FREE Fortnightly Recipes and Tips
Published March 13, 2012 | 
Day 12 and we haven’t had a serious fall out yet. We have threatened to kill each other in a sort of serious joking kind of way. Have any of you watched Jeff Dunham a very popular ventriloquist? One of his characters is Achmed the dead terrorist, hilarious! Achmed is dead but refuses to accept this even though he is a skeleton with bandages wrapped around his head and every time the audience laughs at him he screeches ‘I keel you!!’ We find that if we threaten to ‘keel’ each other, it diffuses the tension. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go 
Geoff bless him, knows I don’t want oily, meaty cooking smells in the campervan – so he sits outside in the cold with the little portable barbecue, smokes and drinks beer while cooking his food out there. Or we use the communal kitchens at the caravan parks. And he puts up with my paranoid South African ways of double-checking that he’s locked ALL the van doors whenever we leave the van (even if it’s just for 10 minutes). 
We had an amazing day in Queenstown. First thing in the morning we took the Gondola cable car up the mountain to ooh and aah at the view. There are heaps of activities for all ages – the luge, mountain biking where you use the cable car to come up and bike all the way down again, bungy jumping, paragliding. Fortunately we both agreed on coffee drinking as our main activity up there.
After lunch we experienced the Onsen hot pools, by appointment only. There are 6 private hot tub rooms on the edge of a mountain, a view over the river. No one can see in and there are dials that open the sliding window all the way leaving us in the hot bubbly water with the real sky above us, leaning on the edge of the tub gazing out at the riverbed. Luxuries like this make up for any bad days at work! From there we headed back into town, parked by the Lake Esplanade and ended up at Bar Zero. They provide you with snuggly snow jackets, hats and gloves to enter into the -8 degree bar totally carved out of ice. The ice stools covered with cloths to sit on, the counter, table and even our drinking glasses made out of solid frozen blocks. 
I bought myself some vegetarian sausages to have with my salads & cooked potato, a 50-50 meal as I call it. 50% raw fresh and 50% cooked. 
Published March 9, 2012 | Holiday time again, feels like just the other day we went but it was more than a year ago to South Africa and Victoria Falls. And the trip I had in between to Queensland was more a business trip with a bit of holiday tagged on the end. This time Geoff has planned a 3-week Campervan holiday for us.
We have our little home on wheels for 23 days to travel around South Island New Zealand with enough little hidey hole cupboards for his ‘n hers things. Mine all packed neatly in little compartments and Geoff’s just thrown in higgledy-piggledy. 
I ordered some food online to try and stay on the straight and narrow as much as possible while travelling. I found a lovely lady in Christchurch www.eternaldelight.co.nz and the goodies bag was delivered to our motel the first day. How exciting unpacking and filling our little van fridge with raw treats; quiche made with a curried nut cream, ‘cheesecake’, burgers, nut spreads, heart shaped cookies, fermented kombucha and sauerkraut, oh and muesli & crackers.
Beer? You want to put your beer in my fridge? Our fridge darling he replied. Well I reasoned, you can buy beer and ‘bloody’ meat everywhere on a daily basis but you can’t exactly buy raw food goodies every day. Luckily we did hire an esky (ice box) to put extra stuff in. And a portable barbecue so cooking can be done outside. And so far there is enough space in the fridge….
Our part of Australia is flooding with excess water from the skies. When we left for the airport a few days ago it was pouring down so we put on those cheap plastic macs and dragged our cases up the road to the nearest bus stop. Got to the airport and by 1am had arrived in Christchurch. A restless night waiting to hear from Nicole if baby had been born.
I have played house storing everything away. Geoff is a wonderful driver and knows what to do with all the van things like pumps, toilet, power, invertors and boy things. I sit in the passenger seat like Lady Muck enjoying the scenery.
Finally the long awaited birth of my second grandchild Summer Eden born 3rd of the 3rd, long past the due date of 17th Feb and oblivious to everyone in different parts of the globe waiting to hear the news. 8lb 10oz, phew and she looks so soft, rosy and round cheeked. Congratulations to Nicole and Steve!
– fresh living tomato, cukes and orange for me, Dry toast and sticky cheese for Geoff.
Now we can drive on each day and the only stress in life is that I bought a new laptop a month before I left and sadly did not learn how to use it properly. So if anything looks a bit dodgy on the blog, apologies and I look forward to improving with time!
Start your journey here....
E-book with bonus 3 day menu plan, lots of full colour photos!
