Click on the picture above and you'll be taken to the festival's official website. The principal sponsor for 2007 is EIT Hawke's Bay - a fine tertiary institution and producer of some of the country's best viticulturists. Get your tickets now because they sell like hotcakes (something I might just blog about one day...that, and catfish).
Apologies too, for the lack of posts - I'm swamped with work (I'm an orchardist), this being a busy time of year. There will be new material soon - bear with me!
Puha (pronounced "poo-ha")
- aka Sow Thistle (Sonchus)
Puha and Pork Bones
Puha and Sesame Salad
As a child, puha was the bane of my existence. While mums the length of the street would lovingly caw from kitchen windows, "do you kids want sausages or saveloys for tea?", mine would say nothing, employing the power of surprise in the battle to feed her two picky children.
Arriving home in the early evening after hours of play always held an air of dreadful mystery for me and my brother. Unlike the other kids in our street, our mother was Maori, which meant that while the other children in our street always got 'proper' food, we, at least once during the week would encounter something 'different'. This often meant finding a steaming plate of muttonbirds, left-over hangi, paua fritters or if I was unlucky, pork bones and puha.
Spring: bright yellow daffodils, the fragrance of blooming daphnes, lambs gamboling in verdant fields... The acrid stench of wool burning on a rickety barbecue appears as welcome on that list as a knife-fight in church. However, spring is the time when the cooking of lamb tails occurs and not having had them in ages, it seemed the perfect excuse to give them a go. Fortunately for me, a workmate (many thanks, Joe!) had just finished a week docking lambs. A dozen beer later, the supermarket bag of tails I requested turned up having changed into a very large fertiliser sack full of the things - time to get to work (just a quick note - click on the photos if you want a closer look - if you dare!).
Click on the picture above and you'll be taken to the festival's official website. The principal sponsor for 2007 is EIT Hawke's Bay - a fine tertiary institution and producer of some of the country's best viticulturists. Get your tickets now because they sell like hotcakes (something I might just blog about one day...that, and catfish).
