New discoveries in my home town

We haven't been on any mini breaks since Auckland last month, primarily because I am flat out at work and we had our massive, awesome office opening party this week which required a great deal of preparation - including painting in the weekends, below are our write-on walls (taken during clean up from the party), the write-on paint hadn't quite cured so we did some other creative stuff.

Staying here in Wellington has given me an opportunity to discover, and rediscover, some great food places. In no particular order we have eaten at:

• Phong Vu on left bank, Vietnamese, cheap and the cuisine for anyone who doesn't eat Gluten - rice / rice noodles in virtually every dish. I love Vietnamese food and we just rediscovered this pace last night - yummy.
• Cafe Breton (on Brandon St) has gluten free crepes, it's like GF heaven, with both sweet and savoury options. Only open for lunch, does a pretty good long black too. I have been there twice this month already - awesome.
• Khandallah Trading Company (formerly MBBK). For the non-Gluten Free among us it was great, with cheap eats and loads of options. For me sadly the staff have no idea what is and isn't GF and the menu is full of bread and sauces. So I stuck with meat and vege - disappointing.
• Fork 'n Brewer. Again great looking menu, we were there for a large party so didn't ask about GF just chose what turned out to be a wonderful Vege stack, honestly for a pub it looked fantastic and tasted great. Steve had Spicy Chicken Wings to go with his various beers and loved them - great.
• Cafe Villa in Ngaio - I have mixed feelings about our lunch there. My GF bread was soggy and eggs under done, while the bacon was almost burnt. My friends had eggs benedict which they loved, so had promise but for me - average.

Back to the office opening, which has been my focus for weeks. We got the food from Smith The Grocer, for the most part if was well received and the staff were lovely, their cocktail menu has loads of GF options. Later in the night as we cleaned up we got Hells - our new office tradition (yep twice makes a tradition) is to get a variety of vegetarian pizzas on gluten free bases - to meet the two variations of dietary requirements in one. They are great, good bases and yummy vege toppings - yum.

Some of my favourite people
I really threw this in to see if anyone reads my blog ;-)

our beautiful flowers for the party

Here they are setting up beforehand.

Final discovery this month was Garage Project. Shane my business partner thought it would be cool to have a local micro-brewery cater the beer, so we got 3 kegs from Garage Project. Everyone gave us awesome feedback and they were great, they stayed for about 3 hours promoting their beer and helping us on the bar (there were about 80 people so that's a few pints to pour). Not a beer drinker but I am told the Trip Hop was the most popular. 

What it looks like from the other side

I recently discovered twitter - I know pretty slow to join the social media world - and am slowly getting the hang of it all. Both my work and personal profiles have been a tad challenging to get off the ground, work wise (@Optimalhq) it's pretty easy to find good technical and news tweeters to follow but hard to find inspirational women and entrepreneurs. Personally (@mactoria) I have found about 20 of my friends to follow and found they didn't do much so almost stopped the interaction - until today. Today I realised I hadn't even explored the world of gluten free living on twitter, now via a couple of wonderful hashtags #gf and #glutenfree twitter has opened up a whole new world! awesome!

Another thing happened today, one of the team came into the office for a coffee and doughnut, the doughnuts have been in the office all week just sitting on the bench beside the apples (I have added a photo of our kitchen above so you can imagine where) tempting people it seems. I suddenly realised I hadn't even given them a 2nd glance, not because they're not yummy looking and smelling doughnuts but because my brain doesn't see them as food I can eat. I started to realise this last week when at a party watching people eating pizza, again I didn't really give it a 2nd glance until the gluten free pizza's were pointed out and wham - I couldn't stop eating it!

So what does this mean? is diet just mind-over-matter? without the physical reaction to eating other things that are "bad" for me can I still teach my brain to ignore them as well? Imagine the possibilities - chocolate? wine? coffee? - Nah it can't be that simple.

Here is a photo of our lovely coffee machine at work - now that's a whole other story - this week we are using Flight (@flightcoffee on twitter) coffee's Bomber beans - they are pretty good and mean it's unlikely I can convince my brain coffee is bad anytime soon. Nope my brain is imaging that lovely freshly ground coffee smell now, yum.

Auckland and losing my rose tinted glasses

Yep mini break again - lovely. This time managed to fit in a little work and relaxation in Auckland, visiting Sam and drinking awesome sangria in a spanish tapas bar.
We stayed at the Stamford Plaza again - we've tried most of the IBM rated hotels now and think the Heritage is our favourite but thought we'd remind ourselves about the Stamford (you can read my review on Tripadvisor.com). This time we spent a little time in the bar drinking Singapore Slings and Mojitos = yum. The irony of the situation is we went for a beer but with $10 bottles vs $15 cocktails the decision was a no-brainer.

After Wanaka and Queenstown my expectations of gluten free goodies were unrealistically high. Cafe's don't label their menus with GF like we are used to seeing here in Wellington (I had lunch at the Thistle today and even their menu notates allergen free dishes) and most didn't know whether a dish contained gluten or not - and honestly there are only so many poached eggs on GF toast a girl can have. Earlier in the year we made the trek out to Nosh in Glen Innes to experience their yummy goodies. The chef there (brilliant btw) told me that breakfast sausages don't usually contain gluten so I added them to the order a couple of times this visit.

The one yummy thing I did manage to eat in Auckland was an orange, almond and date friand from the Auckland art gallery. The gallery was fabulous as always but they have removed that beautiful red flower installation outside so here is a photo I have clipped if you hadn't seen it, and above is their beautiful moving flower installation inside (still there luckily):

I seem to have the coffee situation sussed but the rose tinting on my glasses is definately fading a tad, perhaps it was the cooler climate and the Wellington like winds? or we didn't go down to the wonderful bars in the viaduct or wynard quarter? or the excessive walking round Friday night looking for dinner somewhere that hadn't already turned into a nightclub?
Still - we're looking forward to our next Auckland visit - Radiohead, yay.

Central Otago - relaxing and wonderful gluten free goodies

We have just been to Central Otago for a lovely weekend mini break. Not, as most people would imagine, a skiing break more a get away from work and relaxing one - and man did I get away from work.
Our flights were purchased ages ago and as usual I spent weeks researching accommodation options - crazy when we go to Queenstown every year but there might be something new and exciting to try - right? When out of the blue the Hawea Hotel posted a great deal on Grab-one so we grabbed it & a rental car (thanks AirNZ) and headed off on the windiest day of the year. I won't bore you with the flight but it did involve a 70 knot gust and an hour on the tarmac in Wellington followed by 3 landing attempts in Queenstown - needless to say the whole plane clapped - twice.

Wondering where Hawea is - it's the Lake to your east when driving up to Haast via Wanaka.
https://maps.google.co.nz/maps?q=lake+hawea&hl=en&sll=-44.559653,169.30069&sspn=0.275936,0.727158&t=h&hnear=Lake+Hawea&z=10

Below is a view from our bedroom! magic.

Hawea is simply beautiful. Virtually no Vodafone coverage so I really got away from work. Driving around is fantastic seeing the dramatic landscape, the green green pasture one minute then arid rocky expanses the next. The views are simply splendid both in Queenstown and as we moved north. I spent a great deal of my childhood in Queenstown and it's surrounding lakes and this trip reminded me why I love willow trees and hate ducks (remember duck itch year siblings?). It rained / sleeted much of our stay so we didn't walk as much as planned but did enjoy wonderful walks on the shores of Lake Wanaka and up to Diamond Lake. There are fantastic houses all locked up waiting for their owners to visit and many new subdivisions in random places to accommodate the increasing workforce required in the region.

You can read my review of the Hawea Hotel on Tripadvisor, it really is a surprisingly wonderful place, rustic and relaxing with beaut views.

The Food - WOW! I have never seen so many allergen free foods, both Queenstown and Wanaka cater for food allergies well.
The major food highlight was lunch at Mt Difficulty, we went for a Pinot Noir tasting but after tasting 4 I felt half cut (shocking I know) so just had to eat lunch while we were there. The snow was rolling in so sitting in their restaurant beside the fire is quite magic. The food is too! well worth the drive and the prices. We will go back again. http://www.mtdifficulty.co.nz/cellardoor/restaurant.html

The Queenstown highlight was discovering the Gluten Free, Dairy Free and Egg Free goodies on the counter at Vudu Cafe. OMG too much choice. Many of the cafes and restaurants had signs outside saying Gluten Free options so the demand must be high. Vudu had muffins, brownies, rosti's, fritters - you name it.
Then the Wanaka highlight - the best (no exaggeration here) Brownie in the world, a gluten free raspberry and chocolate brownie, simply divine, at Ritual Espresso Cafe, chosen for it's bean selection - La'Affaire.
I have written reviews on both on Tripadvisor.

Our three day mini break turned into a much longer one when the snow storm shut roads and the airport - a story in itself but worthy a photo. Steve's a legend driving without too much stress to get chains.

Hope you all enjoyed my first chapter.