To market, to market...

I have taken you to markets once or twice before.  Matakana is a small place, about an hour's drive north of Auckland and it has a fabulous Farmer's Market and is close to some beautiful white beaches. It ticks all the boxes for a day trip. We've been before but without a camera. This time I was armed...

We started with a Kiwi favourite, the whitebait fritter and it is gooood. On a cold crisp winter morning they make the perfect breakfast.

My five year old is fearless about seafood and knocks back oysters without flinching so he wasn't put off by the little whole fish lurking in the omelette, he was delighted!

Whitebait are slimy little critters but delicious when fried. They are the babies of a couple of fish species that live in rivers. The tiny fish hatch in late autumn and are carried along and out to sea where they grow - then in late autumn and spring they migrate back up the rivers to settle and breed.  Whitebaiters use nets to catch them at the river mouth on their way through - and whitebaiting is quite the Kiwi art.

Back to the food... both boys devoured one of these healthy treats - the colours were really that intense... 

 

Raspberries, strawberries, spinach. Forget those awful e-number enhanced fruit drinks, there is nothing like nature to colour your food.

We also sampled some feijoa wine...

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Feijoas are a Kiwi thing too - a small green fruit, they drop off the trees in great abundance in autumn. I think they're rather an acquired taste, best made into chutney. Call me dull but I think I like my wine made from grapes.

We took home a couple of these avocados... who could resist?

After we left them to ripen slowly over a couple of weeks  they were creamy but firm and so very much better than the gas ripened ones in the supermarket.

So very good on toast with a little Maldon sea salt and a squeeze of lemon. 

Quite worth another trip north I think.