An EXTREME Christmas Day

Kia Ora!

Although I think I know many of you, for those who I haven’t had the pleasure to meet, introductions are in order. I’m Sabrina, Natasha’s friend from Burnaby, fellow Girl Guide leader and UBC student. So much has happened on my three-week trip to New Zealand that I hardly know where to start, but I’m sure that many of Natasha’s dedicated blog followers are curious about how we spent our first Christmas away from home.

Since the first day of our trip, Natasha and I had been planning our Christmas feast. As with everything else on our trip, this meal needed to be EXTREME, especially since neither of us had ever cooked a Christmas dinner. We tested out some ideas in the dinners leading up to the big day and spent hours meditating about food while on the road (there were some long, long days of driving from place to place.)

On Christmas morning, we awoke to the sound of waves crashing on the shore next to our beach hostel in Punakaiki. Since it was Christmas (and we were getting sick of endless breakfasts of banana and peanut butter on toast – the thrifty backpacker’s staple), we splurged on some delicious freshly-baked muffins and bread. In the Christmas spirit, a Dutch girl even offered us some of her precious margarine to spread on our treats.

Because we were on the beach, we just had to open some of our Christmas presents on the sandy beach. I even constructed a driftwood Christmas tree for some extra festive spirit. However, what initially seemed like a brilliant idea turned out to be EXTREMEly poor judgement as we were attacked by New Zealand’s one menace, the dreaded sandfly (which is even worse than a Manitoba mosquito!). [Peanut gallery (and blog owner): I don’t think Sabrina has ever been to Manitoba so this is a unfair comparison, but I do agree the sandflies are beyond awful]

“Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree, How lovely are your branches.”

Christmas morning on the beach

After we gave the sandflies their Christmas feast, we hopped in our beloved (if wimpy) Sheepy [peanut gallery: Sheepy is what we named our white car, in honour of the most common residents of this country.] and started the long drive across the South Island to Picton. As you can see, we just had to stop when we saw a sausage sizzle, another essential New Zealand institution. It’s an EXTREME version of a hot dog stand since the man operating the stand clearly didn’t mind that he was cooking over an open flame at a gas station! [peanut gallery: He also seemed to think raising money for charity by holding a sausage sizzle for all the tourists is a fine way to spend his Christmas day.]

Christmas lunch at the Murchison petrol station. Yum.

Why did the lamb cross the road?

As soon as we were settled into our hostel in Picton, we sat back, played with our stocking stuffers (thanks Don and Linda!), and watched the chaos enfolding in the kitchen as twenty backpackers tried to simultaneously prepare Christmas feasts. One guy, who clearly had never cooked in his life, was attempting to make a meat roast. He began by jabbing at it with a baster, and when his efforts proved unsuccessful, he began to hack at the half-cooked meat with a big knife to determine whether it was cooked. Luckily, Natasha and I weren’t as ambitious. Our dinner, however, was still very EXTREME.

Playing with Christmas presents in a treehouse

Look at our marvellous Christmas feast!

We began our three-course dinner with a lovely spinach, apple and roasted walnut salad, and then moved onto mashed potatoes (they were supposed to be roasted, but we didn’t want to get in Roast Boy’s way) [peanut gallery: I would have braved trying to use the oven, but a lack of oven pans was also a major impediment] , with lovely pan-seared lamb shoulder. And of course accompanied by a bottle of New Zealand wine. We drew quite a few envious (and hungry) stares as we ate at the communal dining room table. For dessert, we indulged in some pavlova, which the hostel workers had baked as a Christmas treat.

Pavlova, the famous Kiwi dessert

After dinner, we ended up playing an EXTREME game of Monopoly with some Swiss backpackers. It didn’t end until after midnight, when I voluntarily went bankrupt so that I could go to bed since we were going scuba diving on Boxing Day in the Marlborough Sounds.

Even though it was a very different sort of Christmas than the kind we’d normally have at home, we (I’m speaking on Natasha’s behalf here) both had an amazing (and I daresay, EXTREME) holiday. [peanut gallery: I’d agree]