Monday, January 31, 2011

Plan for next year: to try the whelks.

It was Auckland Anniversary (of the establishment of the Colony in 1842) weekend, which means one thing:  Seafood Festival!  We brought our appetite and had big fun. 

I started out with a paua fritter on sweet rawera bread.  The black paua meat is chopped up fine, mixed with onions and other spices, and fried on a grill into a crispy gorgeous little mess.  I know it looks a little like a cow patty.  You get over that quick once you taste it.

 It was so good, in fact, that I had to keep it going with some paua fritters.

The gentlemen shared a spicy salmon quesadilla.

We stood gaping for a while at the gruesome display at one of the stalls.  Notice the shark's blood running down the cooler.  Eeesh.
My favorite part is the impaled lemons on the sword-tips.  Safety first!

We enjoyed some calamari rings and shrimp kebabs (not pictured).  Then we moved on to a booth that had grilled shrimp in a sweet chili chocolate sauce.  That, my friends, is an unexpectedly GOOD idea.

With a little help from Daddy, Amiri even got to do some fishing in a kiddie pool.  He hooked a big one in no time at all and won some great prizes!

The grownups finished out the day with a little tiramisu and the boys got to have TWO different kinds of ice cream! 

Side note:  we were doing that thing where the adults spell the word so that the kids won't know what they're talking about: 'Hey, do you think we should get them some I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M?'; and then Amiri pipes up, 'Oh, yes, I want some ice cream!'   Busted.

And then we we binned our rubbish like tidy Kiwis and went home to relax.

1 comment:

Mom said...

Sounds WONDERFUL! I truly wish Dad and I could have been there!