Summer continues, with more sunny days, blue skies…and the odd bits of rain, which is of course great for the garden. Today, Monday, is a public holiday, which is, of course, always a small pleasure in itself. The day began with a Zoom call to wish a friend in the UK a 50th happy birthday – from all parts of the globe, the online gathering sang happy birthday to him – one of the joys of modern technologies! Charlie continues to improve, and another (small) corner of the jigsaw has been completed – progress all round.
And so to this week’s food small pleasures from a seafood pizza on Thursday night after Pilates at Santeria on Cuba Street to a lovely Sunday lunch at Hive Cafe in Eastbourne, a dish they called Spanish breakfast, with spinach, potatoes, chorizo, tomato salsa, and a poached egg amongst other things. Very delicious, and I think we will have to return their quite soon.
It is still the season for lots of lovely fruit from strawberries, raspberries and blueberries to greengages and other plums and peaches. This week I picked up some minced port, fresh ginger, green chilli and an aubergine (eggplant) to make a rather tasty dish from Ottolenghi’s Simple. There were also a few baby carrots in this week’s basket, and some lovely rainbow chard and cavolo nero.
As I mentioned above, we drove round to Eastbourne on Sunday (you can see it is 18,871km from its namesake in the UK). It was a gorgeous day, and we stood and looked out at the water from Rona Bay Wharf. The featured image at the top of the post, if you look carefully, you can just about see the South Island.
Today we went to the zoo, which seemed to be full of mainly very sleepy animals. Even the chimpanzees were all dozing or searching for blankets. At least we saw a giraffe eating, the meerkats being fed (that was fun), some very energetic squirrel monkeys and a sleeping kea.
Finally, this week I joined in Natalie the Explorer‘s weekend coffee share. It was lovely to meet a lot of new bloggers and read some interesting posts. Here are some other fun posts from this week.
- Ju Lyn is getting ready to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
- Laurie over at Notes From the Hinterland introduces us to Little Miss in her Friday Favourites.
- Little Pieces of me also has a visit to the zoo in her Grateful Fridays.
- Deb’s World lists some things to bring a smile.
- Trent’s World‘s The Weekly Smile this week works on his websites
- There is a beautiful sunset over at Sagittarius Viking.
- And check out Fashioned For Joy’s delights of the week.
You can find Thistles and Kiwis on Facebook, and also on Instagram@thistleandkiwis. As for Twitter….am totally inactive these days. If you want to get in touch, email me on thistlesandkiwis@gmail.com
Thistles and Kiwis 
Thanks so much for linking to my post!
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Thanks for the mention! In your post, wonderful photos of food, as always. I was really taken with the mosaic of the bird. Lovely!
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Yes I like that mosaic too. There was a lovely one of a ruru, a native owl as well.
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Good to hear that Charlie’s on the mend.
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Glad Charlies mending. so many beautiful places in NZ. Love the zoo, such fun.
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I love that we both had gratitude this week for a trip to the zoo!!!!!!!
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At some point in time it would be great to challenge your gorgeous photos – with love from a dreary wintery England! x
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Dear Friend — I savored your small pleasures this week, with the abundance of beautiful food and luscious photos of NZ summer outings. I’m envious in a joyful way. And many thanks for linking to Fashioned For Joy! I love being kindred spirits across the globe.
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Thank you for your kind comment!
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Laurie said you didn’t starve this week! 🙂
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No we certainly didn’t!
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So glad to hear that Charlie is on the mend – it isn’t easy to have our little critters unwell.
My favourite image is those lovely leafy greens – the variations in colour. What did you end up making with them?
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I seemed them in a frying pan with a little oil and garlic.
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Yum. I love cavolo nero but we can’t get it easily in Singapore. All your other leaves look so exotic as well. We can get plain old kale, which I am already grateful for.
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But I am sure you can get lots of things we think exotic! I hope to get back to Singapore one day. We loved our short holiday there in 2018.
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The grass is always greener … or in our case, the leaves are more colourful!
A great deal has changed on the landscape since 2018 – you definitely must come through for another visit.
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