Mother's Day in the sun

I, who come from a family in which absolutely everyone has dark hair, have given birth to a red head. It's only obvious in the sun, which was in ample supply on this late autumn Sunday.

Here she has just finished counting out the $8 we needed to get into a cat show. Anna's been wanting to go for years, but it always falls on Mother's day, and usually we go to my mother on that day.

My first priority for the day, however, was one of Hamilton's greatest places of good food: the Sunday morning Farmer's market. I particularly love the huge 'sweet pointer' red capsicums and this week plan to use some of them to make a chutney using a recipe out of last month's NZ House and Garden magazine.

Today for the first time we tried their fresh fish. It was scooped out of the Raglan sea only on Friday,  the sellers told me, and it REALLY tasted like that too. Yahoo... I am so sick of semi-stinky supermarket fish!!! Fish-on-Sunday-night is the new routine at our house.

The market's also the place to spot stylish bikes.

To choose my Mother's day present, yesterday I'd strolled about 250 metres down the road from our house to another home of good food in this city: French shop La Cave. 

Our children are growing, and so are their appetites, so for a while now I've wanted a bigger lasagne dish. I have more than one I can fill, so it was a bit of an indulgence to want a single big one.

But I fell for this Emile Henry ceramic one, generously sized, made in France and very much on sale. 

This week it will be filled with a big beef lasagne made with tomato sauce from roasted Farmer's market tomatoes. And stewed gravy beef. Sounds strange, but it's my new discovery - I put a large amount of stewing steak such as gravy beef in my crock pot, cover it with water and cook it for hours. It makes lots of beef stock for stews and soups, and I use the meat as I once would have minced meat. It is SO much nicer, and leaner. 

But tonight, as I said, we had fresh fish, and the table was graced with flowers my little girl bought me from the Farmer's market for Mother's day, with her own money.