Author: Bunny Eats Design

Seeing Red

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On our Valentine’s Day, we enjoyed a scarlet feast of both sweet and savoury with friends in our backyard until late. Red is one of my favourite colours and it was fun to eat and dress for the occasion. There are loads of red foods and drinks out there and everyone really got into the spirit. Our read feast included: Red velvet cupcakes, jam tarts, pies, cheerios (cocktail sausages) with tomato sauce, home made salsa with nachos, spaghetti and meatballs, plenty of red wine, virgin and non-bloody mary drinks. Instead of having two or three courses, we  put everything on the table and as we pleased. Much like a children’s birthday party, where you don’t distinguish  the appropriate order of eating chips, lollies, fairy bread, sausage rolls or cake. It was a fun way to eat…even if a little sickening. I’m already thinking of the next excuse to have a themed pot-luck.

Monday Bunday: Choice Cuts Labbit

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Holy crap. A designer that I adore has turned one of his collector items that I also adore into a diagram of another thing I adore. Frank Kozik has just released a new Labbit vinyl toy called Choice Cuts displaying the cuts of pork. I love Frank Kozik. I love Labbits. I love pork. Geek. Out. Overload. The release and signing of this toy was on Friday at a fantastic butcher in LA, California where they gave away a sausage to the first 50 in line. More info over at Kid Robot here.

February Book Review: Don’t Try This At Home

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Don’t Try This At Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the world’s greatest cooks and chefs Edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman, 2007. I wonder about if the editors Spoon and Fried are pseudonyms  or just coincidence? This is collection of personal botch up stories from 23 of the well-known chefs including Heston Blumenthal, Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, Eric Ripert and Jamie Oliver. Each chapter or story is only a few pages long so it’s a good book just to flick through and read a story or two at a time. If you cook like me – someone who has never followed a recipe to the letter, you will inevitably find yourself with some failures. How you deal with your botch up is up to you. I’ve become quite good at salvaging things either by finding a fix or making something entirely new with what I’ve got. In a creative, stressful arena, in the heat of a commercial kitchen, tight deadlines, egos and people from many different backgrounds are thrown into the mix. It’s a recipe for disaster. …

Celebrating VD

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The freakiest, exotic and un-romantic meal I’ve eaten with The Koala was in Vietnam. At a restaurant where such things happen, The Koala killed a snake and I swallowed it’s raw heart in a shot of vodka. Then we proceeded to eat the rest of the snake over 8 courses cooked by professionals. Supposedly an aphrodisiac, but after we washed down our snake soup shots of Hanoi vodka, we were feeling more sloshed than sexy. Our love is a rom-com. With that in mind, there is world of sexier feasts out there and this coming Tuesday could be a day to eat them. Caviar, oyster and chocolate sellers must look forward to this day. Even if these foods don’t actually get the juices stirring, the purpose is people want to think they’re getting into the mood. The whole aphrodisiac thing is more about rituals than medicine. Since Valentine’s Day falls on a weekday, and because it is red and has a cool name, I leave you with a recipe for Virgin Bloody Mary Shooters. No …

Actual Lanterns

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Just in case you suspect that I  went to Auckland Lantern Festival only to eat, here is  evidence that I also enjoyed the lanterns at Albert Park. Of course, the steamed bun lanterns was a favourite. There were a few food shaped lanterns…asians sure do love their food.

Takoyaki and other street food delights

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Like many others I went to the Lantern Festival at Albert Park over the weekend and gorged myself on an array of street food, witnessed the horrid karaoke and adored the display of lanterns. Armed with my camera and a 50mm prime lens, it was a learning experience for me and the first time I’ve ever taken my manual focus only lens out. Having to manually focus every shot gets tiring, but thankfully, my friend Miss C was very patient with me. I make no secret that I love street food. It’s one of the highlights of my travels. Even if my body doesn’t always agree. I’ve had meat on sticks in many countries and I love when stalls specialise in a single or few items rather than try and do many dishes poorly. When presented with so many potential delights to choose from, my criteria was simple: pick a dish you don’t make at home. Takoyaki Japan These takoyaki hit the spot. For those that are unfamiliar with these piping hot Japanese snacks, a …

Land of Milk and Hammy

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Milk Last night I saw that local food store Nosh, was offering 2 litre jugs of milk for $2 to raise awareness of high milk prices in New Zealand. We a lot for milk even though we are one of the world’s biggest dairy exporters. $2 litres of milk usually ranges from $3.50 up to $6. Today, the New Zealand Herald reported that Nosh’s February only offer was being extended until the end of 2012 and other chains are now tipped to follow suit. Milk wars on!!! Good on you Nosh for being a pioneer on the price of milk. Nosh are a very small reseller of milk so good on them for taking on the giants. Full article here. Some comments on this is that Nosh will have to increase the price of other items to pay for the drop in the price of milk. Since I didn’t buy milk at Nosh before, this hike in everything else would affect me. I guess we will have to wait and see. Nosh’s gourmet positioning turns people …

Monday Bunday: Bunny Cologne

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An advertisement by Grey in Indonesia for a pet cologne. I suppose the concept is to show that the house bunny has been everywhere in the room. I dunno about pet cologne, Tofu smells like a soft toy usually, but smells like a woolen jumper when he’s been in the rain. I wonder how many variations pet cologne comes in?

Do something with rhubarb

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“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.” – Brian O’Driscoll I think you can consider a rhubarb as a vegetable in the same way that a tomato is a fruit. Rhubarb is completely alien to me. I recognise the word, but I I can’t say I have eaten rhubarb before. If I have, I mustn’t have been paying attention or maybe it was cooked with fruit and I wasn’t sure where the fruit ended and the rhubarb began. I was determined to do something with rhubarb this summer, and to know for sure what it was (and if I liked it). It’s a bit embarrassing that I wasn’t  sure what rhubarb looked like. I couldn’t identify it in the wild, although I’m generally pretty good at identifying edibles in the ground. I thought maybe it looked like silverbeet or celery only bright red. I was on the right track. I even claimed that I’d never seen rhubarb in any shops. Surely if I …

Letter from the Minister for Food Safety

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The food bill has been something that has been in the news recently both in the US and in NZ. The biggest concern to your average home gardener and foodie was the policing and regulation of growing, sharing and gifting food and seeds. It was one of those things that sounded too ridiculous to be passed. But when you show apathy because something seems too retarded to happen, it could very well happen right under your nose. I recently signed an online petition against the food bill and today I got this letter back this afternoon. Sounds very promising. I’m guessing that those that make a few dollars selling their excess bounty may be concerned, but will anyone bother policing a few bags of tomatoes? What are your concerns on the food bill?

Summer Rolls with Surimi and Nectarine

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When I was a kid, many weekends involved a family visit to at least one fish market. Sometimes, cousins, uncles and aunties and grandparents came along. It was a social occasion. It was sight seeing. A big aquarium alternative where everything can be fashioned into a meal. To quieten us and keep us content until our yum cha lunch or dinner, our parents would buy us crabsticks to snack on. I think they were 50 cents and I’m sure we knew they weren’t real crab, but it didn’t matter. According to Wiki, the word “surimi” literally translates to “fish puree or slurry” and I suppose things like other kiddie favourites like chicken nuggets, hot dogs and cherrios (saveloy) are similar in build. These days I forget often about surimi as an ingredient. At my market, surimi comes in frozen vacuum sealed packs of 500 grams ($4) and 1 kilo ($7). This week the big Australian supermarket chains have frozen 1 kilo packs for just $5. Maybe that’s too cheap. You can often find surimi from …

Tofu Tuesday: Nothing to see here

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A couple of weeks ago, we noticed a white spot over one of Tofu’s eyes. It looked like a cataract and dilated at different times of the day. When we visited the vet, she said the damage could be permanent and supplied some eye drops. Dilating means that he is getting some light in there and the pupil is reacting. That’s promising. Tofu doesn’t seem bothered by the lack of sight in one eye. He’s his usual happy self and if anything, it makes it easier to wrangle him up at night. I don’t think he misses his full sight, he’s just adapted to function without. Being blind in one side is bad for a wild rabbit, but for rabbit that runs the entire backyard as his own domain, it’s not a problem. So no image this week. In honour of Tofu’s blind side. Check out previous Tofu Tuesday posts here.

Auckland Seafood Festival 2012

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Today, armed my sister, Joey, and our cameras, we tackled my first Auckland Seafood Festival. I always suspected that it would be an expensive exercise that wouldn’t be worthwhile. I was wrong. This festival really celebrates New Zealand seafood and the new location of Wynyard Quarter is perfect. Surrounded by water and boats old and new, the festival was beautifully decorated and it was often hard to figure out what props had been brought in to entertain the sea theme and what were already there. We arrived a little after 11am to a queue shortly after the doors opened. Greeted by seafood on ice, this was a nice preview of what was to come. If you don’t like seeing eyes on your food, then keep walking. We made our way around and quickly found something we couldn’t turn down. The Wild Seafood Challenge. There were 6 different items for $2 for each item or $9 for a platter of all 6. This included: kina, prawn killers, turbo shells, sea cucumber, octopus and kina shots. The …

Auckland Seafood Festival – coming up next

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I’ve been gorging myself on seafood lately. Prawns, salmon, white fish, sea cucumber, squid, more salmon, more prawns, more salmon…That’s just the last few days. I do love seafood and it generally seems to be the more politically correct “meat” to eat. It’s a long weekend here in Auckland as we celebrate Auckland Anniversary weekend. The Auckland Seafood Festival is on all weekend so if you are a seafood lover, it’s worth checking out. This will be my first time at the event so stay tuned for my report back this weekend. My sister Joey and I will be going on Saturday armed with appetites, cameras and general silliness. Tickets are $20 each and more more info can be found over at the event website: www.aucklandseafoodfestival.co.nz Things I have my eye on at the Auckland Seafood Festival: Scampi – If you like prawn, you really should try it’s hulking cousin. The meat is sweet and firm. Wild Seafood – If you’re into eating non-farmed food and are feeling a little adventurous, there is a Wildfood Seafood passport …