Foraged Friends and Fruit

Foraged fig, prosciutto, and goat cheese pizza on the grill


Book club picnic in the hills around Wanganui

Foraging for fruit and friends (with recipes)

I am– as anyone who knows me would surely agree–friendly and outgoing…or nosy and a tad too talkative, depending on your perspective. As my kids would say, “Mom, can’t you go anywhere without talking to someone you don’t know?” So I wasn’t that worried about making friends here in NZ even though I wouldn’t have the built-in possibilities of school or work like Mark and the boys. I had my friend antennae up from the beginning, interesting in itself because they are a bit creaky from non-use back home where I hardly have time to keep in touch with the friends I already have.

At the risk of making my new friends feel like targets of a well-aimed friend capture machine (mmm…that could be fun to design) or like acquisitions proudly trotted out to show, I feel very lucky to have already found a few kindred spirits with a handful more hovering on the horizon. I hope that these friendships flourish while I’m here and that I don’t lose them when back in Vermont. There is so much technology now to keep us in touch and I muse sometimes on how that might have salvaged a few friendships I have sadly lost over the years due to distance and life-diverging paths. (No, I can’t find them on Facebook…I’ve tried.)

The first people who reached out a friendly hand to us were our next door neighbors, Jeanette and her husband Laurie, who could not have been more welcoming from the first time they waved a greeting as we drove through their front yard, which we must do to get to our house. Jeanette is very crafty (her meticulously maintained gardens are dotted with mosaic tiles and birdhouses she has made) and loves to cook. We’ve already shared a lot of recipes and cookbooks and tastes of things back and forth. I’ve brought over maple gingersnaps and lemon ice (photo at left, recipe below) and she’s returned with a huge bunch of homegrown chard (called silver beet here) and passion fruit syrup made from fruit off a vine at her father’s house. Jeanette is going to teach me to knit and we’re taking a glass bead workshop here together starting this week. At our first drinks and cheese visit she served a red onion chutney that Mark loved, a recipe from Annabel Langbein, who has quickly become a new favorite cookbook author, a little bit Deborah Madison (for her local, seasonal recipe approach) with a strong dose of the simplicity and practicality of the British cookbook writer Delia Smith who I also like very much. They also had us over for an all vegetarian feast when a fascinating Turkish friend of theirs was visiting. He speaks five languages including Japanese, French, Russian, and English and leads tours around Turkey and southern parts of the former Soviet Union. He doesn’t eat after the sun has set and during the summer he is fruitarian, he told us, living almost exclusively fruits and nuts.

At the end of the first week Mark was working, the boys and I took a Department of Conservation trip to see the rare blue duck. We did see the infamous duck, although the action was minimal and the boys were a bit disappointed that we hadn’t known to bring bathing suits; jumping off the river cliffs looked way more fun than hanging out with a bunch of old people trying to spy ducks through binoculars. There were just a few folks on the trip under the age of 65 – and although I did have good conversations with a few of the older folks (one retired sheep farmer who had some interesting insights and another former farmer now working in an agriculture extension role at Massey University who took me up to see their food and agricultural sciences department this week), I struck up a conversation with the only other woman close to my age. She was also wearing a Chelsea football shirt, a promising first sign.

Margo recently moved back to Wanganui from 29 years spent in London after her mother died unexpectedly and she bought out the family home just a five-minute walk from our house along the river. She grew up on a sheep farm north of the city and always figured she’d come back to help her mother at the end of her life, but ended up returning a bit sooner than expected. She works in accounting and her husband, John, a Brit, is a civil engineer who worked on the Chunnel among other interesting projects. Right now they are concentrating on getting the house in order so, happily for me, Margo has time to go for long walks with me a couple mornings a week.

I’m also lucky that she is a bit out-of-shape right now because, while in England, she was a serious marathoner who did major races including a six-day run across the Moroccan Sahara and a similar extreme race across Siberia in January. We’ve seen DVD’s of some of her running exploits and they are not for the faint-of-heart. Our walks are very mellow but fun and she has a curious attitude like me about everything. Two weeks ago, having spied some fruit trees on a walk around our neighborhood, we went back and collected quite a lot of different fruits, including banana passionfruit (Margo picking them above and on the vine below), figs, a few apples (not quite ripe yet), blackberries, and also lemons – the latter were not technically wild, but literally falling to the ground rotten from a tree growing in an absentee neighbor’s yard. It would have been criminal, we agreed, to let them go to waste.


I used some of the lemons in a lemon ice (pictured above, recipe below) from the Simon Hopkinson book I’d been reading – his writing and attitude are so British, I love him. Made grilled pizza topped with figs (photo at top – I used the NYTimes no-knead pizza dough based on the no-knead bread recipe and it was great) and then a cake with the figs and a different one with the blackberries and some rhubarb (given to me by Mr. Sharp, the local knife sharpener, but that’s a story for another day). I conflated the two to create the cake recipe below.

Also made a roasted fig and plum (from the farmers’ market) butter following the roasted apple butter method from the Shelburne Farms cookbook. It is the perfect cheese platter condiment – goes great with blue or a good cheddar. As for the passion fruit, it's not as intensely flavored as the standard kind, but good nonetheless. I made a huge batch of syrup that I sadly oversweetened, but it’ll do. I folded some into whipped cream and filled brandy snap cookies with it. Very yum. I’m about to experiment and make a lemon bar (they call them slices here instead of bar cookies) with the passionfruit syrup instead of lemon juice.



Last week I had Margo and another emerging friend (I hope), Marion, to lunch. Marion is a doctor whose husband works with Mark, but she actually called me after I contacted the local hospice to offer to volunteer in their kitchen. She works part-time as a GP and also works at hospice. She was raised in Zambia; both her father and grandfather were bush doctors. She invited me over to a delicious lunch first and we’re going to work together on a booklet about feeding your loved one at the end of life, a topic that is near and dear to her heart. The lunch I served for her and Margo was the “superfood” meal I noted on Facebook. She’s into healthy eating and I had been telling her about the story I did on functional foods for the Free Press and thought it would be fun to theme a meal that way. So I did cold cumin- and lemon-poached salmon (not wild, but sustainably farmed in the Coromandel up north) served with a spiced yogurt sauce and a broccoli, sundried tomato, and almond quinoa salad. Dessert was yogurt parfaits with gingered roasted rhubarb and apricots, topped with the cookbook maple granola made with almonds, pumpkin seeds, and dried cranberries. I found pomegranate juice for sale at this local Indian bulk market so we sipped pomegranate spritzers. (Leftovers made a great picnic for an outdoor concert Mark and the boys and I went to that night. The line-up included a band called OpShop, the name for secondhand stores here, and Dave Dobbyn, an icon of the Kiwi music scene for more than 30 years: a little Eric Clapton, a little Willie Nelson, and even a little Neil Diamond all mixed up.)



My other new friend was discovered in the local independent bookstore where I landed within the first few days of being here. I was asking for recommendations for books and also if they knew of any book clubs that might welcome a transient Yank. (After finding out I’d written a cookbook , they have very kindly ordered it and tentatively plan for me to do a reading when it arrives!) As I was paying for my books, a woman came in to pick up her order and they said, “Oh Sally has a book club. Maybe she has an opening.” Luckily, Sally’s book group did welcome me – as did Sally, who works for the local county council directing their arts and culture projects and used to manage the library, so I have her to thank for their great cookbook collection. She is a kindred spirit for sure and knows absolutely everyone foodie and arty in town. She is fixing up a charming old house in an outlying town called Marton and a couple weeks ago I went to hang out with her for a few hours while the boys played golf on the local course (Mark was on call). While we chatted I pitted a huge bowl of tiny, tart Damson plums from her backyard tree and then helped her design a plum compote spiced with black peppercorns, star anise, sugar, and a good slug of brandy. I have some in the fridge and am sure it would be absolutely brilliant (that’s what they say here all the time) with pork.

The first book group was this past Thursday night and it was also absolutely brilliant. We actually picnicked on a plateau on a hill with sheep peering curiously at us over the thistles. Helen, a freelance education writer who moved from England four years ago with her husband, just closed on the land and they are going to build themselves a very small (like 500-square- foot) house there. It was beautiful and peaceful with hardly a car passing on the road far below. The weather was gorgeous and we toasted Helen’s purchase with champagne and then took turns digging out the cork of a bottle of wine I’d brought (the first I’ve had here that wasn’t screwtop – I didn’t even check!). They have a very different way of doing book club where they each put in $10 (about US$5) every meeting and one person is responsible for buying book(s) and bringing them to the next meeting and explaining why they chose them. They then go into a central box from which members “check out” whatever they fancy with everyone just sharing their thoughts as they read them.

We wound down before dark since we had to walk down the hill, except for Annette who four-wheeled it with all the picnic stuff. (Annette, incidentally, started the local farmers’ market and owns a very cool environmentally friendly inn up the Whanganui River called The Flying Fox with access only by flying fox, or zipline.) The light was amazing, as it often is here. Sally called it The Blue Hour, a perfect name I thought for that magical and transient moment of dusk when everything is shadowed in hues of blue. Apparently the French coined it originally: l'heure bleue. In the summer it is often when the smell of the flowers is strongest, Sally told us, and it’s the name of a famous French perfume, too.

Book club on Helen’s (in hat) property – Sally is the one hiding behind her hair in front

Recipes

Simon Hopkinson’s Lemon Ice (really frozen mousse or semi-freddo)
Couldn’t be simpler. Very rich and delicious – it stays pretty soft. Says it serves 4 but I would say 6 at least.

Beat together 8 large egg yolks with 1 cup sugar until light, white, and fluffy. (Yolks here are so bright orange it was never white.) Add juice of 2 large lemons (I used 3 because I like things on the tart side) and beat until “the mass starts to rise up once more.” Beat 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (I did this, but seems picky to have the 2 T) heavy cream until soft peaks form. Fold cream into lemon mixture gently but thoroughly. Freeze for at least a few hours. If you dollop it into small glass or ceramic dishes (like small glasses or custard cups) and freeze those, it’s a neater presentation and should solidify a bit faster. I served it with fresh strawberries on top. SH says with his usual dry tone: “there is no need – most definitely not – to scoop spoonfuls of it into a ‘tuile’ or a basket.”
- Method direct from “Second Helpings of Roast Chicken” but I’ve abbreviated his directions.

Fig, Ginger, and Orange Yogurt Cake
This is a hybrid recipe using the base of Annabel Langbein’s Rhubarb and Yoghurt Crumble Cake from “Eat Fresh” and inspiration from the gorgeous New Zealand food magazine, Dish, whose Feb-March issue featured a Plum, Coconut, and Lime Cake.

2 cups flour
1 T baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
140g (1/2 cup or 1 stick plus 2 T) softened butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
Juice and zest of 1 orange
2 teaspoons finely grated fresh ginger
¼ cup plain yogurt
4 ripe figs, sliced
½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 180 (375) degrees. Grease a 25-cm (10-inch) springform pan and line with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and baking soda. In another bowl, beat together butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs and orange juice and beat well. Beat in zest, ginger, and yogurt and then add flour mixture and stir gently just to combine. Spread into prepared pan and top with slices of fig. Sprinkle chopped walnuts, if using, between figs and press gently into batter. Bake until golden and skewer inserted in middle of cake (not through a fig) comes out clean. Let stand 15 minutes before releasing springform collar. Cool.

Some Lists (but not 25 Random Things)

Since lists seem to be the rage these days, thought I’d throw together some of my own. (And since I'm still struggling with photo placement, see captions/explanations at related points below.)

LIST #1: Nine Things I Took for Granted (and don’t have in NZ)
1. A dryer. They are pretty rare here. Alex said, “Oh I didn’t realize we didn’t have one. I thought we were just trying to be good.” The woman at the high school uniform shop noted cheerfully, “We don’t have dryers, we have sun.” (Not today, we don’t.)
2. At least two toilets in the house. There is one outside in the shed, but it’s not really conducive to use in its current state.
3. My food processor. The one in the house is a multi-purpose processor, blender, coffee grinder and does neither of the first two things well. (But coffee is probably more important than pesto, so that's OK.)
4. Knowing how your pots behave on your stove. I made some dry-fried green beans by mistake.
5. Gallon jugs of milk. My boys go through milk by the gallon, not the litre. (See photos of boys - above in front of coal-fired paddle boat on Whanganui River -- our house is at the top of the hill behind them. Also photo with Dad who also drinks lots of milk - hiking around Mount Ruapehu.)
6. Screens on the windows. There are practically no mosquitoes, but swarms of flies.
7. A cover on the barbecue grill. Only the deluxe versions have them here. We’ve taken to using a roasting pan cover to help hold heat in, but I haven’t yet tried to cook a largeish piece of meat yet; fat hamburgers have given us enough trouble. (Grilled pizza worked ok -- per photo above of one in process topped with foraged figs, proscuitto, creamy feta, and honey-caramelized shallots.)
8. Really good artisanal cheese. (Well, I didn’t quite take this for granted, but I do miss it.) There’s decent cheddar, feta, and blue but no funky and oozy, dry and crumbly, or otherwise deliciously different small-batch cheeses.
9. The Sunday New York Times. I know I can read it online, but it’s just not the same as curling up with the real thing.

List #2: Five Things About NZ That Make Me Smile
1. Sharp cheddar is “Tasty cheddar.” I agree.
2. Tuis – the black and white birds with the most amazing vocalization range from warbles to grunts to cackles.
3. The Dr. Seussian cabbage palm trees everywhere. (See trees at nearby Wiritoa Lake above.)
4. The Norfolk pines that look like those cellular stations masquerading as evergreens on Vermont hilltops back home.
5. The retired sheep farmer who said that Kiwi sheep have two short legs and two long (because they’re always grazing on such steep pasture). (See photo of some of many Kiwi sheep on way to new pasture above.)

List #3: Five Things About NZ That Remind Me of England
1. Everyone is always having tea. (See Mark above.)
2. Milk chocolate digestive biscuits.
3. Crumpets in every grocery store, making the boys very happy. (“Mom, are they made that way on purpose to let all the butter drip in?")
4. Everything is “brilliant” and “heaps” of fun. Trash is rubbish and trunks are boots. (See photo above.)
5. There is a fish and chips shop on every corner – and an Indian restaurant. Sometimes they are combined.

Boyz on School - first impressions

Alex:
1) We have big black lace-up shoes and tall wool socks for our uniform, but during school we don’t have to wear our shoes and socks and many kids just go barefoot. (And people, mostly kids, just walk around town barefoot, including going into stores.)
2) We have houses in school just like in Harry Potter. I am in Wakefield and I already earned house points for my house. We have a ribbon with the house name on it and Mom has to sew it on my school sweater.
3) It seems like there’s going to be a lot more writing in school because we’ve already written a bunch.
4) Our science teacher is called The Mad Scientist and he’s a huge Obama fan. He has a picture of Obama on his door. In our first science class, we put our fingers through flames.
5) Many of the kids are extremely polite, like they introduce themselves and shake your hand, but some of them also swear a lot.

Nikko:
1) They do speak English here, but they use quite a few different words like “heaps” for lots, "zed" for the letter z, "rubbish" for trash, and they have “tea” instead of snack.
2) The first day of P.E., we played rugby with an invisible ball. The teacher said it was to practice the mental part of the game. It didn’t help me much because I didn’t really know how to play anyway.
3) People seem to let bad words slip out in school; two of my teachers swore on the first day. (My English teacher also told us that if he had seven Alzheimer’s moments, we could remove him from the classroom.)
4) There are heaps of rattails here. Lots of the boys have short hair with one long tail in the back. They all try to hide them by tucking them into their shirts at school because they are not allowed to have them.
5) All of the kids think everyone in America is a gangster and that everyone lives in big cities like Los Angeles and New York.

Notes from Mom - The boys had a short week to start because of Waitangi holiday on Friday, but all seemed to go well. Alex's middle school is more cozy with one main classroom and teacher per class and Nikko's high school is big with 1,800 students and a very spread out campus. It's too early to tell how the academic level matches where they are in Vermont, but it looks like it'll be fine. Alex is in a mixed-age class of year 7's and 8's so not the youngest in the class as we had feared since we were pushing him up. Nikko is in mostly "extended" or advanced classes, including P.E.! The school supplies lists were dizzying with each subject requiring a different number/size/shape notebook. The bill, however, was a nice surprise with most of the books costing less than a quarter. Alex starts soccer pick-up games with the school team on Monday night and Nikko is exploring the possibility of trying out cricket (on the beginner team). Mom has promised not to offer to volunteer in the schools quite yet.

Being Truly Welcomed

Haere mai! Haere mai! Haere mai!Once! Twice! Thrice! Welcome.

During Mark’s first week of work, we were invited to a Whakatau, a Maori welcome ceremony, at the hospital -- which I wrote about briefly in a Facebook post -- but will explain better here along with a second more elaborate welcoming Powhiri (pronounced pofiri - that controversial wh being an f again) for all new students and their families I attended at Nikko’s high school yesterday morning.

The invitation to the event at the hospital on January 21, stated: “Gentlemen must wear long trousers; ladies must wear a skirt (preferably long).” (Later I read on a website, “You are expected to act in a dignified manner, for Maori accept your physical presence as representing all your ancestors. It is considered rude to show disinterest during these proceedings, walk in front of a speaker or talk.”) An elegant younger woman of Maori heritage who works for the local Maori health center greeted us and explained what we were about to experience and told us that she would be our guide, ensuring we didn’t do anything embarrassing. The women entered the room first, but the men would be seated in front of the women to represent their role as defenders of the women, she instructed us. We were serenaded as we walked into the room by a female Maori elder wearing a carved horn necklace and matching earrings and then a group of staff (mostly non-Maori, or pakeha, a commonly used Maori term for New Zealanders of European descent) sang a traditional waiata (song) for us.

An older Maori man in tweed jacket -- "Uncle Bill" everyone calls him, he told us later – then welcomed us and our ancestors with lots of gesturing and lyrical words (his energetic brandishing of a walking stick had Alex a little scared at a few points) into the family of the local iwi (tribe), along with other recently arrived doctors from South Africa, Sweden, Britain, and India. (He repeated many things three times – interesting in light of some of the Greek traditions we are familiar with through Mark’s stepmother’s family.) Mark, who had been volunteered to represent our small group, followed our guide’s prompt and explained where everyone was from and thanked the hospital for the warm welcome. (He did great despite his reluctance to be the spokesperson. Of course, I would have happily done it but women are not permitted, our guide had explained apologetically. She had also asked if we would like to share a traditional song of our homeland but we declined, feeling a bit strange about singing the US national anthem as she had suggested given that we were only one of the countries represented. I later read that, “Visitors that sing of their homeland or in their native tongue are said to bestow their hosts with the voice and sound of their ancestors… a great gift and honour.” Not sure that our off-key version would have been a gift…)

The short ceremony concluded with a lovely brief song, which I wish I’d understood at the time but see the original and translation below. Then we went through a receiving line in which we pressed noses with everyone (a hongi – photo above and more on that below). And then they served tea. (This place is a fascinating mix of Maori, British, and frontier culture.) The manager of the hospital spoke after the Maori ceremony and welcomed us also, saying that now we would always carry a piece of Wanganui with us, no matter where we went (although they hoped we would stay!).

Te Aroha Waiata with translation
Te Aroha (Love)
Te Whakapono (Faith )
Me Te Rangimarie (And peace)
Tatou. Tatoue e. (Be amongst us all)

The powhiri version of the ceremony at Wanganui High School to welcome the new Year 9s and other new students (Nikko is a Year 10) on Monday morning was more elaborate with performances by the high school’s award-winning Kapahaka (traditional dance and song) group. I obeyed both my don’t-look-like-a-rude-American-tourist instincts and the pleading of my 14-year-old son not to bring my camera, but see a photo of the high school dance group above – although in traditional dress, not school uniforms, which is what they wore on Monday. They were really impressive and I spoke later to their advisor who said I might be able to come watch them practice so I can understand the movements and meaning better – and possibly learn something to take back to Lois and my world jazz dance classmates at FlynnArts! In my ignorant state of the moment, I will say that the movements of the women are a little reminiscent of Hawaiian hula, but all the dance is accompanied by song and the men’s movements are much more vigorous.

Monday’s event followed a similar format to the smaller gathering at the hospital with the female students in their white blouses and grey wool skirts entering first, followed by the boys in white polo shirts and grey wool shorts , while the student group sang and danced on the stage of a large hall. Teachers and parents filled in the back rows. When all were in the hall, an older woman sang an initial welcome (this song, I later found out, signals to visitors that they are free to approach and acknowledges the ancestral spirits of those in the room – it does have an wistful, haunting tone and apparently represents the bottomless source of ancestral tears) and then an older man or elder (kaumatua) spoke. The principal and another school staffperson (vice-principal?) also welcomed all students to the school (in Maori and English) and included some international high school principal rhetoric (e.g. “Be proud of yourself and do yourself proud.”) Towards the end, the elder articulated a really nice point about the hongi being an exchange of breath or life, bringing all present together as part of the same family. At this point, you are no longer considered manuhiri (visitor), but are now tangata whenua, one of the people of the land. From that point on, you share in the community's duties and responsibilities. In earlier times, defending the group or tending crops – in our case, it means taking call in the hospital I suppose, or doing your English homework.

I did a little research on the tradition of powhiri and found the following illuminating website for anyone who wants to know more: www.newzealand.com/travel/about-nz/features/powhiri/powhiri-introduction.cfm. A couple interesting points I thought worth including here: “The various elements of the powhiri serve to ward off evil spirits and unite both visitor and host in an environment of friendship and peace. The word powhiri encapsulates two important concepts to Maori. Apparently, the word Po can be translated as a venture into the unknown or a new experience, while Whiri is derived from the term Whiriwhiri meaning the act or experience of exchanging information and knowledge. " This seems particularly apt for our entire adventure here in New Zealand.

Mark's First Work Impressions

I’ve just finished up my first full week so I now know (sort of ) what my job is here. As everything is organized a tad differently, just knowing what to call myself turned out to be a challenge. My official title is “Consultant Physician.” The term physician, however, means the same as Attending in Medicine back in the States, (so no self-respecting surgeon would allow themselves to be called a physician). There are two main aspects to the job: outpatient and inpatient (certainly the term “hospitalist” doesn’t mean much here) and I'm involved in both for a general population of about 60 to 70,000.

On the outpatient side, it turns out internists here really don’t do any primary care as we understand it in the U.S.; they consult for the GP’s (general practitioners) who do the the bulk of primary care. Since there are very few subspecialty medicine folks here (a cardiologist comes to our hospital just once a month, for example), that means I end up being the first line of consultation and we send far fewer patients on to subspecialists. So … lots of cardiology and neurology at levels I wouldn’t normally end up treating at home, like pretty intense, quasi-unstable cardiology. Also, since we do all the stress tests (and they do lots of them here), I’m seeing lots of chest pain. I have three outpatient sessions per week along with a half day of stress tests (no nuclear tests here … have to go an hour away for that, and all the way to Wellington - 2 ½ hours - for a cath). On the inpatient side, I have one intense day of call per week (which includes consulting frequently for the ER which is staffed only by RMO’s – intern types, see below – at night) and about every fourth weekend. Much of the inpatient medicine is similar to the States but, once again, no subspecialists and many different protocols and medications.

As for my partners in the hospital, there’s one Kiwi, and the others hail from Pakistan, India, South Africa and Romania. As we had heard, there really are not enough docs here and many leave for more money elsewhere (especially Australia). Folks seem to really like working with and seeing an American doc (and seem to tolerate my crazy accent). Needless to say, they’ve already worked me over pretty hard to stick around longer than six months. Probably the biggest differences on the inpatient side is (a) you don’t really need to do much documentation, just what you feel is necessary (there’s really no malpractice here), and (b) the educational hierarchy is quite different. As some of you may know, in the English system students can enter into medical school right after high school (it’s somewhat combined with undergrad). Then after that, they typically do a couple of years as a “resident medical officer” (RMO), rotating between medicine and surgery. After all that, they can become a registrar, where they focus on “GP” work, or Internal Medicine, etc.

The RMO’s I’m working with also come from around the world: NZ, England, Wales, Bahrain, China, India. At least a few have started hinting that they’d love to come to the States for residency and hitting me up for tips on how to make that happen. As you can see from the photos, the hospital is under renovation with a really nice new addition that houses the ED, surgical “theatres”, obstetrics and the CCU (kind of like FAHC …. There is even a similarity in the sunny logo, although the signage is all in English and Maori, unlike at home). All my colleagues here have been very welcoming -- from the manager of the hospital offering us a weekend at her summer home on the other coast of the North Island, to my boss having us over to dinner, to the husband of the stress test technician inviting Melissa to watch him slaughter a lamb. Now that’s hospitality.