::: To be eaten, playing John Mayer’s live cd nice and loud, preferably Slow Dancing in a Burning Room :::
(I’ve been playing it every morning in the car, too. It’s not really morning music. But it sounds like a performance of a lifetime, and leaves me in awe of the outstanding talent out there).

Okay, so take one sheet of frozen puff pastry. Score the sides, about a centimetre or so in from the edge, then poke the middle part with a fork. Pop it in an oven at 400 degrees (205 deg C ~ ish) and, turning the tray half way through, leave it in there for about fifteen minutes.
Meanwhile, in one saucepan caramelize a thinly sliced onion, with a little salt and pepper, in olive oil (about a tbsp). In the other saucepan, put 400g thinly sliced mushrooms in another tbsp olive oil. Put the lid on, and stirring occasionally, brew for ten to fifteen minutes ~ enough to make them soft but with enough texture to suit your taste.
When the puff pastry is bronze, pull it out of the oven and spread with a sauce of your choice – tomato puree, pesto, pureed roasted eggplant – and top with the mushrooms (use a draining spoon to make sure you leave all their water behind in the pan), then spread the caramelised onion and crumbled goats cheese evenly over the top. Slide it back in the oven for ten minutes (or until the tips of the cheese are charred brown), and then extract, slice and eat!

Notes.
1. Adapted from Great Food Fast
2. If you choose the tomato puree option, you may also want to liven it it up with some fresh thyme.
3. If you live in NZ you may want to leave your oven door open post cooking, to make the most of that heat in there. Heck, you may even want to stand by the open oven whilst you eat to really make the most of it.
4. As with everything I cook when I’m home, tired and it’s awful weather outside, serve with a glass of tasty red wine.
5. If you didn’t juice your greens this morning, serve with a heaping of arugula.
6. A good dessert would be a few squares of Green & Blacks dark chocolate (or, if like me you can’t wait, it’s equally good as a starter).

We have returned from Auckland – and what a difference that short distance made!
We enjoyed how warm it was. That we could walk outside without being blown over. That it wasn’t so damp.
We visited one of my favourite places in New Zealand: The Auckland Domain. The Domain has trails on it’s outskirts, with streams and mini waterfalls alongside. We meandered on through to the inner city suburb of Parnell, coming out at some old, now unused, railway tracks. It was easy, light, and with absolutely no worries.

We ate at Bellota and Dine, and a few other random cafes along the waterfront or on the lanes off of the main shopping street. We took a ferry across the harbour to Devonport, and enjoyed the light breeze and the views. We passed an entire afternoon drinking a beautiful Spanish white wine (me) and Corona (Andy’s staple) along Princes Wharf, with an unobstructed view of the water. We gambled for a couple of hours in the casino (warning: it’s actually quite a seedy place, with class-less touches such as a pie and chips canteen inside, which smells really rather terrible). But we won our money back and more, so it was fun in that sense!

When we returned back to Wellington, it was so damp that within forty minutes of getting back to our apartment, our coats were still on.

We passed the next day clearing out. In Auckland, away from our things, we were able to freely pass time doing what we felt and truly being there. Here, I find myself thinking of the things on my to-do list. I was quite ruthless with what went (the phrase ‘why pay twice?’ running around my head) and now instead of a shopping list, I have piles of things to sort through and get rid of. When considering something, I am asking myself “Of what use is this for me now?” and applying it across the board. Removing the clutter that has existed in piles growing around the perimeter of our office has left it a far more pleasant place to sit. Oh, it’s not perfect (there are two piles here for me to read and sort through) but what we did manage to do, was enough to shift the balance.