THE ROAD TAKEN : Food On The Road

Some of you asked for more food pictures and we're here to please. Every day we're shooting for nine cups of vegetables with a lot of good fats and some protein. We don't always make it, but most days we get close. On high-exertion days we eat more carb-heavy vegetables like beets and kumara/sweet potato. Finding organic produce is a major challenge, but we got lucky today.

This vegetable melange with leftover chicken ends with tamari, dijon, and cream to make a sauce.

We made hot chocolate in the shared kitchen at Glentanner campground at Aoraki/Mount Cook and sat by the warm wood-buring stove to drink it.

Proving that I will make a picture of just about anything (orange food)...

From our river walk this morning: what are you looking at?

Today in Oamaru we drove to a mostly organic/spray free produce place outside town and got bags and bags of good food.

Often I'll buy something I'm unsure of, like these organic red oca/NZ yam. I sliced and added them to the pan with all the other veggies. Click here for history.

Oca is sometimes referred to as one of the “lost crops of the Incas,” because, despite its potential to become a globally cultivated crop, it’s still mostly enjoyed only in a few limited areas, namely South America and Mexico. Thought to be one of the oldest crops of the Andean region (tubers were even found in early tombs in the area), the oca suffers unfairly from the stigma of a “poverty food,” yet supplies a rich source of carbohydrates, calcium and iron (some high-protein varieties even contain more than 9 percent protein), not to mention great taste and versatility.

There's no way I know of to get nine cups of daily vegetables by eating out, and the food is rarely as good as we make ourselves. So we only occasionally go to restaurants.

I saw these at the produce place today. That ginger man is funny.

Today we finally fried up some cold-smoked bacon we purchased from a nice butcher back in Geraldine and had it with prunes as a starter before a vegetable saute. Sweet and salty.

The friendly butcher in Geraldine

Our food stylist is not traveling with us. With space at a premium in a caravan, there's less room to fidget with presentation. This blue cod sure was tasty though.

Pear and cheese hiking snack

Some food you buy for the wrapper.

There's nothing like roasting a whole chicken in the oven, warming us twice.

NZ lamb is reliably grass-fed and succulent. When the weather keeps Art from grilling, I cook it in a high-heat oven after slathering it with dijon, rosemary, and garlic.