My favourite part of a MasterChef series

Is the trips away.

When I travel, one of the things I really like to do is to eat. To try the local produce, the local cuisine, to visit the original source of some of my favourite products. And I love to be able to bring some of the produce and ideas home and try and recreate some of the food I have experienced. A lot of my best travel memories are associated with food/drinks and I have made some great discoveries.

So I get really excited when I watch the episodes where the MasterChef contestants are doing just that. I feel like jumping on a plane and going somewhere myself. Unfortunately both money and season of life prevent me from doing that. But at the start of next year, we have planned a trip to the north part of the South Island of NZ, so I'm going to concentrate my excitement of the MasterChef contestants experience into researching opportunities to have some great food and wine experiences on our holiday. We have already specifically planned to spend a couple of nights in the Marlborough region, as well as a day in Wellington and I have also suggested we drive home on a slightly different route so that we can visit the Wairarapa region too. We are planning to camp the whole time (to both save money, as well as to be able to stay in some pretty amazing natural places), so hopefully I can find some great food to glam up the camping experience a bit, as well as some produce that we can bring home to enjoy over the following months.