We had a lunch catch-up with Bertam her mum Val and Jenny at Winner Winner Chicken in Pukekohe. I had such high hopes and probably bit into the piping hot fried chicken way too soon and burned my mouth. But when it cooled down, it wasn’t any better unfortunately. I took some photos but none of them turned out to be worth posting (the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s wide-angle shots are just too distorted) because everything looked BROWN. For sides we ordered Mac and cheese, tater tots, fried mushrooms and the loaded fries which was the best one of the bunch.

They had good gravy which made me think that should we come this way again, the chicken to order would have to be their grilled one which is their signature chicken anyway.

The fried chicken pieces were just too small with a heavy batter and the chances of over-cooking them high which I think happened in our case.

We skipped dessert- they have famously good cabinet pies- because we brought Farro Fresh sticky-date pudding which we ate at Berta’s house, served with vanilla ice-cream and do-it-yourself-instant-coffees as we all talked about the upcoming elections, the public transport system and dealing with burial plots.

Berta gave me some pretty purple broccoli to take home (she said it tastes slightly more bitter than its green counterpart).

Sunday was a trip to Mitre 10 for some pots (we have a calathea plant with new shoots that we wanted to repot) and another opportunity to ooh and aah at all the plants we couldn’t afford. On my Wishlist are:

1. Variagated monstera

2. A 1.5m olive tree

3. Swiss-cheese plant

4. Philodendron Birkin

5. Fiddle leaf fig

We had been mulling to buy a cherry blossom but we couldn’t decide which one. There were a couple on sale, but at over a meter and a half long, how were we going to transport it home in our little, compact cars??

We also looked at some mobile pools. Apparently, El Niño is going to bring in a scorching summer so we need to prepare for it- plus we don’t know what to do with the empty ex veggie patch; a pool might just cover up that bald patch!

We thought of an actual pool (starts at $50k for those trendy, shallow lap ones) but someone told us that should we think of putting our property on the market, a pool doesn’t actually push the price up nor make your listing more attractive. You’re better off using that $50k for interior renovations.