Reviewing Glendowie

I am so thrilled, we have another great review, with thanks to lovely Cate Foster. We  have been so lucky with the press,  and this time Cate has written about the wonderful walking around Glendowie. We are so lucky to have a little bit of country in the city, with historic Karaka Bay, said to be a landing spot for one of the great Tainui canoes involved in the great Maori migration, and a site of Treaty of Waitangi signing in 1840.


 Churchill Park is a beautiful Premier Auckland park, and still a casual walking place through cattle and paradise ducks, offering a wonderful place to watch the sun go down over the city, and a lower creek walk with peeks of some well known gardens. 

Tahuna Torea is probably our jewel with the old Maori fish traps now sanctuary for birds and our small native animals, a boardwalk with plant identification tags which are interesting for tourists and locals alike, and the sandspit stretching almost all the way across the Tamaki Estuary to Buckland's Beach at low tide. The godwits use this long beach for feeding and restoring on their holiday from Alaska or Siberia, and there are a few rare locals who have told me of marveling at the parent birds preparing their young for the long, long journey, round and round, landing, taking off, landing, taking off, over and over again. I guess some of them never make it back.'

Thank you Cate,  for sharing your adventure with us. And for the comments about "superb coffee", and "criminally good food". I hope you enjoyed the red rice - I would love to see you again.

I have moved the shop around again, they say a change is as good as a rest! And 
I am asked more and more for semi prepared food, something special for tonight...a good curry, lamb in pomegranate, tasty mince pie. I have always made my own curry pastes, but lately I have been using the instant pastes I sell in the shop, and I think it is no different to buying from the heaps of pastes I remember in the markets of Thailand and India. The taste is very good, and authentic, and it gives the customer an idea for an easy meal. Still fun to put your own together though!

I had agreat girl working with me last night preparing bruschetta and pastries for a 21st party. Her father is Kiwi and mother is of Canadian descent, and she is working for a jeweller in town. She mentioned this great website www.grooveshark.com This is such a winner I  can't believe I hadn't heard of it before, A bit like i tunes but way easier for those with a bit on our minds. So I 
wandered through the pages and fell apon a terrific group Brazillian Girls Try this http://grooveshark.com/#!/brazilian_girls

None of the members of Brazilian Girls are Brazilian, and only the lead singer is a girl: still, it's a name that invites investigation, and New York-based Brazilian Girls achieved some popularity through their self-titled debut album in 2005. Their style is electronic-based but they also fuse salsa, samba, reggae and jazz into the mix, and singer Sabina Sciubba sings in five different languages. Second album Talk To La Bomb(2006) brought more warm reviews.