Fog and feta cheese...

What happened to the view?.. Fog over the harbour.

For the second day in a row fog has brought Wellington to a standstill. Our usually glorious view out to the harbour and beyond is a sea of grey mist....not the view our guests are expecting when staying at a B & B called 'Harbourlights'! Yesterday we watched the fog sit like an umbrella over the entrance to the harbour. It was unseasonal (January in New Zealand is the height of summer), and eerie. Last night the airport closed due to the fog,  Tonight the airport is marginal again and flights are delayed, disrupting the travel plans of many and affecting tourists and locals alike. New Zealand is in holiday mode in January. Many businesses are just starting up again after the Christmas break, schools don't reopen until the start of February and universities a month later. But every cloud has a silver lining and the unusual weather is not all bad - farmers have been crying out for some welcome rain, and so has our garden.

Cooking in the rain

 Our strawberries are thriving and the courgettes are growing so fast that if we leave them a day before picking them they are turning into young marrows.

Home made feta, plain (top) and with fresh herbs.

Green salad with feta cheese

Tonight Peter was on dinner duty barbecuing some of those courgettes with carrots, new potatoes and  tasty little lamb chops. Real men don't let a bit of rain stop them cooking on the barbecue and our lamb chops were perfectly cooked and delicious. I made a salad using an assortment of lettuces and herbs from the garden and tossed it with some fresh feta cheese that we made over the weekend. It is the first time we have made feta and it is delicious. It used 4 litres of full cream milk which is not cheap to buy so I doubt we will have saved much money by making it ourselves, but we enjoyed the experience and will certainly be doing it again. We ended up with 800g of cheese, half of which we mixed with fresh herbs from the garden.
The salad is not really a recipe, more a combination of whatever is at hand. If you want to replicate the picture the following is a list of the ingredients I used, but feel free to add anything you like:

GREEN SALAD WITH FETA CHEESE:

2  handfuls of mixed lettuce greens
a selection of herbs, parsley, coriander, mint, oregano
a few fresh peas, removed from the pod
cucumber sliced and quartered
1 courgette stripped into ribbons with a potato peeler
1/2 an avocado diced
1/4 red capsicum, chopped
100g feta cheese (we used the herbed one)
freshly ground black pepper
(no salt is needed as the feta is quite salty)

DRESSING:
3 tbspns extra virgin olive oil
1 tbpn white balsamic vinegar
1/2 tspn dijon mustard
1/2 clove garlic, crushed and chopped
seasoning to taste

Blend dressing ingredients together and toss over the mixed salad.