Today me, Leah, Lauren and the other Jen headed out on a Hawke's Bay wine tour. We spent the day checking out some of the local wineries and are going to wrap up the day with a visit to Jen at workat the end of the day.
We ended up tasting at four wineries and buying at those same four wineries. We ate lunch at one winery, and then got a tour at Jen's, which was very cool because it's definitely the best-looking one, both in terms of landscape and architecture, I thought. And of course the best-tasting.
Dinner was an official Kiwi barbecue (NO, not a meal consisting of the flightless national bird, but "kiwi" as a descriptive term for the people and culture of New Zealand. I am told that we should not be disappointed if we leave NZ having not seen a kiwi, since they are nocturnal and are rarely seen outside of captivity.).
Anyway, they do a lot of BBQing here. Pretty much, grilled meat is a major staple of the NZ diet. In preparation for the dinner, where we got to meet two of Jen and Paul's friends, a delightful couple, we went to the supermarket. There we had fun checking out the local culture and spent an inordinate amount of time in the candy aisle.
We were pleased to see -- and buy -- our new favorite vegetable, one that the four of us American visitors are vowing to eat every day that we are in NZ. It's called kumara and they tell us it's basically a sweet potato but it's much better than what we're accustomed to. It's less sweet, with a purple skin and pale flesh. My new plan for when I return home is to go into business as New England's first kumara farmer. And if there already is one, I will be their best customer.
