New toys

I don't get to Auckland (New Zealand's largest city by far) very often. My brother lives there and I used to go once a year for Christmas to keep up with my nephew and niece, but since having become a Grandma I tend to visit the little girls in Australia instead.

I had to make a sudden dash up there last weekend however, as my stepmother died last Thursday evening and I had a funeral to attend. Mum had had Alzheimer's for a long time, and to all intents and purposes had been dead for the last three years so it was not an occasion of great grief, more one of remembering what she used to be like when she was herself. We had some good laughs.

It was the school holidays too, so flights were full, and to get reasonably priced ones I had to stay from Sunday to Thursday - which meant I had time to go shopping.

I had never seen these things before:

They're triple scissors for cutting parsley and suchlike. My sister-in-law bought a pair with five blades which were $20, but I wasn't about to spend quite that much on what may well not get used very much. They are cute though so I bought that pair for $10.

This is my collection of round pancake making pans, the one on the top left is a takoyaki pan which I got at Japan Mart in the new(ish) Sylvia Park shopping mall:

The others, clockwise, are a gem iron, a poffertjes pan and an aebelskiver pan, all of which I've had for a while. The poffertjes indentations are quite shallow, whereas the ones in the other pans are all hemispherical. Truth to be told, the takoyaki holes are identical to the gem holes, so I didn't really need both! The gem iron is intended to be used inside the oven though and takoyaki is made on top of a burner.

The other thing I bought at Japan Mart was the tamagoyaki pan on the left:

It's much more solid than my old one on the right, and the end furthest from the handle has a nice curved edge to make rolling the eggs easier. The old one will go in the bin, it's very thin and cheap and nasty.

I'd love to have got the big copper tamagoyaki pan they had, but it was over $200. It's a jolly good thing I only took a small bag up with me, as lack of luggage space is what stopped me from spending far too much money.