Random Kitchen Stuff

Oh My Goodness. Now that I am out of FB, I have time for other mischief. This might have been my next random fb photo album..... "random kitchen pics"..... But is it art?
First two pics are from my sister M's kitchen. Hubby is a great cook, who likes to cook for others, so all kinds of unexpected bits and pieces can be found there, and work is often 'in progress' when I visit.
Next two photos are from Christmas lunch and Boxing Day breakfast in Havelock North. My b-i-l 'inherited' his love for cooking from his mother.
My friend M in Chch has all sorts of interesting wee treasures in her house.
I was 'helping' get ready for a party, but got distracted by these glasses...
And just to finish..... my other friend T in Chch had brunch for her 50th last week... and here were some of the 'doings' ready and waiting for guests to arrive...
My resolution.... 'next time' I walk a Chemin/Camino..... I am going to take more food pics!!!

And beware... coming soon to you another day...more random kitchen pics.... You'll all be wishing I would rejoin facebook sometime soon....

River walk-autumn afternoon

My reward to myself today once I had finished my Massey assignment, was a walk beside the Manawatu River. The forecast was for rain.... but it seems that once again the rain mostly visited the eastern side of the ranges.

It was mid-afternoon when I walked, with the sun pushing its way through some sombre clouds.
Here are some of the groynes in the river that are designed to help push flood flows more towards the other bank. We humans have tried to 'cheat' nature here by moving the whole course of the river over away from the town. But when the water is in full flood, it all wants to find its way back to its previous course.

The water is so very low at present, it makes it hard to believe that this river can ever be badly behaved...
Today it was just a gentle river under a steely sky
Autumn giving the promise of winter.
A glorious place to stand and gently be.

From the Camino

When walking the Camino I met a French couple who had walked from their home on the Swiss side of Le-Puy-en-Velay, and who walked all the way to Santiago then home again. (And I thought I was a heroine!) They have just put some photos up on Picasa and I have pinched this one of me, taken on a very wet day at the end of the May, just days away from the Pyrenees.....

Someone has already told me how happy I look in this photo, and that's the way it was.

Just under two years before I walked the Camino, I was in the youth hostel in Cahors doing the tourist thing exploring the area for a few days. In my room one evening I met a French woman who had been walking for three weeks from Le Puy. She just looked radiantly happy and she said she was- she was loving her walk. I guess that was when I first wondered if I might ever do such a thing myself....

Well, in April 2008, it was my turn. As I emerged into the countryside after the steepish climb out of the basin where Le-Puy-en-Velay was nestled, I knew a deep, peaceful happiness that I was walking and, all going well, I would be walking for weeks. These feet were made for walking.....

A Storm Threatens

Around lunchtime when I went out walking, it was sunny with light cloud. There were weather warnings last night for the Tararua Ranges, and trampers were warned about the conditions and rising rivers etc. Certainly there was cloud over the ranges that I could see as I walked in town, but any rain had to be falling on the eastern side.
By 3pm though, conditions had changed. Though it was still sunny, calm and pleasant in Palmerston North, a storm could be seen threatening over the Tararuas. This first photo shows the front spilling over the ranges near the river.
And this second photo, looking towards the ranges, shows how dark the clouds had become. Soon I spied some lightning in the dark clouds over the ranges.
But no rain arrived, though a gentle rainbow just gave a hint of its presence. There was that slightly weird before-the-storm feeling, but it seems that any storm has remained mainly in the east.
As I write this in the evening, some rain has begun gently falling..... but this storm was just pretending to come here.....