This week’s small pleasures #152

I can’t believe it is Monday again…and time to stop and pause and think about the small pleasures of the week. I make no apologies for there being quite a few food related items: Wellington on a Plate is still on and it is something I am interested in too. Anyway, let’s start with the new mini market outside the Pipitea Campus of Victoria University. Selling a good range of fruit and vegetables at good prices, you can also find bread, eggs and honey. It is lovely to see this little enterprise in the city centre during the week.

This year I managed to get a ticket for the ‘world’s most famous’ cheese scone making class at Pravda. It was really interesting to see how a recipe can be adapted so that a single chef can make 200 cheese scones (as is the norm on a Friday). We had a go at making some, ate one warm with butter afterwards, and got one to take away. These scones are really good, and I might try making them this way. I can’t let you into the secret of the recipe as they asked us not to share on social media. You’ll just have to believe these are really good scones.

Still with Wellington on a Plate, Thursday saw us try our first burger, the Coalition Burger at Bellamy’s by Logan Brown, which is situated within the Beehive (ie the New Zealand Parliament building). This was a Prime Angus beef burger with ‘red’ onion, ‘green’ jalapeños, ‘black’ garlic with a cheese sauce and pickles in a potato bun – and very good it was too.

On Sunday, we had our second burger at Kelburn Village Pub. This was a Wagyu beef patty with cheddar cheese, tempura oyster mushrooms, mesclun, tomato and barbeque aioli on a smoked rosemary and charcoal bun. It was really delicious, with a great combination of flavours. In fact the two we have had so far have both been good. We’ll be trying a third one on Thursday.

The small pleasures of the week were not all about food. There was my usual Saturday morning at Squirrel café, reading, drinking tea and eating toast. There was Pilates, there were cuddles from Charlie, there was a good visit to the osteopath, there was some sunny weather.

On Sunday, we drove over to the Wairarapa, stopping in Greytown for lunch, before driving to Masterton to visit the museum there (where there was a tiny exhibition on Scandinavian (well, mostly Danish) immigrants to the region.

Queen Elizabeth Park, Masterton and some ornamental cabbages

Finally, Wellington features twice in Time Magazine‘s World’s Greatest Places 2019: Zealandia, the wildlife reserve, which has featured a few times in this blog and Hiakai where we ate in June. It really is the coolest little capital!

And that’s it for this week. What were your small pleasures?

Thanks to Mani over at A New Life Wandering for the original idea.

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