Pain, pleasure

Sunday got off to an unpromising start when I grumpily dragged myself out into foggy, soggy, barely breaking morning for a training ride.

As much as I enjoy cycling, I’ve started to resent spending hours every Sunday morning sweating my way up as many big hills as I can find. My neglected husband and kids agree. But my second and final event looms large so I needed to get in one last ride.

Action Woman in the

72 km class at the
Kona Colville Connection.
12 March 2011.

Despite suffering little physical pain, I struggled mentally the whole way and it took all of my willpower to resist the urge to turn around, head home and curl up with a coffee and the crossword.

Sadly, my heroic efforts featured little in the form of culinary excitement: just a carbo-shot and a sand fly. For the record, I spat, rather than swallowed.

My ride took me out past the Kumeu Showgrounds, the venue for a return on four wheels to the pleasure part of the equation – The Kumeu Country Market.

What a great market it turned out to be. There was a good range of artisan food producers, cooked food vendors and some – but not too many – non food stalls.

Having just biked 62 km gave me license to scoff anything and everything - which of course I would have anyway – starting with Hungarian fried bread, rubbed with garlic and served piping hot with a sprinkling of sea salt. Mmmmmmm.

It was on to Mr and Mrs Serbian Salamis to hoover up free samples and buy some five-star delicious air-dried beef and two spicy pork salamis (a true compliment given that I don’t like pork).

The kids were having their own foodie fun with their $10 allowances, predictably heading straight to the sweet and gut-rot vendors for as many multi-coloured, sugar coated, artificially sweetened horrors as they could guzzle before I noticed.

Meanwhile I continued on my epicurean quest, hovering up an Argentinian beef empanada (okay, meaty but a bit bland) and an Alfajor, which is made of two layers of corn flour cookies stuck together with dulce de leche and sprinkled with grated coconut (a bit dry and crumbly for my taste).

The handmade ricotta.  I took the
vendor's advice and have
been eating it for brekky atop
honey on toast.  Delish!

Full to bursting, I gallantly staggered on to buy some handmade ricotta, cinnamon and sugar coated almonds, cheese (Clevedon buffalo mozzarella and a Nelson grown sheep milk pecorino), some smoked eel, a loaf of ciabatta bread, then a glass of carrot juice to sustain me for the trip home. Burp.

By some miracle we all managed to develop an appetite by dinner time and a pot of home grown, homemade pumpkin soup was complemented by the market's smoked eel smeared on ciabatta, with a squeeze of lime juice.

The evening’s highlight was the Italian buffalo mozzarella classic, Insalata Caprese. Don’t tell anyone, but I like to enhance mine with...I can hear the purists gasping...a wee drizzle of high quality balsamic vinegar. Naughty!  But so, so very nice.

Here's a bit of gratuitous food porn to show what you missed.

As an aside, when you watch a movie or flick through the food or fashion pages in a magazine, have you ever wondered what's lurking off camera? And now for an appetite killer if ever there was one: