A test of our culinary skills

Today was our last day in Christchurch at Emily and Paul‘s, and we had offered to cook a final meal for everyone as a way of saying thank you for letting us stay. We had begun to think about what we may cook a number of days before as we felt we had a lot to live up to after some delicious meals over the last two weeks. Prior to coming to New Zealand, our standard diet over the duration of the trip has consisted of something like pasta with something like sausages and a token vegetable but we felt that we needed to raise our game for this meal.

After finally deciding on a menu, doing a training session and a seemingly endless list of jobs including packing, we headed down to the supermarket for ingredients which consisted of….yes you got it…pasta and sausages!

But wait, this was pasta and sausages with a difference - we included a few vegetables, splashed out on chorizo sausages and also did a pesto sauce which we tried for the first time in Mildura. Unfortunately we did not know how to make the sauce from scratch but perhaps this is something we can try when we get home. We also got the ingredients of a desert which we copied directly from Fran’s dinner party over the summer (thanks Fran!) and we made sure we had plenty of crisps and wine.

As expected I took charge of the cooking with Chris ensuring everyone had drinks and that the crisps were being eaten. Everything seemed to go to plan and despite my stressing that there wasn’t enough, it all came ok in the end. It didn’t match up to some of the meals Emily had cooked but I think it was an ok effort and the desert seemed a particular favourite. It was great to spend time with everyone all together before we go.



Tomorrow we are flying back to Sydney at 6:35am which unfortunately means a 3am start in order to get picked up by the ‘super shuttle’ to the airport. I guess going to bed after 11:30pm might not be best preparation but we have sweets this time anyway :).