The Kitchen

I didn't realize that I would miss it so much.  Chopping, slicing, sauteeing, stirring, washing, tossing, cooking!  The girls I'm staying with in Christchurch have been so gracious to let me use their kitchen.  They just aren't into home cooking.   First I went to the grocery store and bought tons of vegetables.  I filled their colorless fridge with orange carrots, purple onions, red tomatoes, green spinach, celery and cucumber, white mushrooms and garlic.  Now it looks like a proper fridge.  Yesterday I made a fantastic salad with all of the above plus some pine nuts (which, by the way I was overcharged for, but more on that later).  This morning I woke up early to make my mom's specialty breakfast: egg on a bed of spinach on a bed of sauteed vegetables.  Tonight I made "my"* famous Avocado/Lemon/Basil rice.

*I ripped it off of that 5 Ingredient show on the Food Network. 

 

I've had a couple of "I miss home" days.   I started to rifle through my .pdf files and saw some pictures and videos of an old Girls' Night where we had Karaoke at my place.  It made me miss my friends any my house.  And this kitchen time is having the same effect on me.  I'm still having a blast, and loving this vacation for sure.  I'm just saying that I'm glad June is around the corner and I can come back and see y'all for a visit. 

Today I looked into flights and it's looking like I'll be here in NZ until the 13th, then go for a week of laying on the beach in Bali, then fly through Singapore for a few "city" days and then head up to Bangkok to meet Summer on the 23rd.  She and I will trek around SE Asia, landing at some point in South Korea and then it's on home for me around June 1st-ish.  I plugged International Falls into the flight search engine and it didn't show up.  ha!  Somebody want to volunteer to drive me up to my parents' place?  10 hours round trip!  Anyone?  Anyone?

OK-- pine nuts/ripped off:  $10.99NZ for a kilogram of pine nuts.  Translation?  $7.70US for 2.2 pounds.  I bought them in bulk, where you have to put them in a bag and write a code on the bag so they can weigh them and charge you at the register.  Well when I got up to the register they weren't ringing up properly.  She asked me if I remembered the price and I told her $10.99 per kilo.  She looked confused because of whatever her computer was saying and brought the manager over.  I had like maybe three handfuls in this bag.  But even back home pine nuts are expensive and so I wasn't too shocked when she said that they had originally rung up as $2.34NZ, but that wasn't correct and that they were actually $7NZ.  I was like whatever, because she was one of those slow-poke check out girls and I was getting irritated.  Fast forward to me finding the receipt in my pocket a day or two later and just happening to see that she rung them up as $109.99 per kilo.  SO.  They should have been 70 cents.  Not $7.00.  Which made so much sense because there was no where NEAR a kilo of pine nuts.  Remember a kilo is like 2 pounds.  It's heavy.  I should have figured that out when she called the manager over.  My bad.  So, the question is: 

Do I go back to the Pak 'N Save and get a refund of the $6NZ? 

That's $4.20US.  I don't have a car.  The bus goes right by it on the way downtown, but the buses only run every half hour.  Should I make somebody bring me there?  Or just drop the whole thing?  My frugal sensibilities demand that I get a refund.  It's the principle of the thing!  But I could blow four bucks on a cup of coffee.  On the other hand, I could use the four bucks to get a cup of coffee.  Get what I mean?