Saturday 30 April 2011

Breaking many eggs to make a massive omelette

This year Noumea had something very similar to an Easter show. The show is on every year around April 24 and it's out in Dumbea, a suburb of Noumea that has a beautiful river running through it and is surrounded by gorgeous hills.


The beautiful hills above Dumbea  
I'm always surprised by the height and majesty of New Caledonia's mountains.  There's so much more here than just pretty beaches!

So, on Easter Sunday we took Max and his best mate Murphy out to check out the rides.  They loved it.  We also loved the massive omelette making session that we walked straight into!



This is the stove which was moved across to the fire when it was time to cook the eggs




The omelette-making happens every year and is apparently a polynesian tradition - a nod to the fact that Dumbea has a twin-city in French Polynesia. The eggs are cooked on an enormous polynesian-style fire and when I say enormous, I mean HUGE.  


So many eggs are cooked up that they use drills to mix the mixture and huge teams of people to break all those eggs.  The chefs are all done up in fancy chefs hats and the whole thing is taken pretty seriously!  We even noticed that each batch of mixture was tasted and seasoned very carefully.


The best part is that everyone gets to taste it.  The omelette makers walked through the crowd handing out nice big plates of omelette with good crunchy baguette.


The Polynesian influence meant there was awesome drumming, stone-throwing, coconut tasting and lots of good-looking Polynesian men showing off their tattoos.  Max got to have a cuddle with one nice young man...it's a shame his sister was less than willing.


Here I am with the final product.  It was great.


One extra thought - when I got home there was an article on NZ Herald about the exorbitant price of the Easter show in Auckland. By way of comparison - yes, life is pretty pricey here but this show was a good value way to spend a morning.  Less than $NZ3 to get in, less than $NZ6 per ride and the omelette...well that was free!  And who says there's no such thing as a free lunch.