William Chong

I recently got the Settlers of Catan game for my iPod, for those rare moments when I’ve got a couple of minutes spare. For those who don’t know, Settlers is a well-designed and fun board game where you try and build settlements and cities, collect resources and try to beat other players in achieving various objectives (e.g. longest road, biggest army, lots of cities etc.) It’s generally a well-balanced game: there’s a great trading element in the game that allows for lots of interaction between players, and you can get some really close and intense games going at times.

While it’s not as good as playing the board game version with friends, Catan on the iPod is still a well-designed and entertaining game. And at $6 from the App Store it’s much cheaper than buying the original board game, which can sell in shops at $90(!) for a basic set. The graphics and gameplay features pretty much replicate what you can do in the actual board game, and it’s very easy to pick up and play. It offers both single-player (with computer opponents) and multi-player over networks and so on.

Highly recommended for those with iPhones/iPods – you can get it here on Apple’s App Store. If you want there are also online sites where you can give the game a go (e.g. http://games.asobrain.com/)

In the meantime, I’ll keep trading to victory!

It’s been two years since I bought my first pair of running shoes. My red and black Nikes faithfully withstood the many runs I pounded out in preparation for my halfmarathon last year.

So I recently updated my running shoes to the new Lunarlite+ trainers.

What are they like? Well, after running with these flourescent-looking pair for the past two weeks, I can say that they’re pretty good. These shoes sport a type of memory foam that both moulds to your foot pressure patterns and provides the cushioning during foot impact.  It definitely had more cushioning than my old pair of shoes. The foam thing has also largely superseded the idea of having air inside your shoes (that was so 90′s…) – if you’ve ever owned one of those, you’ve probably found the “air” compartment becoming less and less filled with air.

The Lunarlite+ shoes also don’t pad up around your ankles at all – I found that this gave my running a freer feel. Of course your ankles definitely get more sore initially as your feet grow accustomed to the shoe, so it’s probably best to wear them in gradually.

All in all, it’s a pretty decent shoe – it fits snug around my feet and I’m enjoying running on them.

N.B.: The runs have been going good so far – I’m about three weeks into my training programme, and the  great thing is that the days will soon get longer again. So there’ll hopefully be fewer 5 am runs!

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Thanks Kelvin! Thanks Amy! Thanks Lauren!

Find out more:

Website: www.foodbox.co.nz; Ph: 09 265 1054; Email: orders@foodbox.co.nz; boxes from $32.

Most of you know I’m a pretty busy bloke. Between working, commuting, serving, tidying, writing, singing, dancing and sleeping, there’s usually very little time to do groceries on a regular basis. When I do it’s usually bleary-eyed after a long day, and I’m on autopilot through the supermarket aisles picking whatever looks colourful and edible. As many of you can testify, that doesn’t equate to fresh fruit and vegetables most of the time… (hint: soft drinks and chips are very colourful, and very edible!)

So when I got a flyer in my letterbox introducing foodbox.co.nz, I was intrigued. Basically the folk at this venture source whatever fruit and vegetables are in season around New Zealand, pack them into boxes, and deliver them to your door once a week. Little fuss, little use of airpoints to get your 5-plus a day (bananas are obviously the exception to the home-grown rule). They had an option for a once-off delivery, so I decided to try it out.

On Thursday we gather round and open our box. We’re pleasantly surprised – for $32 it’s bananas, kiwifruit, apples, pears, green beans, mushrooms, a head of lettuce, tomatoes, a leek, capsicum, onions, carrots, gourmet potatoes, and passionfruit. There’s an envelope with some quirky notes about the food we’ve just received. I like the trivia about where passionfruit comes from (answer: Spanish Jesuit missionaries in South America named the fruit as a symbol of the Passion of the Christ). They boast that we have got in our hands New Zealand-grown grapes, and include a recipe for a Moroccan cous-cous that can be cooked using the ingredients in our box.

It’s definitely not a replacement for all your shopping. You’ll still need to shop for meat, rice, milk, all your other balanced-diet necessities. And if you have Asian-cuisine inclinations, vegetables like bokchoy and Chinese cabbage may not be a regular feature. While you’re allowed to replace any fruit and veg you don’t like from your box, it’s still a lucky dip of produce that may not suit the guy that’s hell-bent on getting some papaya, or the gal who demands peaches come hell or high water.

But I give it two thumbs up because of one simple fact: I’m eating more fruit and veg. I won’t claim to now eat exclusively at home, but the guys at foodbox.co.nz give you this stuff in such a jovial, non-patronising way (take heed, Ministry of Economic Development TV ads) that you’re motivated to eat what you buy. And that equates to savings from the takeaways, the fast-food outlets, the pubs and restaurants. And the variety of fruit/veg we’re eating is definitely a plus. It’s a joy to try a passionfruit for the first time in my life, and to be given stalks of rhubarb and challenged to cook it in a meaningful way (I did a sugar-laden rhubarb crumble).�

Foodbox.co.nz can make something as mundane as your fruit and veg a present-opening, diet-altering delight.