Bafflegab – confusing or generally unintelligible jargon; gobbledygook.
If I remember correctly, the kitchen in the house I grew up in had only four three-pin power points.
This had to be done with care because a design fault left cords at risk of connecting with the elements.
My kitchen has at least 10 power points – for the fridge, microwave, two phones, radio, toaster, bread maker, food processor, mixer and dish washer.
Plans for kitchen renovations are still on the drawing board and given the occasional shortage I’m wondering how many power points is enough and where to put them.
I’m also wondering when the people who make power sockets will catch up with the fact that plugs for some appliances are too big to fit side by side in double sockets. They need to come up with a new design with more space between the holes.
North Otago’s Riverstone Kitchen is a finalist in Cuisine’s restaurant of the year again.
It won the supreme award two years ago and was the regional winner last year.
The food and service are equal to any I’ve had anywhere in the world and it’s continuing success in these awards show it’s not justparochial people like me who thinks so.
It specialises in simple, fresh food, much of which is grown on the property or near by.
If you can’t get there in person, you could get a taste of what they serve via chef Bevan Smith’s recipe books.
The 50 finalists are:
Northland
Á Deco
Auckland
Antoine’s RestauranT, Café HanoI, Cibo, Clooney, Cocoro, Coco’s Cantina, Depot! District Dining, Ebisu, Kitchen at Hotel De Brett, Merediths, MooChowChow, O’Connell Street Bistro, Ponsonby Road Bistro, Roxy, Sidart, Soul Bar and Bistro, The Engine Room, The French Café, The Grill, The Grove, TriBeCa, Vinnie
Waikato/BOP
Palate, Chim-Choo-Ree, Victoria Street Bistro
Hawkes Bay
Black Barn Bistro, Elephant Hill Estate & Winery, Terroir at Craggy Range
Wellington
Ambeli, Arbitrageur, Capitol, Hippopotamus, Logan Brown, Martin Bosley’s! Matterhorn, Ortega Fish Shack & Bar, The Larder, The White House
Marlborough/ Nelson
Hopgood
Canterbury/ Christchurch
Edesia, Pegasus Bay Winery Restaurant, Pestacore
South Canterbury/ Oamaru *
Riverstone Kitchen
Central Otago
Amisfield Bistro, Wai, Wakatipu Grill
Dunedin
Pier 24, Two Chefs Bistro
Make love, not war was a catch-cry of the 1960s.
Make trade, not war might not sound as good but trade is a very effective deterrent to hostilities:
If we were living in earlier times, our country would be a prime target for invasion and takeover.
Our combination of natural wealth and small population would put us square in the sights of a bigger, aggressive nation looking to expand. We would be Gaul to Caesar’s Rome, England to Canute’s Denmark.
Our luck in settling a fertile country watered by plentiful rain is envied by many.
As the foodbowl of the South Pacific, we are eyed by countries worried about their ability to feed a population growing in numbers and in quality of life. They show no inclination to invade, thank goodness.
The paranoid among us would point to a takeover by stealth through the purchase of farmland but I don’t see that.
We are beneficiaries of the generations who fought to ensure a country like ours could thrive unmolested. And, befitting such enlightened times, we share our wealth with those who would formerly have enslaved us. It’s called trade.
We don’t have a lot of food to trade but it is of the highest quality. Rightly, we have recognised that we can make the most of our natural resources by feeding the more discerning among the world’s consumers. . .
Trade beats hostility and if we can’t provide quantity we can provide quality.
And for anyone who extols the virtues of fair trade, the only true fair trade is free trade?
Hat Tip: Anti Dismal who added a quote from Otto T. Mallory:
If soldiers are not to cross international boundaries, goods must do so. Unless shackles can be dropped from trade, bombs will be dropped from the sky.
618 Li Yuan became Emperor Gaozu of Tang, initiating three centuries of Tang Dynasty rule over China.
1178 Five Canterbury monks saw what was possibly the Giordano Bruno crater being formed. It is believed that the current oscillations of the moon’s distance from the earth (on the order of metres) are a result of this collision.
1264 The Parliament of Ireland met at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first definitively known meeting of this Irish legislature.
1429 French forces under the leadership of Joan of Arc defeated the main English army under Sir John Fastolf at the Battle of Patay.
1757 Battle of Kolín between Prussian Forces under Frederick the Great of Prussia and an Austrian Army under the command of Field Marshal Count Leopold Joseph von Daun in the Seven Year’s War.
1767 Samuel Wallis, an English sea captain, sighted Tahiti and is considered the first European to reach the island.
1778 American Revolutionary War: British troops abandoned Philadelphia.
1812 War of 1812: The U.S. Congress declared war on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
1815 Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Waterloo leads to Napoleon Bonaparte abdicating the throne of France for the second and last time.
1830 French invasion of Algeria
1858 Charles Darwin received a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace that included nearly identical conclusions about evolution as Darwin’s own. which prompted Darwin to publish his theory.
1859 First ascent of Aletschhorn, second summit of the Bernese Alps.
1873 Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election.
1886 George Mallory, English mountaineer, was born (d. 1924).
1887 The Reinsurance Treaty between Germany and Russia was signed.
1895 Minnie Dean’s trial for murdering a baby placed in her care began at the Invercargill Supreme Court.
1900 Empress Dowager Longyu of China ordered all foreigners killed.
1904 Manuel Rosenthal, French conductor and composer, was born (d. 2003).
1908 Japanese immigration to Brazil began when 781 people arrive in Santos aboard the Kasato-Maru ship
1908 The University of the Philippines was established.
1913 Sylvia Field Porter, American economist and journalist, was born (d. 1991)
1915 Red Adair, American firefighter, was born (d. 2004) .
1920 Ian Carmichael, English actor, was born (d. 2010).
1923 Checker Taxi put its first taxi on the streets.
1927 Paul Eddington, English actor, was born (d. 1995).
1928 Aviator Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly in an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean (she was a passenger,Wilmer Stutz was the pilot and Lou Gordon the mechanic).
1930 Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Franklin Institute were held.
1936 Denny Hulme, New Zealand race car driver, was born (d. 1992).
1936 Ronald Venetiaan, President of Suriname, was born.
1940 Appeal of June 18 by Charles de Gaulle.
1940 “Finest Hour” speech by Winston Churchill.
1942 Paul McCartney, British singer, songwriter and musician (The Beatles, Wings), was born.
1945 William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was charged with treason.
1946 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, a Socialist called for a Direct Action Day against the Portuguese in Goa.
1953 The Republic of Egypt was declared and the monarchy abolished.
1953 A United States Air Force C-124 crashed and burned near Tokyo killing 129.
1954 Pierre Mendès-France became Prime Minister of France.
1959 Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long was committed to a state mental hospital; he responded by having the hospital’s director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeded to proclaim him perfectly sane.
1965 Vietnam War: The United States used B-52 bombers to attack National Liberation Front guerrilla fighters in South Vietnam.
1972 Staines air disaster – 118 were killed when a plane crashes 2 minutes after take off from London Heathrow Airport.
1979 SALT II was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union.
1981 The AIDS epidemic was formally recognised by medical professionals in San Francisco, California.
1983 Space Shuttle program: STS-7, Astronaut Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.
1984 A major clash between about 5,000 police and a similar number of miners at Orgreave, South Yorkshire, during the 1984-1985 UK miners’ strike.
1994 The Troubles: the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) opened fire inside a pub in Loughinisland, Northern Ireland, killing six civilians and wounding five.
1996 Ted Kaczynski, suspected of being the Unabomber, was indicted on ten criminal counts.
2001 Protests in Manipur over the extension of the ceasefire between Naga insurgents and the government of India.
2006 The first Kazakh space satellite, KazSat wa launched.
Sourced from NZ Histroy Online & Wikipedia