Rangitoto but there are still large patches of bare volcanic (and shoe destroying) rock. We didn’t see many birds, but there lots of tiny lizards warming themselves on the rocks.

The remains of a shipA brisk 2 and bit hours brought us to Wreck Bay (also called Boulder Bay on some maps), on the far side of the island from the wharf. Here several ship were deliberately run aground to dispose of them. This practice stopped many decades ago, but you can still see the bones of some of these ships lying in the water just off shore.

A little man made out of rocks, halfway up to the summitFrom Wreck Bay we headed for the summit via the service road, a climb of 260 metres that seems harder due to the rocky ground. The top affords great views of Auckland and the Hauraki Gulf is you can see passed the thronging tourists, and the crater is impressively deep – well worth the climb.

But the real highlight of Rangitoto is the collection of lava tubes on the way back to the ferry. There are several tubes, some dozens of metres long. Most caves in New Zealand are carved by water through limestone, lava tubes have quite a different feel to them and the cool subterranean air is a welcome change from the sun blasted rock above ground. I was hoping we might see some cave wetas, but if there are any on Rangitoto they were hiding.
Inside the lava tube, near a collapsed section

Seals at Red Rocks

 Places  No Responses »
Aug 172009
 

In my continuing quest to explore as much of my new home city as possible, yesterday I went for a walk around the south Wellington coast with a couple of friends. Starting from Owhino Bay there is a beach-side path that leads around the coast. Actually it is not a path. It is a 4 wheel drive track, so you constantly have to move to let big cars and off-road motorcycles passed. I don’t really mind 4WDing as a hobby and gladly got out of the way of the impressively muddy machines with knobbly tires, but many of the vehicles coming back the other way looked suspiciously clean. I resent sharing a track with tryhards.

Anyway, walking along the beach eventually gets you to a place called Red Rocks. There are some rocks there and they are indeed quite red, but the real reason for the trek was see the seals.

seals
click for a larger view

The seals were well camouflaged and did not photograph well, but I can assure you that the above photo contains over a dozen of them. Honest, you can see them if you look hard enough!

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