Coffee

I have never been a coffee drinker but after living in New Zealand I have come to appreciate the culture of drinking coffee. I do really enjoy the smell, but I just do not like the taste. And those who know me well will also know that I can be quite sensitive to caffeine so really you would not want me to be caffeinated every day, as I would eventually drive everyone around me nuts.

Unlike me, however, Kiwis love coffee. There are coffee shops everywhere you go, most of them far superior to Starbucks, although you can find a few of those here as well. I have mentioned before that breaks are an important part of the work day. We start the day with a cup of coffee while we get things organized for the day. Mid-way through the morning we take a break for a cup of tea or coffee, and again mid-way through the afternoon. It is common practice for the employer to provide teabags, coffee grounds, milk, and sugar for these breaks. Outside of work, if you are out about town and need to kill time, you go get a coffee. If you want to catch up with a friend, you schedule a coffee date. If you need to have a meeting with someone but it does not necessarily have to be at an office, you meet for a coffee and talk through your business. If you are tired or stressed or grumpy, you have a coffee.

I never spent a lot of time in coffee shops in the US, but it seems that the coffee shop menu is a bit different here. You have your standard hot chocolate, mocha, cappuccino, and tea. Tea options will be Earl Gray, English Breakfast, and several herbal options, not limited to, but including: peppermint, green tea, and something fruity. If you just want a black coffee, you order an Americano or Long Black (name varies shop to shop). If you want something fancier, you can get a latte or a flat white. The lattes generally have flavor options, such as vanilla, caramel, mint chocolate, double fudge mocha, and I’m sure many others. A flat white is not something I have ever tasted, but from what I can tell it is a combination of a cappuccino and an un-flavored latte. I am probably not entirely right on that, and my flat-mate who manages a restaurant and makes the best hot chocolate in town would probably roll her eyes at me for not figuring it out yet, especially since I used to work at a coffee shop J

There is a bit of a science to ordering your coffee here. Do you want to have it in shop or take away? If you are getting a cappuccino, do you want cinnamon or chocolate sprinkled on top? If you are having a hot chocolate or mocha, do you want marshmallows? Marshmallows in the drink or on the side? If you are ordering a hot chocolate for your children, would you prefer a fluffy? (A fluffy is a warm hot chocolate). You can also specify if you prefer regular milk, skim milk, or soy milk. Also, as a general rule, all coffees are double shots. That means TWO shots of Espresso. Yikes! says those of us who are not tolerant of caffeine! If you do not want so much caffeine, you can request half strength, quarter strength, whatever strength you prefer. You can also get extra shots, but I cannot imagine who would want to haha. The best customers are the one who have an order such as “I would like a soy cappuccino with cinnamon on top to have here.” Easy enough, they know what they want, and you do not have to ask twenty questions when taking their order t to make sure you get it right. The scary ones are those who come up to the counter and say “Can I get….”. If they pause, you know you need a pen and paper because their order will end up being something like a quarter strength, trim, Soy, half vanilla, half caramel, extra-hot latte with cinnamon on top and a marshmallow on the side. 

Some coffee/cafe pictures which have made me smile: 

Hot Water Beach, Coromandel, North Island

Wellington (I think....)

Wellington

Crowded House, New Plymouth

Somewhere on the South Island

Outside Hamilton, North Island

New Plymouth

Wellington

Westport, South ISland

Joe's Garage, New Plymouth

Wellington

What's in a name?

Yikes, I did not realize it has been a month since I posted anything! That is clearly testament to how quickly the time is flying for me. Since then, well I have made a rather impromptu trip home for some time with family (So great, we really need to make family reunions happen a bit more often!), performed in two recitals, added several new gigs to my busy music schedule, and gotten a visa to stay here until September 2015. And yesterday it was a lovely spring day so I cleaned out our garden plot and planted flower seeds around the borders so it looks pretty when it is time to put vegatables in. I will post pictures when there is something other than freshly over-turned dirt to see. So I have had lots on my calendar :)

But anyway, all of that is not actually what I planned to write about today. I thought that I would share an amusing mingling of cultures that I experienced yesterday.

Yesterday I had brunch plans with a fellow pianist who became a good friend during Phantom of the Opera. We had been wanting to have a catch-up for awhile but we both have busy teaching and accompanying schedules so pinning down a date and time can be difficult. However, it is currently school holidays for two weeks in between terms 3 and 4, so it seemed a good time to meet up. We could not settle on a coffee shop that would not be crazy busy on a Saturday mid-day so I offered to play hostess. I decided to put American food on the menu and set about making biscuits and gravy, as I was assuming the chances of her having tasted it before were quite slim.

Biscuits as Americans know them, and gravy as something you'd want to have at breakfast on your biscuits are both food items which Kiwis are likely to have never encountered. They do have gravy here, but not white gravy, and certainly not sausage gravy with lots of cracked pepper. It is easy to find the brown gravy you would expect on your turkey and stuffing at Thanksgiving, but they generally refer to is as just sauce. Gravy is not made with sausage here because they generally only have sausage in the form of links. You can find ground pork but it lacks the flavor of sausage so you have to add your own. Unless you want to finely chop the links and have chunks. I have tried both options in making gravy. Not sure which I prefer yet :)

Biscuits is a whole other topic of discussion, and one which set us on a funny conversation about food and names while we were dining yesterday. In NZ if someone offers you a biscuit, they are offering you something sweet, such as a Tim Tam or a chocolate chip cookie or an Oreo. While we refer to these items as cookies, kiwis generally would not be sure what you mean. What we call biscuits would be called a scone here. Most scones in NZ are a combination of a biscuit and a muffin and are generally savory, meaning they are have ham and cheese in them, or spinach and feta. Date scones are quite popular, and are usually the "sweet" option.

As a general rule, things are not so terribly different between NZ and the US. I did not experience the culture shock of new customs, new food, new language like when I went to Japan, or to a lesser extent, Austria. But even after 15 months, there are still things nearly every day that make me smile, even if it is just a vocabulary thing. There have been many interesting discussions at work that started because of something simple that was said by me and interpreted differently by a kiwi, or that I heard and did not understand, and so on and so forth. These experiences are educational but also fun. I find it terribly amusing to watch the reaction to asking a Kiwi if they have ever tried biscuits and gravy, because you can bet that if they do not know what you are referring to, they are probably picturing a chocolate chip cookie with brown sauce on it :)