If you've got chooks then pasta has to be high on the list of favourite carbs to make at home.    Make a big batch and freeze it.  It's just eggs, water, flour, salt and olive oil.    

You can use fancy Semolina flour but you don't need to.     You can knead the dough together by hand but try bunging it in the bread maker for 10 mins and it comes out great.

Bread is next on the list.   Not many people know that a lot of bread dough is now imported for baking in NZ. Maybe that's why your standard white loaf tastes like paper kitchen towels?

It's much yummier to make your own bread or buy it from one of our lovely local bakers.  L'Artisan Bakery at Founders Park does the best Rye Sour Dough Loaf you'll ever taste ... and yes, they're at the Nelson Sat. market each week.

The cheapest way to get your daily bread is to make it at home.   I use a bread maker but you can make bread without one.

To keep it interesting I have a big jar of seeds and grains next to the bread maker and I chuck a couple of handfuls into each loaf.     I go to the Bin Inn when the jar gets low and get a mix of linseed, buckwheat, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, oatmeal and whatever else takes my fancy.

The basic dough recipe I use only has flour, water, yeast and a little salt in it.   Cost around $1 a loaf.

If you don't like wholemeal flour but think you should eat it because it's good for you try some Zentrofan milled flour in your breadmaker - it's a milling process that produces a very fine but still wholemeal flour.   You can buy this and a heap of interesting freshly ground flours and other goodies from the Chantal Organic Wholesalers website.  Not local but very good.  Bin Inn in Nelson also stock a wide range of flours and grains.

And if you're ever in Kaikoura buy some of the organic stoneground wholemeal flour from Hislops Flour Mill  - they're the most local Flour Miller I know of.    They sell it from their cafe on the main road into town.

And we can't forget Spuds!   Baked, Boiled, Fried, Mashed - Yum.

Moutere local Owen Dennis has been growing many different spuds for years and he thinks these three varieties are the ones that taste best and are best suited to our Nelson growing conditions.

My favourite is Ngautiutiu which is a knobbly yellow fleshed, slightly floury spud with a superb flavour.  It's a great chipper, baker and salad spud when new and grows to a big old spud when mature.   

The other two are the inky "Purple Congo" spud and the Purple & White Skinned "Whataroa".

We grow great potatoes here on the Waimea Plains so if you haven't got time or space to grow all your spuds don't worry.

Go to the Appleby end of Waimea West Road and you'll find a roadside sign saying POTATOES - drive round the back, go in the shed and stock up on some of the best spuds around grown by Mr Russ.    

Todds Produce off the speedway corner of Lansdowne road also grow really good spuds.   Spuds store well so buy a lot and they'll keep you going over the winter if you store them in a cool dark spot.

Who ate all the pies?  Not saying.

Sometimes you just need a pie and a pie needs pastry and nobody makes better pastry than the Pie Lady from local company "My Pie".  She uses butter.   Life would be a bit sad without pastry every now and then I think.

She has a stall at the Nelson Market so you can get your Saturday morning pastry fix.   She has a shop in Nelson selling single and family sized pies and she has a website.   This lady does a pie for every body.   

The fillings are beyond description and no gunk in them, just ingredients as nature intended.  Try one.  Hell, try them all.    Wild Pork and Cider is My Pie of choice.

And actually you've just got to love anything cooked by someone who says "Microwaved Pastry is the devil's work".