New Zealand Native Trees - The Wandering Palate

In preparation for my daughters school United Nations Day food festival and the New Zealand stand, we are putting together a slide show with the theme of New Zealand native trees and supporting Project Crimson a charity organisation dedicated to planting Pohutukawa or Rata trees, which is greatly supported by Ata Rangi vineyard with proprietor and tree lover, Clive Paton, very much involved. Ata Rangi have sent me some pictures including this amazing image of a majestic and dazzlingly coloured Pohutukawa tree; an awe-inspiring illustration of New Zealand’s unique natural beauty. Read More >

Media Gallery | Related to: Ata Rangi, New Zealand Native Trees, Pohutukawa, Project Crimson, Rata |

From a lost play by Eubulos, (c.405 BC - c.335 BC)
‘For sensible men I prepare only three kraters (large vase used to mix wine): one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home.

The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.’

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of the new.”

As uttered by the vitriolic restaurant critic Anton Ego, in the film “Ratatouille”, after his epiphany.