Today’s cryptic crossword clue – solution tomorrow

Pierced with a horn, former vice president died (5)

Source of clue – NZ Herald


For the solution and explanation, click here

Solution for 29 April cryptic crossword clue

Coach’s dedication (9)

Solution – Diligence

The tricky bit is knowing that a diligence was a type of carriage or coach drawn by horses in olden days.  The setter of the clue wanted you to think about “coach” in the sense of a sports coach – they’re tricky that way.

Then another word for dedication is diligence.


This is a double definition cryptic crossword clue.  See the sidebar under the list of popular posts for links to further information about different cryptic crossword clue types.

Live Fish, Wynyard Quarter

So a friend and I tried another one of the restaurants down on the North Wharf in the Wynyard Quarter.  Live Fish this time.  

It is billed as Hong Kong style alfresco dining.  But to be honest it didn’t feel particularly Chinese in layout.  But the food was authentic in taste.  There was also a large tank containing live crayfish and abalone which you could select.  I didn’t choose either of those ($45 for the half crayfish or $68 for one abalone just seemed a mite extravagant for a casual lunch!). 

I had prawns in hoisin sauce.  They were simply delicious but there were only about 6 small prawns with a pile of green salad in the middle and no rice.  It just wasn’t filling enough for lunch.  And at $19 not that great in value.  The salad was supposed to have a sweet chilli lime dressing but  I couldn’t really taste it.

My friend had pan fried salmon with rice.  The sauce was a Cajun mayo (which doesn’t sound particularly Hong Kong, does it?) – this was delicious.

The service was a bit slow but we weren’t in any hurry.


For other posts about the Wynyard Quarter click here and here.


You might find my travel bucket list of interest.

Today’s cryptic crossword clue – solution tomorrow

Coach’s dedication (9)

Source of clue – NZ Herald


For the solution and explanation, click here

Solution for 28 April cryptic crossword clue

Clued ‘shone’ cryptically, as planned (2,8)

Solution – On schedule

So “cryptically” indicates an anagram.  It can only be of “clued shone” since that has the right number of letters.

Scrambled you can come up with “on schedule” which means “as planned”.

For a more detailed discussion of cryptic clues that involve anagrams, click here.

Hilton Queenstown - new hotel on glorious Lake Wakatipu

Looking out from the front of the Hilton, Queenstown at the jetty and the lake

The front of the Hilton hotel, Queenstown

 The Hilton in Queenstown is a new hotel built on the side of Lake Wakatipu on the site of a major development that went bust and then was finished by the receivers.

There is a lovely view looking out from the front of the hotel.  But the entrance to the hotel and the back is a bit poky in my opinion.

You can see the partly developed area behind the hotel - not very pretty

 The layout of the hotel takes a bit of getting used to.

The room was spacious, the bed comfortable and the bathroom well appointed (but no natural light as a result of the building being built back into the cliff).

The service in the hotel was great.  The food was good.  And the room service was even good value as well as prompt.  Most unusual.

The location of the hotel could be seen as either a plus or a minus – it is at least 20 minutes by road to the main centre of Queenstown.  Many guests go there by water taxi instead.  So if you like to be within striking distance of the bars and restaurants but not right in it, the hotel is great.  Not so great if you want a big night out on the town after which you just walk back to your hotel.

Water taxi on Lake Wakatipu

Roundabouts - sounds like Satnav?

For another sign, click here

You might find my travel bucket list interesting.

Harper Lee Quotation

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

        – Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, born on this day in 1926




Click here if you would like to see my travel bucket list (not including places in New Zealand)

Anniversary of the Cave Creek disaster in 1995

We remember the 14 people that were lost in this disaster and think of their families.

Today’s cryptic crossword clue – solution tomorrow

Clued ‘shone’ cryptically, as planned (2,8)

Source of clue – NZ Herald


For the solution and explanation, click here

Solution for 27 April cryptic crossword clue

Dreadful, the French records (10)

Solution – Chronicles

Ignore the punctuation here.  The split of the clue into 2 parts is “Dreadful, the French” and “records”.

Dreadful = chronic

The French = les (in other clues it could also mean le or la – all being words for “the” in French)

Chronic + les = chronicles which is a words for a register or record of events.


This is an example of a charades clue.  Click here for a post about charade clues.

Smoked salmon salad platter, potato wedges and corn

Smoked Salmon  Platter

The smoked salmon platter was easy but looked great.  Just choose a nice plate, plonk your piece of smoked salmon in the middle, surround it with little piles of red onion, pickled cucumber (could be any sort of pickle), tomato wedges, slices of cucumber, lemon wedges.  Sprinkle some capers and thinly sliced red onion over the top.

Other things you could put on the platter if you had them handy include, chopped boiled eggs (see here for my way of doing them), blinis (you could make your own but there are perfectly good frozen ones in the supermarket), finely chopped red chilli, salmon caviar etc etc.

Sauce with mayo, horseradish and mustard

The sauce I did with it was made of mayo, horseradish sauce and Dijon mustard – with white pepper and a teensy bit of salt.

Corn drizzled with butter, salt and pepper and parsley

To make a meal, I added one corn cob – boiled for 15 minutes in unsalted water.  I put butter, pepper, salt and chilli flakes onto it.  Yum.

My best potato wedges yet

For the first time I made potato wedges that came out perfectly.  I parboiled the potatoes (baking potatoes (Agria) cut up into wedges) for 5 minutes, shook them up in the pot a bit after draining, then coated them in a little vegetable oil, salt and white pepper.  20-25 minutes in a hot fan forced oven and they came out crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside.


You might also be interested in a post I did on an asparagus and bacon salad.  If so, click here


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Food on Friday: Fish and Seafood

ON

It's Friday again.  So here is this week's Food on Friday.  It's about fish and seafood this week.

Have fun linking up posts to do with anything "fishy" or to do with the sea!  I look forward to seeing what you all come up with.

I have also now made up a Pinboard for the links in Food on Friday: Fish and Seafood.  Click here if you would like to see it.

Enthusiasm

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm

 – Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet – died on this day in 1882






Click here if you would like to see my travel bucket list (not including places in New Zealand)

Today’s cryptic crossword clue – solution tomorrow

Dreadful, the French records (10)

Source of clue – NZ Herald


For the solution and explanation, click here

Solution for 26 April cryptic crossword clue

Safeguard a picture on shifts (10)

Solution – Precaution

Safeguard = precaution

“shifts” is a key to there being an anagram involved.  The solution has 10 letters and so does “a picture on” – re-arranging the letters you get “precaution”.

For a more detailed discussion of cryptic clues that involve anagrams, click here.

Collecting recipes - hard work but worth it

I risk being thought of as a bit of a trainspotter with this post.  As I have mentioned before I got sick of having lots of cook books – most of which only had a few recipes I would ever use.  So some years ago I decided to create my own recipe book/s.

I bought some school exercise books – ring bound ones – very cheap.  I divided them up into – soups, starters, salads and vegetables, mains, eggs & sauces and desserts.

I taped all my cuttings etc into the books.  Then I started on my least favourite cook books and felt like a vandal as I ripped out the recipes I wanted.  But I did find that the recipes ended up being so much less bulky than keeping the whole book.

The key to this working, though, is that I did an index for the recipes which I keep updated.  The index is by ingredient – so if I have lots of lemons, for instance, I can just look up lemons in my index and see all the recipes I have so that I can inspired as to what to do with them.

This might sound like quite a lot of work.  But I only update the books once or twice a year – generally when I am on holiday.  And when you do it, boy do you get hungry!

So now I only have about 5 cookbooks plus my recipe books.  The cookbooks I couldn’t part with include:

Stephanie Alexander’s Cooks Companion

Edmonds Cook Book – a NZ classic

3 Thai cookbooks – 2 from Spirit House and one from David Thomson

I do have a couple of Jamie Oliver books left but may give them the tough love treatment next year.

On re-reading this, I realise that I missed an opportunity to make the covers of my own recipe books beautiful.  But although they aren’t pretty, they are so useful.

iPad proves to be a hit - alternative uses

Today’s cryptic crossword clue – solution tomorrow

Safeguard a picture on shifts (10)

Source of clue – NZ Herald


For the solution and explanation, click here

Solution for 25 April cryptic crossword clue

Hood’s battle (9)

Solution – Balaclava

This clue relies on you knowing 2 of the contexts of the word balaclava – one being the hood over the face that criminals sport when robbing banks and other being the name of a famous battle, the battle of Balaclava.  In fact this was during the Crimean war (1854) and soldiers serving then wore the sort of hoods that we now call balaclavas.


This is a double definition cryptic crossword clue.  See the sidebar below popular posts for links to further explanation of different clue types.


For the next clue in the series, click here

Pasta dish with bacon

Pasta with bacon and vegetables

 Another culinary creation using ingredients to hand because we didn’t shop.  It is interesting how this approach often leads to great results.  But, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

So I had a packet of bacon, some alfredo pasta sauce (nearing its expiry date), one tomato, one green chilli, ½ a red onion, lots of garlic, ½ a red and yellow capsicum (bell peppers to some of you).  Ginger corn on the cob and some cauliflower.

I chopped the vegetables up while my better half fried the bacon – very competently I must say.

I put the corn in boiling water for 10 minutes, adding the cauliflower broken up into florets in the last 4 minutes or so.  Once the time was up I spooned the veges out and kept the water to use for cooking the pasta.  I didn’t want to waste any of the good stuff!

I then fried off the onion in the fat from the bacon (the bacon was set aside to be added again later).  After 3 or so minutes I added the finely sliced ginger and garlic. Because I had a lot of garlic on hand I used about 10 cloves – but you could alter that to as much or as little as suits.

Once that was softened, I added the capsicum (bell peppers) which I had thinly sliced together with some freshly ground white pepper (which was pounded up in my small mortar and pestle).  I used about 2 ½ teaspoons – so the end result was very spicy.  Use 1 teaspoon if you aren’t as besotted with pepper as me.  I also added a spoonful or two of some chilli relish I had in the fridge – you could use chilli sauce, or sweet chilli sauce instead.

While this was all going on, I had re-heated the water and put the pasta in for 11 minutes from boiling.  I used dried penne – but any sort would be fine.

For the last 3 minutes of the pasta’s time I put the bacon back into the pan with the vegetables and added the wedges of tomato.  I only added a smidgeon of salt – the bacon provides a lot of the salt taste already.

So I put the bacon mixture into a serving bowl and sprinkled a few crunchy fried shallots on top (optional – available from asian stores in jars pre-prepared).  In a separate serving bowl the drained rice with ½ the pot of alfredo sauce warmed through.  I chose not to mix it all together for aesthetic reasons.  And it also means you can serve yourself only the portion of pasta and sauce that you think you should have.

For another recipe, click here.



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MOMA – New York

MOMA in New York is my second most favourite gallery – second to the Musée d’Orsay.  MOMA stands for the Museum of Modern Art. 

It houses over 150,000 artworks – so it is clearly impossible to take it all in.  There are some massive Monet Water Lilies – which have to be seen in person – you just don’t get the same impression in a small reproduction.  Some of the other most striking art from my point of view is:

Joan Miro - Hirondelle Amour

Picasso - Girl Before a Mirror

Matisse - La Danse

Van Gogh - Starry Night



Jasper Johns - Flag

Kandinsky - Painting No 200

Paul Klee - Two Tents

Mondrian - A Composition

It also has a great store where you can buy a huge range of prints and modernistic gadgets like a super iPad stand.  They do have an online site although it seemed a bit unstable when I tried it recently.

Today’s cryptic crossword clue – solution tomorrow

Hood’s battle (9)

Source of clue – NZ Herald


For the solution and explanation, click here

Solution for 24 April cryptic crossword clue

Their new one’s surprisingly still in ignorance (4,3,5)

Solution – None the wiser

So the clue that there’s an anagram involved is “surprisingly” – counting letters you see that it must be of “their new one’s” rather than of “still in ignorance”.

So the letters can be rearranged to read “none the wiser” which of course, means “still in ignorance”.


For a more detailed discussion of cryptic clues that involve anagrams, click here.
For the next clue in the series, click here

Anzac Day

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Bangkok - an interesting (and hot) place to visit

Bangkok is an interesting place to visit.  If you don’t do well in the heat you might find it a bit of a trial.  Some of the things we did there included:

Visiting The Jim Thompson house.  He was an American who settled in Thailand and became a very successful entrepreneur in the silk trade.  His house is now a tranquil spot to visit and has a nice shop with quality silk goods for sale.

Visiting temples in the Grand Palace.  A must see attraction.  But no shorts or bare feet are allowed – ie flip flops without socks not allowed.

Visiting Lumphini park – it’s a large park (360 sq acres).  It is full of people doing tai chi and martial arts, having get togethers, biking, running and anything else you can imagine.

Having lunch down by the river – you will see from the picture the sorts of boats that whizz down the river – and that the river looks pretty dirty.  I wouldn’t want to fall into it.

But it isn’t all pretty.  And the traffic is pretty horrendous – and interesting and exciting all at the same time.  The people, though, are just great.  Polite, friendly and peaceful (well, when they aren’t protesting about something).

Today’s cryptic crossword clue – solution tomorrow

Their new one’s surprisingly still in ignorance (4,3,5)

Source of clue – NZ Herald


For the solution and explanation, click here

Solution for 23 April cryptic crossword clue

An opportunist, a doctor accepting dare (10)

Solution – adventurer

An adventurer could be said to be a type of opportunist.

The second half of the clue is “a doctor” in this case a + dr.

Those letters “accept” a word meaning dare – in this case venture.

So a + d+ venture + r

This is an example of a container clue.  For a more detailed discussion of container clues, click here

Happiness is not a Destination

For another saying about happiness, click here

Click here if you would like to see my travel bucket list (not including places in New Zealand)

Woolloomooloo Wharf & Manta Restaurant, Sydney

Woolloomooloo Wharf

We went to Woolloomooloo wharf in Sydney more or less by chance.  We had been in the Domain and looked out and saw what seemed to be a line of bustling restaurants in the distance.  Consulting our trusty map we realised that they were in an old wharf building that had been restored and partly developed as upmarket apartments with moorings for yachts.

The building itself was interesting, although a bit odd.  Cavernous spaces inside that didn’t seem to be used for anything.

Interior of Woolloomooloo Wharf

We selected one of the restaurants for lunch completely at random.  The one we chose was Manta.  A modern Australian restaurant.  It wasn’t until we sat down that we saw just how expensive it was – and then we thought , what the heck.  But at $181 for lunch I won’t be back there in a hurry!

The food, it has to be said, was of a high standard.  We had prosciutto to share as a started – it was acorn fed, 3 year black pig – and just delicious.

Lovely but expensive aged prosciutto

Then the better half had crumbed whiting which was nice with a scrumptious potato salad and sauce.

Crumbed whiting

I had spaghetti with Alaskan crab which was slightly disappointing.  For the cost I would have expected more crab.

Spaghetti with Alaskan crab

I guess what you are paying for is the setting – which was lovely – looking out on the boardwalk and the superyachts.