The 2012 NZ Post finalists have been announced ...

It's the end of February and the judges for the New Zealand Post Children's Books Awards have *finally* let us in on their selection for the award finalists for 2012.

A wide variety of authors & illustrators are listed in the four categories - picture book, junior fiction, young adult fiction and non-fiction.

One of the talking points this year is that a graphic novel, Shaolin Burning by Ant Sang, has made it onto the picture book list.

By the end of May, we'll know who the winners are. In the meantime, kids can vote for the Children's Choice award - there's prizes up for grabs!

I'm not quite brave enough to predict the winners yet, as I haven't read them all, but Rāhui by Chris Szekely and Digging up the Past by David Veart are stand outs of the books I have seen so far.

Full service restored at Central City Library

Everything is back up and running, almost as normal today at Central City Library with Sir George Grey Special Collections, the Newspaper Room and the Family Research Centre all open for business. This was thanks to some extremely quick thinking and hard word from the staff at Auckland Central Library when a pipe burst on Friday.

I have it on good authority that there may be several librarians looking or feeling a little worse for wear as the work yesterday was a touch more physical than they may have been used to - moving things around, lifting and carrying beyond the normal day to day running of a library and mopping up. I think the words used were "discovered muscles I'd forgotton I had". I can sympathise with that sentiment. It happens to me everytime my personal trainer gives me a new programme at the gym.

Big ups to everyone at Central involved in preserving the collection and getting services back to normal.

5 dishes I ate in New Orleans

List by Tosca

I'm back! Some of you may have noticed last Friday that my post went out half-finished because I was 1) having far too much fun while away to stay on top of it and remember to actually complete it and 2) was up in the air somewhere between San Francisco and Auckland by the time I remembered. BAD TOSCA. The good news is that I'm back with more ideas than ever to keep this space as busy as it usually is. Yay you, right? And so now you get the actual post as it should have been *shamefaced look* New Orleans was oh-so-much-awesome-times-thirty. People, places, sights, drinks and, well, food. And I'm almost convinced that I would have tried a good three quarters, if not all of the dishes recommended in New Orleans by Adam Karlin and Lisa Dunford. So, yes, I ate (and drank) my way around the city and, if push came to shove, I'd happily do it all over again. This post is little more than the 5 dishes I've picked out as the best of everything I tried while on holiday, with a quick mention of where I ate it, and how deeply out of pocket I was at the end. Kidding! We ate very well for people who spent very little, and that was only accidental. Tip: If you only ever eat at one place while visiting New Orleans, make sure it's the Golden Feather Mardi Gras Indian Restaurant Gallery on North Rampart Street. If I'd been able to find recipes that even closely approximate what we were served there I'd have bumped those dishes onto the list. True story. I was going to attach a slideshow of pics with this post but Picasa doesn't want to play nice with me today. BOO! So instead you get this crummy link which will have to do *sad face* But you'll get pics of, well, pretty much everything foodie we came across. And boy was there heaps :)

MOAR MOAR MOAR! or, as I usually call it, Honourable Mentions:

Crab cakes

Red beans and rice

Alligator sauce piquant

Mockshoe (chicken and sweetcorn)

Chilli dog

Nachos

Fried chicken

Fried catfish

Shrimp po'boy

Fried rice

Waffles

"Wildman" crawfish pasta

Corn fritters

"Tu way pocky way" New Orleans style bbq shrimp

Cooking up a fragrant feast

I read Janet de Neefe's first book, Fragrant Rice, a few years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed her story about falling in love, moving to Bali and setting up a restaurant in Ubud (this is *way* before Eat, Pray, Love!).

So I was excited to learn that she's finally written a cookbook, Bali : the food of my island home. It's filled with recipes for dishes that she serves in her restaurant as well as shares with her family, including several key spice mixes (e.g. base genep) and sambals. Interspersed with photos of Bali, the recipes are (mostly) straightforward and I'd say that this is definitely one cookbook to be inspired by.

Although some of the ingredients may not always be available here, such as candlenuts, de Neefe gives substitutes that should be easily sourced locally.

So if you've been to Bali and would like to recreate some of the fabulous food you tasted there, then I highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of this cookbook.

We're all going to the Zoo tomorrow...

... Zoo tomorrow, Zoo tomorrow.....

Well some of us are anyway. Auckland Libraries and Sport Auckland are taking our award winning Wriggle and Rhyme Library programme to the Auckland Zoo tomorrow as part of their Jungle Gym kids fitness week which runs from today 27th February through to Sunday 4th March.

Wriggle and Rhyme will be happening at the Band Rotunda on Tuesday morning at 10.30am, led by the fantastic Joanie Bartel and assisted by some of the local librarians who run the sessions in the libraries.

For more information, check out the Auckland Zoo website