Abercrombie & Feast

We’re home in Sydney.  It seems like no matter where we go on holiday, I’m always so happy to come home to our little apartment in Sydney. 

We had such a great vacation.  Lots of swimming, sunning and relaxing.  Lots of memories made.

Probably my overwhelming culinary memory of New Caledonia will be the bread.  An island-sized slice of France in the South Pacific, New Caledonia is a place of burnished skies, blue water… and bread.  Every food shop, no matter how small and dusty, had large stack of fresh, golden bread.  Baguettes, mostly.

Food is very expensive in New Calendonia.  For example, a lunch of lettuce wraps and spring rolls at a local Vietnamese place cost us about AU$60.  Ouch.  So, we brought a lot of our own food to make in our petite apartment on the beach.  But, we did splash out and buy bread- daily. 

I ate the bread for brekkie almost every day.  Topped with a cold slick of slightly salted French butter, or with a sweet, rich smear of peanut butter (brought over in our suitcase from AU) and eaten on our balcony overlooking the sparkling Pacific ocean each morning, the bread was a brilliant start to my days.

The view from our hotel on Anse Vata

The bread was also our snack during the days.  After a day in the sun, on the beach or by the pool, a cold bottle of Orangina and a hunk of crusty baguette, torn right from the loaf, would revive me for the afternoon (or my afternoon nap!)

Walking the streets of Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, I would see dozens of people eating sandwiches made on fresh loaves of bread.  I would see dozens and dozens more with their newly purchased loaves peeking out of their shopping bags, backpacks and beach bags.  It seems I wasn’t the only one filling up on the ubiquitous loaves. 

With a crust as golden as the sunsets over the ocean, and an interior as white as the coral beaches, eating the bread in New Caledonia was like having a bite of the island itself.  Delicious.