Today is the King’s Birthday public holiday here in New Zealand. The sun came out in the afternoon, and lit up the house with its golden light, as we read, listened to podcasts and pottered in the kitchen, roasting pumpkin and making meatballs. In fact, the week was a relatively quiet one, but with a lot of small pleasures.
The Adam Portraiture Award
On Thursday lunch time I popped into the New Zealand Portrait Gallery to see this year’s finalists in the Adam Portraiture Awards. The gallery is house in Shed 11, a Category 1 Historic Place by Heritage New Zealand. I wasn’t too keen on the winner of the prize, but loved this one by Laurie Roodt (entitled Not Entirely) which I voted for in the ‘people’s choice’ and David Jones’ Study of Esther by the fig tree.
A cheese delivery
I love a good cheese, and even though I shouldn’t eat lots of it, a good piece of a special cheese cannot be resisted. I ordered four from Over the Moon, who in my opinion, make some of the best cheese in the country. I got a goat blue, a sheep’s cheese, the lovely pink peppercorn brie and their new garlic and chives spread (which I hope will be a good substitute for Boursin – note to Ally of Nigella Eats Everything).
In the basket
I popped into Common Sense Organics on Wednesday and picked up a bunch of cavolo nero and one of rainbow chard, a bargain bag of limes, some herb salt and anchovies and…2 golden beetroot for my second ‘beetroot experiment’ of the year. Regular readers know I don’t like that root, but golden ones are less ‘beetrooty’ and look so pretty.
The Wonky Box this week delivered pumpkin, a kholrabi, mushrooms, potatoes, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and a lettuce. I supplemented this with apples, pears, spinach, yams (oca), shallots and a little bag of yuzu which was lovely to see on sale. I also picked up some crackers from Baked Dane to have with the cheese.
Lunch times
On Wednesday, I went to the relatively newly opened cafe and pastry shop Glou Glou, which I had heard a lot about and wanted to see for myself. It certainly is a lovely space, but a little pricey I felt. I had a savoury crumpet with some admittedly very good smoked salmon, but it was a rather small offering for the price. On Friday, I crossed the road from work to the cafe in the library in town for one of their always tasty sandwiches, this one was tomato, pesto and mozzarella, and today we went to our local cafe for cheese, ham and tomato toasties.
Morning walk
On Sunday morning, the sun was shining and all looked lovely, so I took myself for a walk down and around a local park. I spotted this completely out of season agapanthus by the pavement which definitely made me stop and look. There was a football game going on, lots of small children on tricycles and bicycles, dogs, walkers and runners, as well as lots of bright yellow gorse bushes.
Simple things
- Enjoying finding new strength in my Saturday Pilates class.
- Cooking – both old and new dishes (think pea soup, think gnocchi with mushrooms, bacon and sage from dish magazine, think lamb and feta meatballs, nestling on couscous).
- Spending time in the kitchen – always a happy place.
- Going to the pub with friends and eating fish and chips.
- Watching a blackbird tossing aside the wood chips to get at worms and making a mess on our lawn
![🙂]()
- Spotting more little fungi in the garden.
What were your small pleasures this week? Here are some other blog posts from a few fellow bloggers looking at the good things in life.
- Green Dreams shares her beautiful allotment, full of wonderful produce,
- There are also wonderful country scenes over at Southern Patches.
- Mr Tootlepedal always brightens my day over at Tootlepedal’s Blog. Do check out his wonderful posts.
- Jude over at Cornwall in Colours shares six things in her garden.
- Deb of Deb’s World takes stock and thrives in May.
- Sue over at Women Living Well After 50 brings some joy into June.
- Natalie shares May in 12 photos.
- The Glasgow Gallivanter finishes her trip to Northern Ireland – I have really enjoyed her posts from there.
- And Fred shares some wonderful things from his garden, including a swarm of bees.
- .…and all the other lovely bloggers out there. Sorry if I have missed anyone…..
Thistles and Kiwis is a Wellington, New Zealand based blog written by Barbara, who likes cats, summer, good food and pretends to garden.
You can find Thistles and Kiwis on Facebook, and also on Instagram @thistlesandkiwis. If you want to get in touch, email me on lofgren@thistlesandkiwis.com