Thursday, April 23. The day kicks off – always, always – with coffee. I absolutely can’t get underway without it. I go to any lengths to have morning coffee. Venetia and Barbara, who holidayed with me in Rarotonga a couple of years ago, will attest to this: there was no coffee pot or similar equipment in the house we rented and the nearest café was half-way around the island. Venetia and Barbara were okay to wait until late morning for coffee when we went out. Not me. I rigged up a homemade system using a saucepan and a sieve. Not the best coffee I’ve ever had but it worked. Last year, in a similarly desperate holiday situation I watched in awe as Barbara’s husband Max went one better, steeping coffee grounds in a plastic jug and using the finest etching on a flat cheese grater to strain it into cups.
Anyway, I’m talking coffee because this morning I have a fresh, fragrant bag of my favourite Coffee LaLa from Kuaotunu, on the Coromandel, just landed in the mail. My first LaLa since lockdown. I’ve been ordering LaLa since I interviewed its makers, Mark Tugendhaft and Nedilka Radojkovich, for a Waikato Times story about 15 years ago. Mark and Nedilka were prime movers for many years in the Coromandel Watchdog group opposed to gold mining on the peninsula. Their unique roastery is adjacent to their home, and they send their coffee nationwide from their secluded native bush valley. Mark initially began roasting coffee for personal use in a popcorn machine, next thing there were six popcorn machines on the go as friends placed orders. Then he built his first roaster out of bits from a Hillman Minx car, and Coffee LaLa – “insanely good coffee” – was born in 2002. Winning awards and friends everywhere.
In normal life, I quite often nip out for a coffee in Hamilton East but in lockdown I fire up my little stove-top pot, drink the LaLa thick, strong and black. The first mouthful is the best.
Question time: Sometimes people ask casually, “what have you been up to today?” It’s a standard, everyday question, I ask the same of others. Once I would have instantly reeled off an answer, nowadays it takes me a minute to marshal my thoughts as one day merges into another.
So, today? Write the post for this blog; assemble some funeral readings, following a request for these; re-do my eyebrows with the tint kit (one was darker than the other, now they’re even); clean out the jumbled bookcase in my bedroom and start a book cull. Find two precious “missing” books while I’m on the job. Vacuum upstairs; do washing; short walk; Zoom drinks with friends; listen to the news, read the news.
It’s a day, a pretty satisfying one, really.
Food matters: I finish the last of a big container of freezer soup for lunch. I’ll never make in exactly the same way again because it is of its time, starting with the last shreds from a slow-roasted leg of lamb a few months back. I boiled the bone for stock, briefly fried some finely chopped carrot, onion, broccoli and garlic in oil then cooked them gently in the stock with the shredded meat until it all thickened nicely. The intense roasty flavours indicate I may have added some pan juices or leftover gravy. I’m sad to see it go.
