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Maori food
“It must be Maori food?” the stall keeper offered by way of response to our question as to whether he had yams. He hadn’t heard of yams, but after asking what country we were from delivered us an impressive repertoire of facts New Zealand; the North and South Islands, Wellington the capital, and, naturally, Lord of the Rings.
Trawling the local market for Christmas dinner food, we did find yams. Purple-black French yams, one each for the seven or eight of us here for Christmas dinner. That is in addition to new spuds, parsnip, brussel sprouts, broccoli, pumpkin and New Zealand lamb ($NZ50 for 1.5kg) with mint sauce and chicken. This to be followed by fresh fruit salad and pavlova.
We are being joined for Christmas dinner by Josh Cavanagh from Chch, and several friends of Jade and Fleur. Us Kiwis will celebrate Christmas on Christmas day, not like the locals, who close up shop at 2.00pm Christmas Eve and go home to start their festivities. On second thoughts, maybe that is a good idea.