The Fish Are Back

Since Kristen is presently mailing a bottle of New Zealand wine to her parents, I'm going to round out my posts from the Antipodes with a summary of food-related learnin' I've gleaned so far.

1. The New Zealanders refer to bell peppers as "capsicum," though KrisDina and I can't help but pronounce it "capiscum." It's a far uglier word either way.
2. From my time in London I learned that the default flavor for purple candy is blackcurrant, not grape. Upon trying a Skittles machine in our hostel lobby, I found that green here is apple, not lime.
3. Coffee is strange here. A generic cup of coffee is a "flat white," and is buried beneath an inch of foam. I, for one, hate foam. I have tried ordering simply black coffee but can only get espresso, or, worse, a double shot of espresso.
4. Tomato sauce, the condiment that best approaches American ketchup, tastes of cloves.
5. "Kiwi" is an odd word when ordering food. I've frequently not known whether a dish bearing that name contains kiwifruit, kiwi bird or is simply something characteristic of the Kiwi people.
6. Two words: hamburger rings.
7. On the subject of burgers, it's not uncommon to get a slice of beet on burgers here.
8. Pavlova is wonderful angel kibble imported from the nicer districts of heaven.
9. A thing exists that is called ginger wine. And it is a good thing.
10. A popular beer here is Monteith's, the brewery for which is in Greymouth, which we actually drove through two days ago. They have more varieties here than most mainstream American beers do. Two of note: Monteith's Radler, which has lemon zest in it, and Monteith's winter brew, which has a cinnamon aftertaste.
11. The Minus 5 bar made several of its drinks with a variety of Absolut vodka that I had never encountered before: Absolut Pepar. And that's in the sense of jalapeno peppers, not peppermint.
12. And, finally, Kristen was very pleased that the McDonald's apple pies here are fried, not baked as they now are in the United States. I, however, find the pies to taste like shit no matter how they're cooked.

I feel really full, to put it bluntly.