Meet the People - 45 [Showtime -23]

Another in the Series Meet the People – Ordinary and Extraordinary New Zealanders Doing Interesting Things – Christchurch author and gourmet cook, Shirley Bradstock has been passionate about food all her life. She’s run a small catering business; she’s made cakes for Auckland delis, she’s run her own family kitchen; and in between baking and parenting she produced the first of her 14 cookbooks. I caught up with Shirley at the Royal New Zealand Show, where she was demonstrating some of the latest gourmet products in her Shirley’s Kitchen range.

Shirley started producing her small batch gourmet products – panforte, marzipan fruits, spiced figs and plums and the like – in 2001 and she’s since worked hard to include other topline delicacies like chocolate and walnut fudge, Kirsch marmalade, fig and walnut log and a new apricot and almond version. I’m a firm believer in making my products in small batches so I can keep the flavours real and the quality high. I’m involved in everything I make, so I can inspect every jar of spiced figs, every fig and walnut log. That’s important to me,” says Shirley. Initially the products were made in a rented commercial kitchen but in 2002, Shirley made the decision to refit her home kitchen to HAACP standards. After many months of construction, paperwork and testing, she was one of the first individuals in New Zealand to have a Food Safety Programme operating from a home kitchen. She is an active member of the Canterbury Branch of the NZ Chefs’ Association and a member of the NZ Food Writer’s Guild – and as if that wasn’t enough, Shirley also works as a culinary consultant in teaching, recipe development and judging. “ I love trying different recipes, creating my own variations and generally experimenting with food and making good things to eat. I get a little twitchy if I am away from the kitchen for more than a few days,” she says. Her products are now available throughout New Zealand in delicatessans and retail outlets and they’re also used by all major airlines flying through New Zealand. www.shirleyskitchen.co.nz www.theshow.co.nz

My Favourite Addington Pix - Showtime 17

The Guy Who Couldn't Have Cared Less

and

Three Race Day Beauties

New Zealand Cup Day

Addington Raceway

November 10, 2009

It's a Sign - Showtime 14

It's just a few days now - Tuesday, November 10th actually - before the New Zealand Trotting Cup Day kicks off at Addington Raceway. As one of the key events of NZ Cup and Show Week, it attracts huge crowds - most of whom will know ten times more than me about racing and what goes on. When I was out at Addington a few weeks back I picked up a small booklet called Racing 101 - I thought it might give me a few tips on form - for both the horses and myself. It tells me how I should pick a winner and how I should place a bet (should I succumb to a wild and impulsive gamble). Thankfully, it also provides a list of 'important tips for new punters' and 'a guide to racing terms.' I feel like SUCH a beginner, so knowing that The Jump is where the race starts and that it's NOT an actual jump (as in a fence or a hedge), could save me a few red-faced moments. I suppose if I were cunning I would have arranged to take an expert with me but I don't think my media pass includes 'guests.' So it's going to be trial by fire for me. But I'm up for it. From my experience, all of life is a gamble, so I should be in my element - and who knows, I might even beat the odds and pass myself off as someone who knows what they're even doing there. www.nzcupandshow.co.nz www.addington.co.nz

Showtime 11 - On Show

Need I say More?

Meet the People - 44 [Showtime - 10 ]

Another in the Series Meet the People – Ordinary and Extraordinary New Zealanders Doing Interesting Things – Paul Goodwin is General Manager of Catering and Facilities at Christchurch’s Addington Events Centre and from today on, he’ll be working crazy hours in the lead-up to the New Zealand Trotting Cup on Tuesday, November 10th. NZ Cup Day is the pinnacle of harness racing in New Zealand and it attracts around 25,000 people, all of whom require food and drink. It’s Paul’s job to oversee the large team making that happen. Luckily Paul trained as a chef and he’s spent over thirty years in hotel and hospitality management. Combine that with the fact that this is his 11th Cup event and you get the feeling everything is under control.

The fashion marquee is already erected in the car park for instance and Paul has a firm idea of just what’s required to feed the crowds. “We start preparing for the November event in February,” says Paul. “It’s important to make sure we have the marquees booked, plus all the extra catering equipment that we’ll require. The corporate menus have to be organised and by the time we hit August, everything is ramped up and we’re looking at how many staff we’ll require on the day, the security numbers (140 this year), health and safety issues – all the basic groundwork that needs to be done to meet our obligations…. all this, while we still cater to the many other public events that happen at the Events Centre. From today on it’s total madness.” On top of getting ready for the Cup on the 10th, Paul is also overseeing preparations for two other horse racing meetings, two greyhound race meetings and up to fifteen other functions.”

Paul in front of the two huge containers that will hold extra food outside the kitchens on Cup Day Up to six large marquees are raised for the Cup Day and in addition to that, there are twelve main function rooms, seven corporate suites, 25 bars, 12-14 food outlets within the buildings and another eight outside. The centre’s kitchens will be cooking over 2 tonne of hot chips and over 2,000 pies. Over 80 kilograms of whitebait will be consumed along with 30 large salmon, 40 legs of lamb, 100 kilograms of crayfish and over 5,000 chocolate-dipped strawberries. Corporate menus will include everything from chargrilled king prawns and Moroccan spiced chicken to hot smoked salmon fillets and prime roast sirloin; and the public will be able to enjoy everything from a $2 hotdog to a $50 seafood buffet. Food preparation will start on the Saturday before Cup Day with 25 kitchen staff working 12 hour days. Then on Cup Day, 55 chefs will be on duty to keep the food rolling out. Paul may have been doing this for eleven years but he says it doesn’t get any easier. “You do understand the process better though and I’m not as daunted by the enormity of the task as I used to be. But you’ve always got to be one step ahead and I’m lucky to have a terrific core of staff working with me,” he says. “You do get the odd problem but we aim to cover every contingency. By the time we get to the end of the day – and that’s usually a 17-hour day for the management team – there’s always relief in knowing we have another one under the belt.” “And even though we’re surrounded by all this food, I hardly eat anything on Cup Day. I normally only have a sandwich at around 8pm. We run on adrenalin for much of the day.” And of course it doesn’t end there – just three days later, Paul and his team are doing the same thing all over again for the smaller Show Day race meeting on Friday, November 13th – running on adrenalin and keeping the crowds ‘fed and watered.’ I can’t wait to experience it all for myself. www.addington.co.nz http://www.nzcupandshow.co.nz/

Counting Down - Showtime 9

Arrrhh…sheep shearing, wood chopping, dog trials, horse jumping…..all etched into my brain decades ago when, as a young cadet journalist at the South Waikato News (then [and maybe still] the southern arm of Hamilton’s Waikato Times), I trudged around the Tokoroa A&P Show interviewing sweaty shearers, huge woodchoppers, bull breeders and assorted other brawny agricultural types. Many years later, after a spell in the big smoke (Auckland), I found myself doing the same rounds as an agricultural journalist in the Wairarapa. Nothing much had changed. And now, even more decades on, I’m about to throw myself into the ring again (as it were), when I go along to the 2009 Royal New Zealand Show, which runs from November 11 to November 13 here in Christchurch.

The Royal New Zealand Show of course, completely eclipses any of the other provincial A&P Shows I’ve visited during my lifetime. For a start, they’re expecting over 120,000 people to visit Canterbury Agricultural Park this year – for a show that has been showcasing the best of the agricultural world for 147 years. In addition, over 6,500 animals – horses, beef & dairy cattle, sheep, alpaca, llama, poultry, pigs, goats, dogs and more – have been brushed, fluffed and groomed for their big day out in the show ring. Over 600 trade exhibitors are also taking the opportunity to present new ideas, products and services; and live music, the NZ Army Band, the eternally popular and much-loved Topp Twins will all be adding to the noise and fun. Me? I’ll be heading straight for the wood-choppers….a little trip down memory lane as it were. And I probably won’t get past the International Aromatic Wine Competition or the New Zealand Gourmet Oil Competition. There’s just something eternally chummy about everyone standing around sampling good stuff! www.theshow.co.nz Both photographs courtesy of NZ Cup and Show Week/Christchurch City Council

Showtime 8 - All the Fun of the Fair

Image Courtesy CCC&NZCup&Show Week

Love the swirls of colour and movement in this image from last year's Royal New Zealand Show. It says so much about the pace, the colour, the extravagance, the fun of New Zealand Cup and Show Week, which is now New Zealand's largest festival of racing, fashion, agriculture and entertainment, all crammed into one hectic week from November 7 -14. It's a week that's filled with parties and socialising and a city filled with hats and high heels. I loved watching all that last year when I was in Melbourne in time for the Melbourne Cup. As trams, cabs and trains pulled to a halt all over the city, passengers spilled out in their finery - giggling groups of young women excited yet still a little self-conscious about wearing hats; men in pinstriped suits; the fashionistas strutting their stuff. It's the same in Christchurch - although forget trams and trains spilling out hat-wearing race-goers. That ain't a happening thing here; but packed bars and restaurants are. And for the kids the Royal New Zealand Show turns on another whole world of entertainment - the animals, the rides, the fairground atmosphere. It's all happening - soon! www.nzcupandshow.co.nz www.theshow.co.nz

On the Rails - Showtime 7

I like this image - courtesy Christchurch City Council/NZ Cup&Show Week - taken at one of last year's Riccarton Racecourse race meetings. It's all in the people for me and in this case, the hats. I love the fashionable pink against the scruffier, utilitarian straw hat. It makes my own camera finger itch in anticipation of this year's New Zealand Cup and Show Week, which is due to kick off on November 7-14. I visited a hat shop in town a week or so ago and they were already busy in the lead-up to November's festivities. I can't wait to get amongst it. www.nzcupandshow.co.nz

Showtime 6 - Hats!

I went through a stage of wearing hats back in the eighties – not for any particular reason…just because I liked them. I wouldn’t dream of donning a hat now – not for anything! (Except maybe a sun hat). Can’t explain that; just gone right off them. So, I think you can safely assume that I will be the only woman at NZ Cup and Show Week without a hat! And all the happier for it – especially when I look at some of the ridiculous get-ups that pop up around the race course. Those hideous things called ‘fascinators’ for instance! Whoever invented those – along with the person who called them fascinators – should be taken out into the centre of the race track and shot.

Fashion on the Field. Addington Raceway 2008 I often wonder where this tradition of wearing hats to horse race meetings originated. Suffice to say it goes way back. Maybe the British royal family are to blame? It’s interesting that, wherever there are horse meetings, there are hats, in any part of the world. I was intrigued to find last year that the tradition is even alive and well in the middle of the dusty Australian Outback. Who would have thought? All that said, I am looking forward to studying the hats at this year’s race meetings. A GOOD hat can be a ‘many-splendoured-thing’ (on the right person) (see above for instance) and I sense of world of excellent photographs opening up before me come race day. I am sincerely hoping though, that hat fashions have moved on from the silly fascinator phase. www.nzcupandshow.co.nz

Meet the People - 42 [Showtime - 5]

Another in the Series Meet the People – Ordinary and Extraordinary New Zealanders Doing Interesting Things – Craig Douglas freely admits that he “didn’t know one end of a bull or a horse from the other” before he started Christchurch’s International Rodeo. But he does know excitement and drama. He does know how to put on a show. He does know how to think big and make dreams realities. Craig, 38, is the man behind Douglas Webber Group, the event management team who created what is now New Zealand’s biggest indoor rodeo, which will run for its third year in November, in conjunction with New Zealand Cup and Show Week. Craig came to rodeo after a spontaneous visit to the Waimate Rodeo. Until then he had been staging major motocross events. He had been racing in motocross events himself from the age of 12 and when he saw freestyle motocross on television in USA, he decided he had to bring it to New Zealand. The rest, as they say, is history. The Crusty Demons of Dirt arrived in 2003 and since then Craig’s event management career has “taken off in all directions.”

“Anything I’ve ever done has been at the absolute edge of possibility,” he says. “I thrive on a challenge and dumping 45,000 tonnes of dirt inside Christchurch’s $40-million Westpac Stadium was just the sort of challenge I love. I could see instantly that an indoor rodeo would be the perfect finale to the biggest agricultural event in the New Zealand.” And finale it is – with all the elements of an 8-hour outdoor rodeo condensed into two action-packed indoor hours featuring speed, big screen television, LPG-propelled fire jets and flame throwers, 144 head of stock, 32 daredevil cowboys from four countries and a whole ton of pre-show organisation. “We build a satellite city for 144 animals, a whole arena and everything that goes with it between 6am Friday and opening time 6pm Saturday. It’s fast-paced action from start to finish,” says Craig. Photo Courtesy Christchurch City Council, NZ Cup and Show Week The rodeo features four disciplines – saddle bronc riding, bareback bronc, barrel racing (female only) and bullriding. And it’s a terrifying thrill a minute when you pitch a 70kg man against a 1,000kg bucking bull. The crowd loves it and the 8,000 tickets sell fast. For Craig, the whole rodeo business has been a huge learning curve but he’s proud of the fact that his event is endorsed by the RSPCA and that people just keep coming. He also enjoys the people he works with. “The first thing I noticed about the cowboys was how well-presented and how down-to-earth and honest they are. They’re all incredibly professional. They’re people of the land and a great bunch to work with.” www.rodeogp.co.nz www.nzcupandshow.co.nz

Showtime 4 - Putting on a Show

It’s been a long time since I went to an A&P show - Agricultural & Pastoral for those overseas who may not know what an A&P show is. But as a kid growing up in the Waikato, they were part of the annual calendar. I wasn’t a farmer’s daughter but A&P shows have a way of luring in entire communities wherever they are held in New Zealand – and in Australia. My last association with A&P shows was as an agricultural journalist in the Wairarapa about 20 years ago – reporting on show events, interviewing stud farmers, photographing shearers and wood-choppers – all the fun of the fair as they say. And then last year, when I was in Melbourne and its rural environs for three weeks – that’s Australia by the way, not New Zealand – I visited the Kyneton Show. What a treat. Everything much the same as our smaller rural shows – the cows, the poultry, the horses, the dogs, the machinery demonstrations, the side shows and ferris wheels – with the added bonus of something distinctly Australian – red dust and a poisonous snake display.

This year, I’m priming myself for a return to the A&P show scene – yes, already – for the Canterbury A&P Association’s annual show, which has been delighting visitors every year since its inception in 1862. The association was granted the rights to host the Royal New Zealand Show until 2012 inclusive and that has inspired a new level of excellence among livestock competitors and judges alike. It’s the most prestigious agricultural event of the year – over 120,000 people attended in 2008 - and whether you’re a food and wine lover, a daredevil or an animal fan, you’re going to find something to please. There will be over 7,000 livestock and feature competition entries, a grand parade, and around 600 trade exhibits; and during the three days of the show over 3,000 horses, 1,000 sheep, 900 cattle, 300 alpacas and hundreds of other animals from dairy goats to sheep dogs, converge on Canterbury Agricultural Park at Wigram, in Christchurch. It’s all part of New Zealand Cup and Show Week, the 10-day festival that contributes over $27-million to the local economy. If you want to check out this year’s programme and get yourself some of the first tickets, check out http://www.nzcupandshow.co.nz/ and there’s additional info at http://www.theshow.co.nz/ This year’s Royal New Zealand Show will be held on Wednesday, November 11, Thursday 12 and Friday 13th. All images courtesy Christchurch City Council, NZ Cup & Show Week.

Showtime 2 - Behind the Scenes

Noorama, Queensland, Australia. 2008. Ajr

I’ve been digging around in my Australian photo files again to bring you a few more images from the Noorama Picnic Races, a crazy much-anticipated annual event in the Queensland Outback. This by way of introducing the fact that this year, for the first time, I will be bringing news and views from Canterbury’s major racing event, New Zealand Cup and Show Week, here in Christchurch. That’s not until November 7-14 but in the lead-up to the numerous events that take place that week, I’ll be bringing you a whole lot of behind-the-scenes insights into the country’s largest spring festival – and it goes without saying that I’ll be making numerous Twitter comments to add colour to the proceedings. So stay tuned for my new Showtime series – New Zealand Cup and Show Week as you’ve never seen it before! www.nzcupandshow.co.nz

Showtime 1 - The Culture of Racing

I was sorting through my Australian Outback photo files the other day when I came upon these ones from the annual Noorama Picnic Races that I attended in 2008. Noorama is miles from anywhere. You probably won’t even find it on a map – it is after all, little more than the recreational centre that was formed in the mid-1900s as a meeting place for the farming community’s sporting and social activities. Yet in the South West Queensland outback, Noorama is legendary. The district dates back to the 1880s and has a rich pastoral history; and the Noorama Picnic Race Club is the jewel in the region’s social crown. Formed in 1964, it held its first race meeting on May 14th 1966 with 43 horses competing for A$365 worth of trophies. It was a huge hit and today people still travel hundreds of kilometres to attend the three-day event. Forty-two years on, the 2008 five-event programme offered prize money in excess of A$31,000 and the feature race – the Noorama Cup – was worth A$7,900.

Located on Noorama Station, almost one hundred kilometres southeast of the tiny outback town of Cunnamulla, Noorama is isolated. It took me 14 hours to get there from Christchurch and I flew most of the way - via Brisbane followed by a two-hour flight to Charleville, a two-hour drive to Cunnamulla (where I was given a hot pink jackaroo hat for the occasion) and another two-hour drive further south to Noorama. By the time I arrived it was just after 5pm on a Friday night and I felt as though I had been to London and back. My pink jackaroo hat was on a nasty lean, I was dusty, over-heated, tired and wondering what I had let myself in for. The race track was all but deserted, there wasn’t a horse in sight and I was still pondering the mystery of why the plane’s flight attendant had given such detailed lifejacket instructions - given that we were flying over a vast, shrivelled outback landscape and the chances of our crashing into water seemed highly improbable.

My outback hosts were kindly. They propped me up in a chair with a bottle of water, trying for their part to digest the fact that they had landed themselves a non-drinking, non-smoking Kiwi journalist who didn’t eat meat and had never attended a race meeting in her life. Noorama promised to be a learning curve for us all. And so it was. My first lesson the Friday night Calcutta – the pre-race horse auction - kicked off around 6pm just as I began thinking about sleep. Locals arrived in a steady stream of dust and congregated around the bar in the biggest marquee. Everyone was primed for action, the barbecue was fired up and the auctioneer started the bids. And that’s all I remember of my first night at Noorama. I fell asleep to the pleasant drone of outback hilarity and the sizzle of gigantic steaks.

By 11am the next day, it was 28-degrees and the first horse floats were pulling up to the open-air stables. Horses were being hosed down, brushed and fitted with nose-bags; track preparations were underway; the First Aid team had arrived; the bookies were setting up; and the first fancy hats were bobbing among the growing crowd. The energy was infectious. Ladies in their race-day finery banded together, swigging champagne and preparing the members’ pre-race cocktails and treats. Men strutted around the grounds clutching beer cans and brushing flies from their Akubras. Jockeys gave the track a pre-race check; and kids of all ages ran free and wild.

Later, as the horses turned for the straight, locals in fancy race-day outfits leaned over the rails cheering for their favourites. Glasses of champagne spilt over, hearts pounded, fists pumped the air and the loud speaker was drowned out by hooves thundering down the dirt track. It was a dramatic scene set against enormous cloud-filled skies and parched red dirt that hadn’t seen rain for seven years; and as the locals yelled and cheered in 35-degree autumn heat, I thought how similar race meetings were the world over. And now, with spring in the air here in Christchurch, racing fans are already thinking about the annual New Zealand Cup and Show Week in November – a crazy extravaganza of six major horse racing events, fashion awards, international rodeo events, the Royal New Zealand Show and more. This year, New Zealand Cup and Show Week runs from November 7-14 and you can find out more about how we do the whole race-day thing here in Christchurch by checking out www.nzcupandshow.co.nz And this year, my appetite whetted by my Noorama race day experiences, I'll be checking out everything the Christchurch week of racing festivities has to offer!