This week’s small pleasures #257

It is November already….time is flying by and before we know it it will be Christmas and then we will be welcoming in 2022, which we hope will be a year when we can travel again to see family on the other side of the world. Anyway, the week saw a few small pleasures, some of which I wrote about in Wednesday’s post.

In Saturday’s post I mentioned the grey weather, but Sunday turned out to be a glorious, warm sunny day, with blue skies and no need for a jacket. Below you can see Saturday at around 8pm and Sunday at around 3:30pm. You can see the contrast!

And to food….from the small pleasure of picking herbs on getting home from work to use in a pasta dish for dinner to enjoying mushrooms on toast with a fried egg topped with some basil leaves for Saturday breakfast to a wonderful dish from Diane Henry’s From the Oven to the Table, a smoked fish (I used hoki), potato and tomato gratin, that has a lovely cheesy topping. In the basket this week there was more seasonal asparagus and fresh peas, a red capsicum, kale, another of those orange coloured grapefruit, lemons and of course potatoes for the gratin. I also picked up some of my favourite strong cheddar and a goat blue cheese.

On Thursday, we had dinner at local restaurant Daisy’s, which we hadn’t been to for months. We started by sharing the wild pork and duck liver terrine served with piccalilli – always a good choice. Karl naturally opted for the ‘steak frites’ which got rave reviews, so much so he was still talking about it the next day. I had the fish which was tarakihi served with gnocchi Parisienne, roasted onion sauce and greens, which was also very good.

The New Zealand International Film Festival has started, and on Sunday afternoon we went to see Miss Marx a drama about Karl Marx’s daughter, Eleanor. It was fine in parts, but not a completely satisfactory film either. I guess I would give it 6.5/10 with a 9/10 for Romolo Garai’s acting as Eleanor. Our next film is coming up on Thursday.

Elsewhere…I’ve been enjoying podcast Something to Eat and Something to Read and catching up on episodes of Out to Lunch with Jay Rayner. We’re enjoying watching thriller Show Trial on BBC and also the latest series of Shetland (we access these with a VPN).

What were your small pleasures this week? Here are some other blog posts from a few fellow bloggers looking at the good things in life. 

• Carol Ann of Fashioned for Joy shares her delights of her week – always a pleasure to see her posts.
• Ju Lyn at Touring my Backyard shares pictures of the most delicious looking cinnamon rolls.
• Natalie the Explorer shares pictures from a long hike as well as the weekend coffee share.
• Anne over at  Something Over Tea spots an acrobatic bug.
• .Jo at And Anyway summarises October – so much lovely food!
• Deb’s World shares what’s on her plate.
• Laurie at Notes from the Hinterland returns to Wolfe’s Neck to celebrate her daughter’s birthday.
• Trent Trent’s World celebrates his birthday and other things.
• Natalie at Little Pieces of Me‘s Grateful Fridays: shares her list things to be grateful for. 
• Scribble and Scran eats cinnamon buns and cooks.
• Sanch Writes shares her weekly gratitude including catching up with friends.

You can find Thistles and Kiwis on Facebook, and also on Instagram @thistlesandkiwis.  As for Twitter….am totally inactive these days.  If you want to get in touch, email me on thistlesandkiwis@gmail.com