Thursday 30 April 2015

We made it (almost!)

Day 29

A significant day.  Our daughter's 20th birthday celebration.  Also, the second-last day of our Challenge!

Breakfast:
Mike complained that carbs are not his thang for breakfast at the end of yesterday (I know, guys can change their minds...)  so I made a smoothie - guava, apple, and feijoa.  No rice porridge.
Fired up with all this liquid goodness, I plummeted into bottling our own olives that have been soaking in water for the last 30 days, almost as long as this Challenge.  It is a long and arduous activity, not for the faint-hearted, but if you can Eat Local, olive-bottling is a piece of cake!
Talking of which, I also made rice flour cake (a recipe on Archana's Kitchen website).  Yep, it's definitely possible!  Getting adventurous in the twilight of our Eat Local 200km Challenge!

Olives soaked in water and changed 2x daily.  Labour of Love.

Tools and accoutrements of bottling olives.
Lunch:
Actually, I cannot remember, nor can Mike!  Probably, as per usual: an entirely uneventful meal; rice flour cheese fingers, avo and tomatoes.

Dinner: 
We picked up a HelpXchange French girl from the bus just before dinner, so we all sat down to a nourishing bowl of last night's Brown Rice and Celery Soup.  Then we had locally-grown potato wedges, Daikon Radish pickles, tomatoes and olives.  A simple, hearty meal to warm us in the hurricane winds blowing outside!
Brown Rice and Celery soup.
Winter night-time photographic skills on Mike's mobile
not really appealing!
We had rice-flour apple cake and Tip Top Ice-cream for dessert.  It was surprisingly yummy.  I wasn't sure about the rice flour in a cake but I will definitely repeat this one, even when we return to normal _ i.e, eating further afield than the 200km Eat Local Challenge allows!!

Cinnamon-Apple Rice flour cake!!

Day 30
We reminded ourselves that today is the last day of our Eat Local Challenge!  Yay, hooray!

Breakfast: 
A simple variation on the humble smoothie, I added yogurt to the blueberry(frozen), feijoa, apple, guava, mandarin mix.  Nice.

Snacks:  We had carrots, and rice flour cheese fingers with home-made beetroot relish and tomatoes.

Lunch:
I made a stir-fry of capsicum, courgette, carrot, onion and my own stir-fry sauce and rice flour noodles!  Yes, they do exist, after a month of missing out on our wheat semolina pasta, I discover that there is a rice-based noodle option!!!&^%$#@*!!    Anyway, it was rather dishy!!

We polished off the rice flour apple cake for afternoon tea.

Dinner:  
I used the stir-fry mix to blend with rice, parsley and chives, olive oil and lemon juice to stuff some locally-grown capsicum from Auckland.  Baked to perfection, halloumi cheese accompaniment, daikon radish pickles, beetroot salad (both home-grown) and avo on the side.  Quite filling and yummy indeed!

Stuffed capsicum.
For dessert, we had Tip Top ice-cream topped with guava sauce (which turned out to be more of a jelly).

Afterwards, Mike cleared his throat and said he had to "come clean and confess".  Well, I was waiting for an almighty ground-shaking confession when he reported he'd eaten a chocolate biscuit this afternoon!  Wahaha, I laughed.  He looked crest-fallen and said he felt he'd let Team Green down.  Nah, it's not that serious Matey!  You've done us proud!  We have survived a month of Eating (mostly) local, within a 200km radius, even on holiday in Fiji, with so much holiday joie d' vivre tempting opportunities, and we have learned so much about a mono-grain diet!  Some of which we will take beyond The Challenge.  Onwards and Upwards, but I think tomorrow calls for Celebratory Pizza from our local farmer's market!!

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