Weekly Blog #11

Although New Zealand doesn't really have one specific food "type" that is native to their country, the food here is much different than the food back in the United States. The grocery stores are different, the restaurants are different, and the quality of the food is different.

The main difference is that food does not contain a lot, if any preservatives here in New Zealand. There is not preservatives in bread, in cereals, in any fruit or vegetable products. It is important to freeze all bread, as well as consuming fruit and vegetables in the first few days of purchase. Even so, often times products can go bad quicker than normal even if chilled or frozen.

Although this does result in more frequent trips to the grocery store, it is healthier to not fill our food products with preservatives and chemicals. New Zealand takes pride in their locally sourced produce, and I think America can learn an important lesson from them in this aspect.

Another major difference between New Zealand and the area I am from is the pizza. In New York, the pizza is huge. Two slices is more than enough to fill me up, and an entire large pizza can easily feed four people. Here, all of the pizza is wood-fired. There is no "cheese" or "pepperoni" slices available in pizza shop windows, ready to be thrown in the open for a few minutes and then immediately served. The pizza is all relatively small, each only big enough to feed one person. Margherita pizza is the most popular option, which is simply mozzarella, sauce, and basil on a basic dough.

A very popular dish here is lamb chops. Although lamb is sometimes a dish at restaurants in America, it is almost offered at every place here. Lamb is a huge industry here, and many people enjoy it as a popular food. Personally, I do not eat meat and could not imagine eating lamb, but many people talk about it in a positive way.

If I had to choose a few things I missed about food from the United States, they would definitely be bagels, New York pizza, and New York apples. I live right next to an apple tree farm, and I used to love to wander through the different tree types and try and apple from each tree. Each apple was so crispy and fresh, some apples almost the size of my head. They don't really have bagels here, and if they do they are nothing like New York bagels. NY bagels are fresh, warm, big and full of fluffy dough, here the bagels are small and almost flat.

Overall, the food is much healthier here. There is a much bigger movement toward eating locally sourced foods, and snack foods or "junk" foods are not as easily accessible. There are fast food options, but there are also more fast food options that sell healthy foods. There are not as many burger chain fast food restaurants here.

The Asian influenced restaurants here, such as sushi places, Thai places, and Chinese places are much better here than they are in the States. Because there is so much competition between these places, only the best ones survive. The sushi here is amazing and incredibly cheap, but the Thai places are my favorite.

Overall it has been great to get used to a different kind of food, and there are a lot of aspect of New Zealand food that I think are great. However, I do miss a lot of American foods and I am excited to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and get back to my mom's cooking.