Thermomix body scrub

This is just amazing.  Not only is it a great hand and body scrub but it smells fantastic (and, shhhhh, tastes pretty good, too).  The almond and sugar scrub off dead skin, the oats are soothing and the coconut oil moisturises, all in one step.  The best part is knowing exactly what's in it.

Ingredients

• 70g almonds whole
• 20g raw oats
• 300g raw sugar
• 100g coconut oil

Pulse the almonds using the turbo button until they're nicely ground up.  That's entirely a matter of personal preference; you don't want it so finely ground that it turns into almond butter, but you do want it fairly well chopped up.  Add the oats and pulse a few more times, then add the other ingredients and pulse again to mix.

To use, scoop some out then add a few drops of water to loosen the mix.  Scrub, rinse and marvel.

The Thermomix minor thesis

Below is the content of an email I sent to people I know who own (or are thinking of getting) a Thermomix.  And as soon as I hit send a dozen other things occurred to me that should have been included.  So, here's the original email and I'll keep adding to it through new blog posts.

Recipes you just have to try

· Magic bean chocolate cake.  This is your go-to for gluten-free pleasure or when you need a gluten-free cake that you don't want to tell people is gluten-free because of all the preconceptions that would trigger.  The main ingredient is a tin of red kidney beans, but you'd never guess that by how light and fluffy this cake is.  This is not like any of the potato or beetroot chocolate cakes where you can clearly taste the vegetable; it really does just taste like chocolate cake made with regular flour.

· Isi's easy Portuguese rolls.  Making bread in the TMX is simple, and these are a great example.  My suggestion for anything you make with yeast is to use the TMX to heat the liquid up to 37 degrees, which is the perfect temperature to activate the yeast and means the bowl is already warm to provide a good proving environment.  These have that gorgeous crunchy outside and fluffy perfect inside, and you can slightly taste the honey in the crust.  Just be sure to use flour that is around 14% protein: Coles stock a brand called Lighthouse, which does a specialty bread / pizza flour that's perfect (and you'll probably see a picture of a TMX on the box because they're both Perth companies helping cross-promote each other).  Also you can just use one 7g sachet of dried yeast instead of trying to hunt down the fresh stuff and the result is the same.  Oh, and knead you have the speed dial on the closed lid position first, then hit the kneading button (the one with the wheat on it).

· Italian meatballs and spaghetti.  This will show you the power of the varoma.  The spaghetti cooks in the sauce, which is itself steaming the meatballs.  And before you freak out at the idea of steamed meatballs, once they're covered in the sauce you can't even tell that they haven't been browned in oil.  Oh, and you don't have a frying pan to clean up after browning, so that's a winner right there.  

· Golden syrup dumplings: another one to get you using your varoma.  I love the instruction to NOT wash the bowl out between steps (there's an anti-washing-up theme developing here).

· Sixty minute eggs: simplest recipe ever: put some eggs in their shells in the basket, cover in water, cook at 60 degrees for 60 minutes.  The egg will poach perfectly in the shell, with the white having a lovely creamy texture, not at all rubbery, and the yolk will be still soft and liquid but not runny.  To get the eggs out, crack the bottom as if to open a boiled egg then let it sort of plop out onto your toast.  Yes it's worth the wait, and they're perfect for dipping toast soldiers because you can dip all of the egg, not just the yolk.

· Lemon cleaning concentrate: this smells amazing, and is perfect for wiping out things like your oven and fridge where you don't necessarily want to use chemicals.  For the oven you'll need to add a bit of elbow grease, but you know that you won't gas yourself using it and you won't be baking anything toxic into your next dish if you miss wiping a bit out.  It's brilliant for cleaning out your TMX bowl with some hot water and a whizz on speed 10.  I also throw a splodge of it (few tablespoons) in if I'm doing a load of tea towels, dishcloths and other things that could benefit from a bit of lemon fresh vinegar light-bleaching action.

There's also some really great recipes in the book that comes with your TMX.  Highlights for us have been:

· Mashed potato is just a revelation. If you haven't tried this yet I order you to do so within the next week.  Not only is the texture incredible, but because you're not boiling all the nutrients out into water you throw away it's healthy (even if you add as much butter and cheese as they suggest).

· Polenta, partly because it comes out more smooth and perfect than you could ever achieve by hand on the stove-top, partly because there are no second degree burns from it spattering up while you stir and partly because the jug is much easier to wash than a stove-top pot if you haven't spent the entire 30 minutes stirring non-stop and it's stuck.  I find the speed needs to be a bit higher than the book suggests: if you can't see the top of the polenta moving then turn the speed up a bit).  The full recipe makes absolutely heaps, so have a lamington tray lined with baking paper ready to go and pour what you don't eat on the night into that so you can serve it again later as polenta chips.

· Porridge: perfect in winter because it cooks itself while you're in the shower.  The official recipe in the book has been updated but I can't find the link (lucky I wrote in my copy).  Now it's simply 160g of rolled oats, 860g of liquid (we do half milk, half water), salt to taste then 11 minutes at 90 degrees on reverse speed 2.  You don't need to blitz the oats either, especially if you like a bit of texture.  Or, if 'texture' isn't your thing you can cook it for more like 20 minutes like Bevan does.

· Buttermilk scones are as fluffy as promised but they're also as sticky as it warns.  Worth the mess for the end result.

· Vegetable stock.  Don't freak out about the amount of salt in this.  By the time you dilute it into whatever you're making it's not much per serving.  Seriously, trust the recipe on this one.  You'll find lots of recipes in the Thermomix world use this as well so it's definitely worth making so you've got it on hand.

· Jam.  Too easy.  Sterilize your jars and fill them while they're still hot by pouring straight from the TMX bowl using the handle.  No mess at all, no second degree burns.  Just be very sure it's at setting point before you bottle it: you may need to give it a go at varoma temperature for a few minutes to get there.

Recipes not to try

· Our gift with purchase was the vegetarian book.  The vegan leek quiche on page 71 has no butter in the pastry and neither eggs nor cream in the filling.  How they dare to call it a quiche is beyond me.  It is unspeakably grim.  Bevan refused to finish his serving and the rest went in the bin because we couldn't bear to inflict it even on our dogs.

Websites to check out

· http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/ is the official Thermomix Australia forum.  The website seems to be a clone of the German one, and it's horrible to navigate (anyone who uses SAP will recognise the same Teutonic utter disdain for the user experience).  Also many of the recipes are submitted by users and have zero testing or quality control, so you're kind of on your own a bit.  However, the search function is pretty straight froward and the recipes do at least have a rating system to give you an idea of which are the ones with mass appeal.

· http://www.forumthermomix.com/index.php is another user-based forum, and again the only 'guarantee' of the recipes is the number of positive comments.  They also do reviews of recipe books so you can get an idea what people think of the recipes in it and what tweaks they've made that you can copy.  All the recipes are nicely sorted into categories, but it's a bit hit and miss what you find from there digging through the threads.

· http://tenina.com/ Tenina was one of the first official Thermomix recipe developers in Australia and her writing style is fantastic.  I've got her book "For Food's Sake" and it's full of drool-worthy recipes, but she also publishes a lot of them here and on her blog for free.

· Assorted bloggers, each with their own spin, including:

o    Steph Berg, just for the sheer number of recipes

o    Thermovixens, because the name is cool and they just seem to have so much fun

o    Thermomixer; he's a hard-core foodie so the recipes are a bit more 'serious'

o    Quirky cooking has a focus on really healthy, natural recipes with lots of gluten-, refined sugar- and additive-free options.  She lives in far north Queensland and home schools her four kids, so that gives you a grossly over-generalised idea of the sightly hippy vibe to this site.

Recipe books

· You probably don't need any other recipe books because the forums and the blogs and adding the words "thermomix" and "recipe" to a Google search will give you more free resources than you'll ever need.  There's also such a wide variety of recipes in the main book that you'll be able to quickly figure out how to convert all your favourite recipes to TMX versions (for example, I check the shortcrust pastry recipe to know what speed and for roughly how long to rub butter into flour even if I'm using a different pastry recipe.  The answer is 8 seconds, which sounds absurd but is true.)  However, you get what you pay for from free recipes, especially untested ones other people put up  such as this one where I pointed out that half the instructions are missing and the author responded with no acknowledgement of the problem (but it's an excellent recipe and another one I'd suggest you try).  So, there are are a couple of books out there that I can recommend:

· Tenina Holder's For Food's Sake, if just for the caramelised garlic paste recipe and her fabulous writing style (this was my bedside reading for a few nights).  It's currently sold out but get it once you can, and add some of her Crio Bru to your order at the same time because you need it for a lot of the recipes so you may as well save on postage.

· Dani Valent's In The Mix.  This is TMX throws a posh dinner party, and it won't be for everyone.  There are some good mid-week recipes, but a lot of them are very involved: not necessarily difficult, just lots of steps with lots of ingredients.  My copy is from the first print run.  Yay it's a first edition, but boo it suffers from a few quirks.  Mum and I went to one of her cooking classes recently and were given a number of tweaks, such as reducing the parsley oil from 15 minutes at speed 10 to only 8 minutes and doubling the soy and oyster sauce quantities in the beef stir fry.  A reprint has just been released and hopefully a few of those things have been corrected.

· The various Thermomix recipe books.  We've got the vegetarian one mentioned above for the infamous vegan leek "quiche", which does have a few other good things in there.  The Indian book is brilliant because it translates corriander/cilantro, zucchini/courgette, eggplant/aubergine, lots of the spices and gives really great alternative ingredients if you can't get certain things.  There's also a gluten free one, an Asian one, a seafood one and assorted other 'healthy' ones including some non-Thermomix branded ones about cooking without additives.  

Gadgets to seriously consider

· The spatula that comes with the TMX is clever at things like lifting out the steamer basket and scraping down the top of the bowl while the blades are running (don't put a regular one in while the blades are spinning: it will cut a chunk off.  Here speaks the voice of experience), but it's not all that great at scraping.  Tenina sells one that you can't use while the blades are going, but it's really good at cleaning out the bowl. Order at least two, because they strongly resemble a pirate cutlass and are likely to be carried off by little people with eye patches.  Also check your local homeswares store for silicone spatulas, especially one from the Soho sub-brand of S&P where the end you use is square on one side and rounded on the other.  It's exactly the right shape for getting around the blade.

· If you're going to do a lot of spice cooking, consider getting a second seal for the inside of your lid.  The seal is the one thing that seems to retain smells a bit so a second one will help you feel less worried about the potential impact on your sweet recipes.   

Other tips

· The inbuilt scales are good, but I get a bit nervous using them because if I put in too much it's not always easy to get out again, especially if it's not the first ingredient going into the bowl.  Luckily the scales work just as well if you sit a bowl on top of the lid, zero out the scales, weigh the item into the bowl and then tip in.

· The steaming basket fits on top of the lid, so if you're cooking something that has the measuring cup out but is spitting everywhere you can sit the basket on top as a splash guard.

· If you want shredded chicken for a salad (or to shred the ham for a pea and ham soup) you can cut breast fillets up into about 5cm squares, steam them until cooked and then shred them in four seconds, reverse speed 5.  Absolutely perfect shredding.  How long would it take to do that by hand?

· If you're making yoghurt, when you get to the part about letting the milk cool down make sure you wait until the 37 degree light goes out.  If it's on, the temperature is somewhere between 37 and 49, and the upper end of that range will kill your starter culture.  It doesn't matter if it drops below that temperature because it's so easy to get it back up to there again.

· Don't be afraid of your varoma.  Make some of the recipes in the book that use it and just follow the numbers in the recipe.  It's easy, healthy and amazing how much food your TMX can cook at once.

· If you really want to personalise your Thermomix because you love it so much you want it to be as special as you know it is, there's a website just for you.  Hopefully there's also a self help group.  

Finding out the rest of this is half the fun, so my minor thesis ends here.  Just hope you enjoy using a Thermomix as much as I do.

New Zealand; Day 14

Sadly, the final day of our trip and it was a low key one.

We started with a visit out to the Model Boat Dockyard in Onehunga, where Bevan purchased the kit for a scale model of The Endeavour's longboat.  Apparently this is a much, much more appropriate entry point to the hobby than the Endeavour itself that I bought for his birthday.  He was also able to pick up some rather necessary tools, which I had failed to buy for his birthday. 

While Bevan was there, Eleanor and I headed back to a playground we'd spotted, and I got a handy iPhone-based sourced hint from one of the other parents for a yum cha restaurant, Pearl Garden, where we ended up for a fantastic lunch.  It overlooked the fish market, and with the humidity that day it both smelled and felt authentically Chinese.  Since it was right in the heart of where we'd been shopping the previous day we were able to double back to a couple of stores and pick up a few extra toys to keep Eleanor happy on the plane.  And guess who so utterly charmed the toy shop owner that he just gave her a bath toy as an extra freebie?


Our last planned stop before the airport turned out to be very conveniently located right next to it.  Butterfly Creek is a butterfly house slash reptile zoo slash petting farm slash playground slash cafe.  Eleanor was so enraptured with the trampoline that she ignored her last fluffy opportunity.  She got to feed another lamb and take a tractor ride, along with lots of other animals to wave to.  Have you ever wondered about the saying "Happy as a pig in mud"?

The butterfly house was huge and well stocked, which is why it's even more inexplicable that a five year old chose to poke the one butterfly sitting on a hibiscus that I was attempting to photograph.  Bevan congratulated me on my tactical application of the death stare on a child who I couldn't yell at or throttle because the parents, while clearly negligent in their supervisory obligations, would probably have chosen to look up just at that point.  And yes, watch this space in three years from now when somebody else is probably saying the same about Eleanor.

I ignored the spiders, but did admire their display of cockroaches in an absolutely filthy dolls house.  Very nice touch.  They also had a surprisingly large number of young American Alligators.  I'm not sure what they plan on doing with them all once they grow to their full 4.5m adult length, although that's probably quite a few handbags so maybe they've got it figured.  They were in glass enclosures about 1m off the ground, with a step up for the littlies.  Eleanor obviously didn't realise that the place where she was clambering up for a look lined up perfectly with a baby 'gator looking straight out at us, but she got a huge shock when they came eye-to-eye.  Of all the times for me to NOT accidentally hit the movie record button on the camera.  D'oh!

Finally it was time to say goodbye to our "big car" as Eleanor has called it.  We checked in with plenty of time to kill, but the airport has a nostalgically old-fashioned observation deck where we could all relax for a bit.  While there one of the NZ airforce planes was on the tarmac, and another came in to land and taxied around behind it.  I suspect my photo therefore depicts the entire New Zealand air force in a single frame, but I'll refrain from posting it in case that's some sort of terrorist act.

Eleanor got to burn off some more steam in the McDonald's playground (found without the help of any of the airport information staff, all of whom gave conflicting advice about the existence of such a facility), before some last minute shopping - including a Lego kiwi t-shirt for Eleanor - and we were on the plane home.
  

It's been a wonderful trip, and we highly recommend New Zealand as a holiday destination for families.  Next time we travel we'll definitely go the self-contained option, as not buying breakfasts or using laundromats saved precious amounts of money and time.  I'm sorry that we didn't get to see more of the South Island, but that gives us an excuse to go back.

New Zealand; Day 13

Another quiet one today, and perhaps one of being in the right place at slightly the wrong time.  But hey, with all the luck we've had with timing so far on this trip we're not complaining.

We started by heading out to Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World.  It's an aquarium built in the old Auckland sewage works in the mid-eighties.  Kelly was NZ's best approximation of Jacques Cousteau, and was one of the first to use acrylic tanks to allow visitors an eye-level, underwater view of the exhibits.  Sadly for his family he died only 7 weeks after it opened.  A tiny bit sadly for us, one of the best parts was only part open; there's a conveyor belt that takes you on laps of a massive ocean tank, and half of it was closed, but the open half was fantastic.

They've also got little snowmobile tanks that take you for a lap through the penguin enclosure so you can see them up really close.  The cabins are fully sealed because the enclosure has sub-zero temperatures.  Unfortunately that also sealed in the body odour of the teenager sitting in front of us.  The fishy smell of the aquarium when the door finally opened was an unexpected relief.

Anyway, ten baby penguins hatched yesterday, so we got to see some very Happy Feet bundles of fluff up close.  It was fantastic, and as the place wasn't that busy we went on the penguin lap a second time (thankfully having a cabin to ourselves).

After a bite to eat in the cafe, the location of which Eleanor remembered with GPS accuracy, we saw some crayfish and an octopus being fed and fought our way out through the ubiquitous gift shop.  By this stage Eleanor was announcing that she was tired and wanted to go home to bed, but that all changed when she spotted the playground we stopped at.  The shoes I only bought for her a couple of months back are now too small, so she insisted on taking them off, and it was lovely watching her run around in the bindi-free grass and daisies.

After a stop on Auckland's equivalent of Chapel St to pick up new shoes it was home for a nap, and then off to our 6pm dinner reservation in the Orbit revolving restaurant near the top of the Sky Tower.  As mentioned yesterday, we wanted to be there for the transition from day to night.  Great plan; we just didn't count on the rain coming in and the restaurant being in the middle of the cloud belt.  Theoretically diners can see up to 80km, but the best we managed was an occasional glimpse five or six city blocks into the distance.  Still, the food was great and Eleanor - who showed absolutely no fear at all of walking on the glass panels in the observation deck floor - loved being up high.

New Zealand; Day 12

We've been offline for a few days. The Rotorua motel network went down late on our last night there (apparently it doesn't like the sulphur) and of course Hobbit holes don't have wi-fi, but we're back now and sad to be staring down our final few days.

This morning we did a tour of the Waitomo Caves. They've been running tours here non-stop for 110 years, and frankly some of the jokes the tour guide told are probably that old.  Being a limestone cave it's full of stalactites and stalagmites, although since there hasn't been much rain lately they were much drier than we expected. One large cavern has amazing acoustics, and has hosted concerts by many famous singers including Dame Tiri Te Kanawa (who the guide claims is a Waitomo native but I can't find anything to back that up.  Well, not on Wikipedia anyway.)

It's also where the local Carols by Candlelight are apparently held, although they don't need torches because the caves are full of glowworms.  We'd seen a couple on the river banks in Rotorua, but nothing compared to here.

After walking down lots of stairs we climbed into boats, and the guide used overhead cables to slowly pull us through while our eyes adjusted.  The boats are necessary because most of the glowworms are in the section directly above the river that flows through the caves as that's where their insect food comes from.  It was an amazing experience, and yet again Eleanor took what could have been quite scary completely in her stride.

(That isn't us in the image below, but you can't take photos in there and this at least gives you the general idea. Actually it doesn't at all, because there are no worms on the cave walls and they're not all as bright as that and it's quite obviously been photoshopped, but the boat is a bit like ours at least.)

Next it was only a few hundred metres up the road to a stop I've been looking forward to for weeks; a shed where they do a daily demonstration of shearing enormous Angora rabbits, and sell yarn made of the bunnies' fur.  It was quite freaky seeing how much the rack they tie them to for shearing resembled a spit roast, but the rabbit didn't seem to mind at all.  They are incredibly soft, and I went slightly nuts in the retail bit.

We stopped at the Big Apple (no, not New York, just a really big apple) for lunch, before starting the 3 hour haul up to Auckland, arriving just in time for peak hour.  Once a load of washing was on we headed back out to the Sky Tower to watch the sun set from a long way up.  Well, that was the plan.  The reality was that every street the GPS told us to turn down either wasn't there or was blocked with road works or police or a crane of some other impediment, and that's not including most of them  being one way at the best of times.

The tower entry is in the casino, which apparently includes lots of restaurants.  The only one we could actually find was a massively overpriced buffet, which although not the best food we've ever eaten at least meant we didn't have to wait for an a la carte option to be cooked, and Eleanor was starting to get a bit cranky.  And after all that it was totally dark by the time we'd finished, so we've decided to have another attempt tomorrow night.

Obviously we did eventually get here, but otherwise our attempt to buy nappies on the way home almost ended in a Gilligan's Island-esque tragedy.  The GPS gave us a list of local grocery stores, so we picked a supermarket name we recognised and started following orders.  The aforementioned problems struck again, and at one point the GPS sent us on a full lap around Auckland University and looked like it was going to do the same to us again.  After a few more very strange detours - and hearing Eleanor pipe up with "bugger" from the back seat, much to our bemusement/horror/relief that it wasn't something worse - we finally spotted the welcoming fluorescent glow of our destination, and thankfully it was still open.  To put it in context, a 2.1km trip to the supermarket ended up taking 40 minutes.  And we thought navigating around Wellington was bad...

New Zealand; Day 11

Today was Lord of the Rings Day. We had a quick browse around down town Rotorua before heading off to the Alexander family's farm near MataMata. It was the site chosen by Peter Jackson to build the set for Hobbiton for the movies, and once there you can understand why; it can't be seen from the road, and from the site you can't see power lines, buildings or any other trace of western civilisation.

Our expectation was that all the movie set stuff was removed at the end of filming, and so the tour is simply an expensive way to see some holes dug into the side of hills. However, when we got there we were informed that the site is presently under the control of the movie production company and we had to sign confidentiality waivers. I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to disclose the existence of the waiver itself, but basically if I discuss any of what we saw, or publish any of the photos we were allowed to take for private use only, Peter Jackson will personally set on me not just his lawyers but possibly a few Nazgûl, and frankly I'm not sure which would be scarier. Therefore let me just say that it's public knowledge that pre-production work has commenced on The Hobbit, that we didn't see just holes in the ground like we expected, and OMG OMG OMG OMG did we time our visit right because they're probably not going to be able to run those tours for much longer before they have to stop for a few months.

The farm is still a working sheep property, and so at the end of the tour we got to see a sheep shearing demonstration and to feed two really young lambs, who understand the game by now and came tearing out of their pen towards us all looking for who had the bottles of milk. Everyone else on the tour could see the superb photo opportunity of letting Eleanor do some feeding, but we did share the bottles around, too. She just loved it.

After a second breakfast at the cafe / gift shop it was on the road again.  I've been having a recurring dream about the Crowded House lyrics to Mean To Me, particularly the line about how "the sound of Te Awamutu had a truly sacred ring".  I put it down to all the exposure to Maori place names, but had no idea of Te Awamutu is a real place or not, and if yes, where.  So imagine my delight when we drove through it!


From there it was off to Waitomo and some Hobbit holes that I can show you photos of. Woodlyn Park is a slightly wacky motel with a train carriage, and plane and a boat converted to accommodation. They've also built two Hobbit holes into the side of the hill, and we'd managed to book one of them, which capped off our day perfectly. I'm guessing they're popular, because it looks like a couple more will be built next door to ours. Ooops, am I allowed to say that?

New Zealand; Day 10

Today was one case of perfect timing after another, and more perfect weather.

We were up early ready for Bevan's 10am helicopter safari to White Island. Getting that far had been something of a saga; weeks ago I booked him for 1.30pm today, but there wasn't enough people for the minimum In fact there wasn't anyone else wanting to do it today, so he was booked for 3pm yesterday. Except then the weather was too windy and misty and it was cancelled and rescheduled for this morning. Except then the weather still wasn't any good, so it was cancelled and rescheduled for 2pm with a 1:45pm pickup, only 15 minutes later than my original plan. I'm so glad everyone - including the weather - agreed to cooperate with my itinerary.

So instead this morning we headed to Te Puia, which is another Maori sacred site, hot springs and geyser. We had enough time to browse through the gift shop before our tour started. Our tour -which covered lots of the Maori history and handcrafts that we didn't learn about last night - reached the geyser just as it started to blow. As we headed back the kiwi house was empty and we were able to go in alone for a better look than we got as part of the tour crowd. We got back to the cafe for lunch just before a few large tour groups. And as we walked past we could see the gift shop was absolutely teeming with people.

Back home for Eleanor's nap and confirmation from Volcanic Air Safaris that the 2pm flight was going ahead, which was a huge relief for everyone. Bevan headed off to the waterfront, Eleanor headed off to bed (and despite insisting she wasn't tired was crashed out cold within 10 minutes) and I headed to the couch for some TV and some more work on my sock knitting.

She woke to a choice between a visit to a lion park or a swim in the motel pool, and she emphatically chose the pool. The end with the steps was just the right depth for Eleanor and in the shade, so we spent almost an hour in there. Going to meet Daddy and see his helicopter land wasn't a strong enough incentive to get out, but the fact that there's a fantastic playground there was, otherwise we'd quite possibly still be in the pool.

Sadly we were about 5 minutes too late to see the helicopter land (OK, so not such perfect timing on that one), but just in time to see Bevan walking up the pier with the happiest, most satisfied look in his face. White Island was the one thing of our entire trip that he really had his heart set on, and I'm so glad it worked out. Apparently they had a smooth flight and plenty of time for a tour of the crater and the sulphur mine abandoned in 1914 when a larger than usual explosion killed all the miners in their sleep. As you can see in the photo, hard hats are compulsory and they even had to don gas masks a few times.

As promised, Eleanor got her time at the playground before we switched babysitting duties and I headed off to the Silver Fern day spa for a Rototua mud pack facial and foot massage, both of which were wonderful (thanks Louise!)

Dinner tonight was a steakhouse that we knew had a kid’s menu. Luckily, since it was Eleanor’s bedtime when we eventually got there, they also had a bucket of markers and some colouring in paper. As you can see, Eleanor has been so inspired by the Maori culture that she self-attempted a face tattoo before we could stop her.

New Zealand; Day 9

Today was science education day: we learned lots about geology, particularly vulcanology, and Eleanor learned about the geometry of trying to get a picnic table and two chairs into a cubby house.

We started at the Volcanic Activity Centre, which had some really great displays on, well, volcanoes, but also tectonic plates, the various types of volcanic rocks and earthquakes. A lot of it was text-heavy and Daddy-perfect, but the little room that demonstrates what a 6.3 earthquake feels like was Eleanor's favourite thing since the Hagglund/Ninky Nonk back in Christchurch. As soon as she found the 'Start' button we had little chance of getting her out of there.

Next it was a half hour stroll through the fragrant sulphur fumes at Wairakei Thermal Valley, where steam just comes up out of the ground in all sorts of little patches. Forty minutes later we were in Rotorua, where the main down town park is full of fenced off patches and the eggy smell is really strong. Although that might be mostly because our accommodation here, just a standard little motel, has its own geyser and thermal pool. Happily for Eleanor it also has the above mentioned playground, which she had to be dragged out of kicking and screaming.

Our final activity was an evening at the Mitai Maori Village, where we got to see a traditional war canoe paddled up stream, followed by a great demonstration of the haka and dinner cooked in a hangi pit. As part of the same tour we went next door to the Rainbow Springs Kiwi Wildlife Park. By this stage it was 9.30pm and their four little kiwis were out of bed and wandering around their enclosure, where the fence is only knee high. Eleanor, who has a collection of toy kiwis and a new favourite book about a kiwi who is afraid of the dark, was delighted when one ran right past her.

By the time we got home it was late and Eleanor was exhausted, but she's had yet another fantastic day. We all have.

New Zealand; Day 8

To sum up today, I went fly fishing and caught a 4lb brown trout, and Bevan went bungy jumping. Needless to say we're both now exhausted (although Bevan did get his second wind when he discovered the insinkerator in our hotel room, to the extent of encouraging me not to eat all of my pasta so that he had something to destroy).





My guide for the day, Craig, collected me from our hotel at 8.30am for a helicopter trip up the Mohaka River near Lake Taupo in the middle of the North Island. The chopper was a little white bubble model, just like the one on the cover of ABBA's Arrival album. Well just like, except that ABBA weren't wearing waders and I doubt either Frida or Agnetha needed a step ladder to get into the chopper, or made anywhere near as an undignified, uncontrolled exit at the other end.

After a quick refresher on my fly casting technique we started wading up river. All day we were casting into a head wind, and at times the wind made the river surface rippled and harder to see the fish, so Craig set some very low expectations on our chances of even spotting one let alone catching any.

However, about 10 minutes later I managed to hook a nice big brown trout. Sadly I misheard Craig's instructions as "hold the line" when he actually said "I'll hold the line", so me grabbing the reel just as the fish pulled meant that it skipped free of the net and disappeared down river with the fly. At this point I was happy simply to have a fishing story about "the one that got away". (Actually I was just happy that Craig had waders to fit me, so anything else for the day was a bonus.)

About half an hour later I got another nibble, and this time managed to reel it in. Apparently brown trout are quite lazy and rainbow trout are the ones that put up a fight, but as you can see this one really made me work for the trophy photos. It wasn't until after I'd released him back into the water that the adrenalin hit and I could really enjoy the moment. Craig's net has built-in scales, which is how I can accurately say it weighed 4 pounds.

For the rest of the day the wind was right up, and while we saw plenty of fish we didn't even get a nibble. Then it was a high-speed hike cross-country back to the chopper meeting point, another terribly undignified moment fighting the waders and my stumpy little legs to get up into cabin, and a bumpy ride home.

Meanwhile, Bevan and Eleanor had discovered a ride-on train near yesterday's playground, and visited the Craters of Moon which is one of the local thermal mud pools. Eleanor, observant as ever, saw all the mud and announced sadly that she'd left her gumboots at home.

By the time we got back to Taupo and I thanked Craig for one of the best days of my life, it was time for Bevan's bungy jump. Back when we first decided to visit NZ he announced that he wanted to see if he could actually throw himself off the ledge, especially without the sort of peer pressure that had pushed him to do abseiling and other action sports as part of group activities in the past. While the jump in Taupo isn't as high as Queenstown it is the world's highest water-touch bungy. Eleanor and I watched from the vantage point as he stood there for what seemed like ages - and he later confessed that he really did come close to backing away - before he lifted his hands above his head and went over. I was so very, very proud of him, and I suspect he's a bit proud of himself too.

New Zealand; Day 7

One week down, one to go. It's hard to believe we're half way through already, but if the weather keeps up like this we'll be very lucky and very grateful.

No Night Garden on Saturdays, but we still weren't checked out and off on our walk until 10am. At 10.05am Eleanor declared that there was a big poo in her nappy, which was correct, so she had to suffer the indignity of a nappy change in the middle of the park.

Spent a lovely relaxing morning just wandering around Napier and admiring the architecture and retail therapy in almost equal proportions. We ended up down at the seaside, which as you can see wasn't quite what we're used to at home. "All Black" is both the name for a member of NZ's national rugby team and an entirely apt description of the beach. In this photo you can see Eleanor and Daddy making a pebble castle.

Next we went to see Train World, which is a very large upstairs room completely taken up with a number of model train sets, one of which was lovingly constructed in a middle-aged man's bedroom at his mum's place and donated when he suddenly "passed on". More cheerily there was a little ride-on train for the kids, which Eleanor went on twice.

Lunch was sushi and another nappy change back in the same park, before an eventful drive to Taupo that Eleanor slept through. At about the half way mark Bevan commented, "We probably should have filled up with petrol before we left." With 36km still to go the low fuel warning light came on, and it was a nervous wait to see whether the rest of the trip would be as hilly - and fuel chewing - as the first part had been.

Our accommodation here is another Quest apartment, again with a washing machine that's running as I type this. For the next two nights we have two bedrooms upstairs (ours with a view of the lake peeping between two other motels), meaning Bevan and I could actually watch some TV tonight; everywhere else Eleanor's bed has been either a sofa bed or wheel-away right in front of the telly.

We had about a 20 minute walk into town for dinner at an Italian restaurant where the chef can't tell the difference between rigatoni and macaroni, which wouldn't matter except that Eleanor would have eaten mac and cheese with a fork or spoon but decided that fingers were better for a larger pasta. Thank goodness for baby wipes!

We finished up the night with a visit to yet another fantastic kids' playground (in the shadow of a big trout to add to our visit to the big salmon) and promises from Daddy to take Eleanor back there while Mummy is off on her guided heli fly fishing expedition tomorrow. I'm really, really excited about it.

New Zealand; Day 6

Today was our biggest single day of driving for the trip, all the way from Wellington to Napier. But, of course, it didn't start until after Night Garden was finished at 9.30am.

We started with a pilgrimage to Weta Cave, which is the museum/gift shop of Peter Jackson's Weta studios. Lots of LOTR memorabilia along with King Kong and other films they have worked on. Bevan bought lots of books, while Eleanor dressed up in the little kids play area. By the time we left she had it pretty much sorted out into Night Garden merchandise in the tub, books in one corner and puzzles in another. Throughout the suburb of Miramar are buildings that are obviously part of the empire, and it's all just starting to ramp back up again for pre-production on The Hobbit.

From there it was a slight downtown detour to see the Beehive and the Houses of Parliament on our way to Upper Hutt and a fantastic kids playground in some gardens that were included in Bevan's LOTR tour yesterday because part of Rivendell was filmed there. As he commented, life has changed when keeping an eye out for good playgrounds is an essential part of the day. Eleanor, as usual, had a great time and especially loved the ride-on bee. It's great watching how much more adventurous she gets every day.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the road, with about a 45 minute stop in Woodville for afternoon tea at Yummy Mummy Cheesecakes and yet another playground. Fortunately Eleanor fell asleep after that for the last two hours up to the beautiful town Napier, which is the Art Deco capital of NZ. It was pretty much flattened by an earthquake in 1931 and completely rebuilt in that style. We're staying at serviced apartments that are very modern inside but behind the original art deco facade.

Tonight's dinner was Turkish: nowhere near as good as Sydney Rd, but very filling. Ordering was a challenge. I wanted a mixed grill, a mixed iskander and a mixed meze platter. You try saying "mixed grill" with an Australian accent and making yourself understood in NZ. I tried saying "muxed grull" and even "mexed grell", before giving up and just pointing to what we wanted on the register.

Finally it was bath night for Eleanor, who only agreed to let Daddy wash her hair if she could then wash his. This set a precedent where Mummy could only brush and dry Eleanor's hair if she could brush and dry Daddy's.

New Zealand; Day 5

Today we followed a much gentler pace, starting with a bit of a sleep in and a leisurely breakfast. Oh, and the first of four loads of washing that I managed to get done in the combined washer/dryer. At least now we have some clean clothes for the next few days.

We wandered through the streets and squares of Wellington down to the waterfront and the incredible Te Papa museum. There were heaps of activities for kids all the way through. The first was an enormous granite orb floating on a layer of running water, which was so perfectly balanced you could spin it any any direction. I'm not sure if Bevan or Eleanor enjoyed that more.

Inside were fantastic displays of New Zealand's birds, animals, marine life (including a giant squid in formaldehyde and video footage of it being caught), rocks and social life. One of the kids' areas had lots of small things in resin for them to touch and play with, such as a drawer containing the life cycle of the Very Hungry Caterpillar from a tiny egg on a leaf right through to cocoon and butterfly. There was even a life size model of a blue whale's heart with a note encouraging kids to climb through the chambers. As you can see, Eleanor was happy to oblige.

There was also a large display on the changes between when the first humans landed about 800 years ago and today, both for those species that the Maori hunted to extinction before white settlement, and the species that have subsequently been endangered by the introduction of flora and fauna to make the place more English and the extensive land clearing for the timber and to create grazing land. There was one entire room showing what it would have been like before humans, with lots of the large flightless birds that were first to be hunted out. Eleanor really doesn't like birds and seems to be especially wary of pigeons and peacocks, and she'd been remarkably brave in front of a cabinet that had stuffed examples of both. However, the "this is how it used to be" room with recreated Moa and other really large flightless birds was just too much for her.

Equally educational, and more to Eleanor's liking, was the menu board in the cafe confirming that there's no such thing as a babycino in NZ, but one can order a "fluffy". That rather explains the funny looks I've been getting all week.

After Te Papa it was back to our hotel for Eleanor and Mummy to have a nap while Daddy went on his half day Lord of the Rings filming locations tour. He hasn't admitted whether or not he chose to wear the elf ears that are apparently available on the minibus for the more hard core fans, and it sounds like he had to bite his tongue during various comments about the books/films that didn't agree with his interpretations. He now has a better appreciation of how much CGI was involved and how much the government indulged every one of Peter Jackson's wishes. Need to dig up a national park? Sure. Just put the native plants in storage and plant them back in when you're finished. You want the army to build a road to give you access for eight days filming? Not a problem, Bro! Do you want a strictly-enforced no-fly zone with that? You're employing 25,000 people; do whatever you want. Apparently for one scene they cut down a pine tree, moved it to a new location, stripped it of its own leaves and then stapled on 250,000 new ones at a cost of $35,000 to help create the right look for just a few moments of film.

Honestly, I did spend less than $35,000 at the yarn shop Eleanor and I hunted out while Bevan was unable to stop me. They had a fantastic range of possum/merino blend yarns, which is a NZ specialty. Australian possums are an introduced species in plague proportions, and for the last ten years they've been part of a combination culling / recycling program. Possum fur is hollow, which makes it incredibly warm and it's very soft. It's also fairly labour-intensive to produce, and therefore not cheap. I'm trying to pretend that buying lots of the yarn is my contribution to the environment, and somehow offsets the carbon emitted flying us over here and back.

We had dinner tonight at a Korean BBQ restaurant. The place had a BBQ set into the middle of each table, and the smell coming from the other diners cooking their own dinner was incredible. Given Eleanor's seemingly unlimited arm length lately we forwent the pleasure and stuck with pre-cooked dishes from the menu. And yes, that is our two year old eating with chopsticks and making less mess of it than we generally do.

New Zealand; Day 4

Up at 5am for the free local 6am shuttle to catch the 7am train. Ugghhh! However, the effort was totally worth it.

The Tranz Coastal train runs from Christchurch to Picton, up the east coast and along the north. Our ticket included the Interisland ferry to Wellington, which made the day incredibly picturesque and relaxing. We saw lots of cows and sheep, areas just north of Christchurch where the ground had cracked open during the earthquake, seals asleep on rocks in the water, vineyards, a salt processing facility, snow-capped mountains and a border collie chasing the train like his life depended on it.

Our seats were in the middle carriage, and we had four seats with a table in the middle all to ourselves. There was also an open-to-the-air viewing carriage near the front, which Eleanor loved. Despite the early start it's a trip well worth taking, and we commented several times how much easier and more relaxing it was than trying to drive.

The ferry was probably just as scenic, but Eleanor found the family area full of toys, TVs and other distractions and couldn't be budged. It was right in the middle of the boat, so while we could sort of see out the windows it wasn't that much of a view. Having got to bed late and up so early she was showing definite signs of a meltdown. A deck of playing cards bought us some peace for a little while.

Fortunately I found the nursery area, which was some of the original cabins converted to include a cot and two tub chairs. We put her in the cot and she cried and cried that she didn't want a nap, but by the end of the story her eyes were closing and she was struggling to remain sitting upright. After toppling over a few times and righting herself again Bevan made her lay down, and it only took 90 seconds of half-hearted sooking before she was out cold. Half her luck; I really wanted a nap, too.

Our car for the North Island is, once again, a Subaru Outback. However the Ferry Terminal car hire where we picked it up from didn't have any GPS units and the car didn't have a street directory, so we were on our own in down-town, peak-hour Wellington with only basic tourist promotional maps and waaaaay too many one way streets. It didn't help that most of them are only one way for part of their length, and that the two maps we had showed the arrows going in different directions on a key thoroughfare.

Fortunately we found our hotel, which is right next to a decent Chinese restaurant so we didn't have to think too hard about what to get for dinner. Frankly we were all just too tired to think too hard. Once Eleanor was in bed I headed out to the airport to pick up the GPS they'd put aside for us at the Europecar desk out there. And on the way back it was a quick stop at a supermarket to pick up some laundry detergent, ready to give our apartment's washing machine a thorough work out tomorrow.

New Zealand; Day 3

Yet another great day in gorgeous, sunny Christchurch, or CH.CH. as the locals refer to it. They have such difficulty with vowels here that I really don't blame them.

Up earlier than expected at 6:50am when the fire alarm went off for a second time (turns out it was another room burning toast, again!) but it gave Eleanor the chance to have a bath and wash two days worth of chuppa chups out of her hair and watch Night Garden before we headed off to the International Antarctic Centre.

We were in time for the penguin feeding before taking a ride on the Ninky Nonk. Well it's really called a Hagglund, and there's warnings everywhere that it's not suitable for people with heart conditions, bad backs, broken bones or pregnancy. Basically it's a cross between a car/caravan, a snow mobile and a tank with windows. They take you for a drive on an obstacle course to show what it's capable of, which is rather a lot of very steep hills at high speed with no suspension. Eleanor was borderline old enough for it, but the driver assured us that if she freaked out he'd stop so we could walk back. No need! We convinced her that it would be just like the Ninky Nonk on Night Garden, and it was and she loved it.

We also did the six minute storm room, where you rug up in coats and experience -18 degrees plus windchill. Eleanor lasted pretty much to the end of that in reasonable humour, before finding a room full of stuffed toy penguins and a babychino in the cafe, both of which were more her thing.

While Eleanor had her afternoon nap, I read our car rental contract from cover to cover and put in a call to a windscreen repair service for an estimate. It paid off, because eventually the hire company just took my word for it on the repair costs and abandoned their original idea of wanting to get a quote and then stuff around with how to settle the bill in the tiny window between right then and their closing time of 5.30 - during which I'd be out of contact anyway - with the added complication of us leaving on the 7am train tomorrow before they reopen.

In the end the bill was only NZ$134 and everyone was happy, except the manager who managed to get a splinter of the broken glass in his finger when he rubbed the damaged spot. During the slight negotiations on how best to resolve the insurance claim situation he commented that the repair cost would depend on how much glass was still there, and he shut up when I pointed at his finger and noted that it's a bit less now...

We spent the last part of the afternoon on various Edwardian forms of transport. There's a city circle tram using antique rolling stock, and our driver looked so much like Eleanor's grandfather that she promptly informed him, "Bo, I've got a poo!" She was right with only one part of that statement.

We also went punting on the Avon river in gorgeous style. Our punter was named Godot and he was great. He stopped so we could watch two little ducklings that were diving under the water and popping back up again right near us, which delighted Eleanor almost as much as trailing her hands in the water over the side and catching floating leaves.

Dinner was some of the best Mexican we've ever had, at The Flying Burrito Brothers. I had a half litre apple and mango margarita, which counts as my two serves of fruit for the day. Eleanor ate her own body weight in corn chips and cheese, plus half my churros for dessert. As tired as she definitely was by the time we put her to bed, Daddy still fell asleep first.