Friday, March 29, 2024

TOWN TALK: Farmers feed city social life

Avatar photo
Thank you, farmers.At this time of year our fridge overflows with butterfly lamb, sausages and chicken nibbles for back-to-back barbecues.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

We sit on the deck with a cold one while the kids jump on the trampoline and run around under the sprinkler until there’s food on the table.
This weekend we’ll wander three doors along to hang out with neighbours for a barbecue.
Their backyard is a central city wilderness – the rock spilt from Three Kings volcano decades ago joins all our backyards and theirs is a mini cliff where wild blackberries climb and another neighbour tends a beehive.
The rock in our backyard is a mini mountain we planted with natives, where the kids can climb and find good hiding spots. It also creates an outdoor room for the barbecue.
Our first barbecue is the day after New Year’s and we tell our friends to come at 4pm so the kids can play.
They’ve been living in Seattle for two years, he working for a tech giant, and in that time all our kids have shot up a good few inches so there’s lots to catch up on.
They come straight from Long Bay beach on the North Shore. It’s a hot and muggy day and the steady rain from yesterday has hit Auckland’s stormwater system. The kids were swimming when the lifeguards stuck the warning signs in the sand.
We get the sprinkler going on the trampoline and sit down under the umbrella with cold beers and wine.
The conversation soon turns to lamb. At their Seattle butcher shop, New Zealand lamb sells for about US$16 a pound. We’ve got a whole butterfly lamb leg for about that and we balk at the price they’ve got to pay for a slice of home when Stateside.
Talking about meat, they say the US beef tastes amazing but they’re not sure why, exactly. They reckon it’s better than NZ beef. We laugh at the absurd possibility that anything could beat the taste of our free-to-roam grass-fed meat.
But American lamb doesn’t compare so they’ll pay the price now and then.
The butcher was closed the day we bought the meat for today’s barbecue so this lot comes from a nearby specialty grocer. They have good meat specials and I’ve loaded up on gourmet sausages, butterfly lamb and a NZ free-farmed pork shoulder – that one I’ll slow cook another time.
We’ve got Pokeno sausages in the freezer but my husband wants to cook fresh today. We often stop there on the way to the grandparents in Waikato to get a few dozen bangers – Cumberland, bratwurst, pork and bacon.
There’s also a Pokeno butcher shop in Mt Eden, a short drive for us. My husband was there just before Christmas when there was a rush on lengths of eye fillet and lamb cutlets.
It’s time for pudding so we coat a pavlova with cream and fill a bowl with fresh blueberries to make a small dent in the 19 kilograms we picked just after Christmas in Waikato. The pav is from the supermarket and I admit I’ve never made one, mumbling about the curse of Auckland’s humidity.
The clock strikes 8pm and we say our goodbyes – the kids take a while to settle down. It’s an hour past their bedtime but at least it’s the school holidays.
We do it all again the next day with another set of friends who live in Auckland. They moved from our neighbourhood to another out east a few years ago and it’s been a while since we caught up.
They arrive at standard barbecue time and the kids venture outside to the rock and trampoline.
We sit on the deck and talk about the year that’s been and the Auckland housing market. We’re not moving from the city but we know people who are.
We barbecue butterfly lamb and sausages and eat it with slaw, new potatoes and garlic bread. Now there’s room in the fridge for the beer and wine – at least until the next barbecue.
Thank you, farmers.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading