22June Mount Somers

Sunday 22 June,

Since there are so many options, woke up at about 3 am to finally decide and decided on either Mount Somers or Arthurs Pass for an hour or so of tramping.

The plan is to use the Thermal Pot so that the food remains warm and we will travel 2 hours, do about 2 hours of tramping and by then the food will be cooked in the thermal pot. For those of you unfamiliar, the Thermal Pot is a pot that allows the food to cook slowly in the pot, using the heat that was in the pot after about 15 to 20 minutes of cooking. Here was my recipe for my lamb curry in thermal pot.

Ingredients

2 sticks of cinnamon
3 anistar
3 cloves
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic crushed
3 table spoon of curry powder
1 kg of lamb
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
3 teaspoons of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
4 medium potato

Partially boil the potato to make it easier to peel the skin actually, that is what I do,

Cook the onion and garlic till transparent in 2 tablespoons of oil.
Add the curry powder.
Stir in the cinnamon, anistar and cloves until the fragrance comes out
Add the lamb and add about 2 cups of water and mix in the lamb to ensure it is well coated with spices
Stir in the tomato paste
Add sugar and salt and finally the potato.

Simmer for 20 minutes over low to medium flame.
Transfer the contents all into the thermal pot inner pot and cook over small fire for a bit (I don't use the inner pot to cook because it is too thin and lots of time end up burning the onion.
After 20 minutes, put the inner pot into the thermal pot and it is ready to slowly cook an ready to serve hot in 4 hours.

Packed the rest of the food including the bread to eat with the curry and water and other snacks.

At eleven we were set to go and left Papanui.

En route we checked out Rolleston as a possible place to settle down and then set out to Mt Somers. Of course before Rolleston, we had to stop at Cookie time factory shop.

By 1.30 we have reached Mt Somers after stopping Burnett Lime Quarry and Reserve.

At Burnett Lime quarry we just sat by the stream while the kids play in the water.

Mt Somers offered several tracks and we decided to take the Nature trail, took us about 40 minutes one way and we were supposed to do a slight river crossing to make it one round. Decided not to try and cross the river and walked back. By 4 pm we were sitting at the car parking area cum park and eating hot curry with bread. Amazing to have nice hot food with no flame around. The thermal pot is a wonderful device.

housedadz