Keep Calm & Op Shop

I can add some new jobs to my résumé, yesterday I was tour driver & parcel loader for Mum & five of her girlfriends (God help me!) Every month a group of ladies go ‘op shopping’, alternating between Napier & Hastings and they make a day of it. Some of the ladies, Mum included, have stalls at Napier’s Marine Parade Market every Sunday morning where they sell their crafts & wares. Op shopping gives them an opportunity of picking up reasonably priced material including beads, wool, old jewellery & clothing that they can then sell or use to make articles for their own stalls.

Some of the group come along just for the outing, picking up the odd bargain for themselves too. One lady has an obsession with jigsaws and yesterday managed to find about five or six brand new 1000 piece jigsaws still wrapped in cellophane. I guess you’d want brand new, imagine getting to the end of the puzzle and finding piece number 999 & 1000 missing!

Most of the op shops we visited yesterday had 1/2 price sales on and were very busy. Half price I ask you? Half price meant a lot of things were $1-$2. Just ridiculous I say, but what a bargain for those that frequent op shops. And I suppose every little bit adds up & helps the causes.

I had a laugh at the mannequin head, it reminds me of a couple Mum had in her craft shop which she used to have at Bay View. Although Mum is a much better artist than the person who drew the face on this one. I called to Mum “Look familiar?”. “Yes, except her shoe for a nose” she said. That had me giggling for awhile.

I was very surprised that the ladies didn’t spend too long in each shop, they were on a mission and the trip was run with military precision, nobody lingered. When the racks and shelves had been perused they were out the door and onto the next shop. It helped that a few of the shops were near each other. We managed to visit nine op shops plus another 3 stops along the way, travelling from Taradale to Havelock North, back to Hastings and home via Waiohiki.

The most important stop (for me) was lunch. Lunch and a cool drink at, wait for it, the Hastings RSA. These ladies know value for money. The meals were large, tasty and very reasonably priced.

Excuse the photo quality- it’s my camera phone and inside- I didn’t think I could haul my Nikon around all the op shops. That’s Mum (Veda) on the left, then Robyn, Yvonne, Jan & Judy. You will notice that being the tour driver I was the only one on the soft stuff.

The second to last stop has us salivating as soon as we stepped through the doors followed by lots of oohhs & aahhs. The Silky Oak Chocolate Company is located out in the countryside near Waiohiki and is a very well known tourist stop, some of the vineyard cycle trails pass by it too. There’s a cafe and chocolate museum along with the chocolate shop on site. 

After spending most of the day visiting op shops it seemed rather obscene to spend $4-5 on a small piece of fudge or a fancy truffle or $2-3 for a piece of chocolate but……just look at that display! How could I not buy a couple of treats to sample later? All in the name of research of course.

I really wanted to scoff the lot or at least sample one of each. There’s no way on earth that I could have a job here, the temptation would just be too much.

Last stop was just around the corner at the Waiohiki Arts & Craft shop located in an old dairy factory. This shop has an amazing array of arts and crafts, many based on Maori culture, both modern and traditional.

Then is was home to unload the passengers & the rear of the van, which was by then filled to the brim. A quick sort & de-brief and then it was inside for a welcome glass of wine and chat (as if they hadn’t already chatted enough) before they all headed off to their respective homes where, if our house was anything to go by, the men had a very light dinner!

Job done. Until next month when Mum will be back in the drivers seat. The plans are already underway with a few new stops on the itinerary.

Lewis Road Creamery

I finally fell for all the marketing hype and purchased a very rare bottle of chocolate flavoured milk today. Although I had no intentions of doing this, I don’t particularly like chocolate milk. It is true, I like milk and I like chocolate but together they have never had much appeal. Now if it was strawberry or lime or even banana or coffee flavoured milk, that would be a different story. I LOVE flavoured milk. Just not chocolate.

But as I was wheeling my trolley around the supermarket religiously ticking off the items on my shopping list- you have to do this when living on the road, otherwise you get back to the van and spend the next half hour trying to find places to store the extra items, then you forget where you've put the extra items and end up buying the same things all over again!

Anyway, I digress, I was walking around the supermarket and there on the shelf beside the regular milk supply was a whole shelf of Lewis Road Creamery Chocolate Flavoured milk! There was a large sign stuck to the front of the shelf- ‘Limit- two per person’. There were only 300ml size bottles left, right next door was a large empty shelf which would have held the 750ml bottles earlier this morning- they were now gone……but wait, I spied one lonely 750ml bottle hiding at the back pretending to be a little brother. I reached in to select it and it was whipped away in front of my eyes. A young ‘lady’ leaned in from the left and grabbed it. It has been known for supermarkets to employ security guards to make sure customers stick to the limits and don’t end up fighting each other, I can see why. Oh well, I didn’t really need the bigger bottle so I settled for the smaller one.

What a dream marketing job Lewis Road Creamery has done, imagine introducing a new product and from the get go not being able to meet demand. Lewis Road Creamery uses only organic Jersey milk and I think this has a lot to do with it’s appeal. Jersey milk is known to be richer & creamier in taste and texture. I know this for a fact, I was brought up on a dairy farm with a Jersey herd, the cream was sold and the skim milk fed to the pigs.

I did nearly forget to take a photo of my purchase today, I had downed half the bottle before I remembered.

And the verdict? Well, it did taste lovely, it was smooth and creamy and I could definitely taste the Whittakers chocolate (a NZ brand). It was very sweet though and when I checked it out I can see why, it has a very high sugar content, one of the highest of the flavoured milks, 29g of sugar or more than seven teaspoons per 250ml!

This could well be my first and last bottle of Lewis Road Creamery Chocolate flavoured milk, it's not available in the South Island.