Yinzer in the Shire

When we were visiting the USA we were surprised at some of the questions people asked us about New Zealand. By the way, it is important to note that New Zealand is nothing like Australia (even the accents are different) and though Australia is the nearest country it's still a four hour plane ride away. Confusing the two is worse than mistaking Canada for the United States. What is Kiwi TV like? This question was asked by someone who is a fan of Australian TV and expected it to be similar. Kiwi's don't have a lot of original TV programming. Most of the shows produced in-country are reality television based off of foreign shows, we have X-Factor, The Block NZ, Master Chef New Zealand, and of course boarder patrol shows. As for scripted television we have a few comedies such as Short Poppies which is by the guys who brought the world Flight of the Concords, there are also one or two dramas and soap-operas, but I don't watch those. The news is still a bit w...

Seth and I would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who hosted us (or offered to host us), to all of you who treated us to dinner, or brought us baked goods on our recent trip home to the States. The trip home was surprisingly normal. I had a lot of mixed feelings about making the journey back to Pittsburgh for three weeks. There were nervous moments, stressed moments, excited moments, and emotional moments that had me crying into my pillow for no discernible reason, and that was before we even left Wellington. Early Easter with Pittsburgh family Neither of us had any idea what to expect. Seth has moved around a lot, but he's never gone back to visit a place before, and I have lived in Pittsburgh my entire life. We realised that when visiting with family it was as if we had just been over for dinner the previous week. Friends had a much bigger reaction, we had to answer the same few questions a million times. As it was happening it was all quite strange,...

Mornings usually find us rushing out the door, even on weekends, leaving little time for fancy breakfasts.  This morning by complete happenstance I decided to up my fried egg game with a few extra ingredients I had on hand. Ingredients: Butter Egg Sea Salt Parmesan Cheese Shreds Pizza Thyme Melt butter in skillet over medium heat, taking care not to burn the butter Crack an egg into the skillet and let cook As the egg whites begin to solidify, sprinkle sea salt, Parmesan shreds, and pizza thyme onto the egg. Using a spatula carefully flip the egg taking care not to break the yolk. Allow to continue cooking for no longer than a minute It looks gourmet, it tastes gourmet, but it takes no longer to cook than your average fried egg.  You're welcome. How about you, how have you upped your breakfast game?

Today's post is brought to you by the often silent, but always lovely Seth.  He has been perfecting this breakfast for quite sometime now and is excited to share it with the world. Eggs Benedict is a lavish breakfast that is usually considered to take a lot of work to make. And, in fact, it does take a lot of work. However, I found myself with a freshly-picked lemon, freshly-made bread, really good New Zealand eggs and butter, and I realised there was just no excuse to not make it. I found that yes, it can be done, and it can be done really well, if you take a few shortcuts here and there, and also if you don’t let the thought of making hollandaise sauce from scratch scare you (because it’s not as scary as it seems). This is a [ovo/lacto] vegetarian version of the classic breakfast. Eggs Benedict Serves 1 Ingredients: Hollandaise Sauce: 1 egg yolk ½ tsp cold water salt, pepper to taste ½ small lemon (about the size of a lime) 24g butter Eggs Benedic...

This is post #2 of our home redecorating series.  You can check out our kitchen redecoration here . With our kitchen nice and tidy we decided to move on to sprucing up the adjacent lounge.  This space has always been a bit tricky, as it is more a hallway to the kitchen and bedrooms than an actual living area. Many times we have attempted to master the beast, but it always came down to us simply switching our couch to the opposite wall. A while ago we moved Seth's desk out into the living space so he could work in the same room as me, so that also presented a unique challenge.  With so much furniture, only two walls, and a narrow space, how could we possibly avoid pushing everything up against a wall? The really before. It was a real problem. The solution came with the addition of one more piece of furniture, a book shelf that had been passed on to us by some friends then shoved in our storage room to be forgotten.   We moved Seth's desk in front of th...