Easter extravagances

The easter hols are coming to a close, and we're still very much alive after two weeks of guests, girls at home and breast-feeding 7 week old babies......it's a lot to juggle, but we're doing it, and whatsmore, actually enjoying it, in a frazzled sort of a way.

 

Over the Easter weekend we went gourmet  with an excellent passion fruit cheesecake (thanks to the highly unexpected appearance of large quantities of delicious cram cheese at our local store, miracles never cease!)
  Still on a fermented food high, I tried a sourdough fruit brioche (an interesting idea!). Brioche is a traditional French easter thing, so the guests enjoyed it, though my jury's still out, sourdough maybe shouldn't go here!

We did even get some easter chocolates, thanks to some ultra thoughtful guests, the local store had let us down on that one!

 

In anticipation of a chocolate free time I had even gone  the extra mile to do some real painted easter eggs, blowing eggs is too much fun for young and old alike!

Then we had a brief break from guests, enough to have a restorative weekend off, and get gussied up to head off to our first dinner dance en famille (this makes it all sounds rather posh - but it was just poisson cru and chow mein served in mass under a lot of tents with some local dancing and drunkenness)

 Then we've been back into guests, but we all seem to be finding our equilibrium. Amaiterai certainly has figured out where he likes to be best......

 ........and Matotea and Heimana have been enjoying some impromptu horse-riding lessons.

Cheese

Funny as it may seem, dairy products are one of the things I miss the most here in Rurutu. We don't have fresh milk on the island, though there is a dairy in Tahiti. We only have UHT or dried cow milk (of course we have coconuts aplenty) and until recently our choice in cheeses was mostly limited to processed cheddar (a weird plastic-like substance called 'cheesdale' ), laughing cow and smelly french cheeses imported for Christmas. However, since our new 'superstore' opened in 'town', the competition between stores and the market for things exotic has really grown. For the last month or so there has been a reliable source of a mild cheddar from NZ; OK so it's not an aged sharp welsh cheddar, but it makes my heart sing, just to have a little bit of cheddar cheese in the fridge......When I tried to communicate my happiness at having some cheddar cheese to the woman working the till I got some amused and slightly incomprehending grins (crazy gringo), I guess it'd be a bit like finding tinned taro at Tesco's in Ystrad Mynach!