Exploring New Zealand’s rural parts with your family makes for a fun day out. An outdoors cooking/foraging adventure is perfect for opening up your children’s minds to how bountiful Aotearoa really is, and giving them a new perspective on where our food comes from.
Subaru is teaming up with Kiwi families to show you that your next weekend car trip can be a real journey to remember!
Best-selling cookbook author Amber Rose and her team of foraging helpers, son Oli (12) and his friend Pascale (12) took on the challenge to venture out of the city in a Subaru XV to find somewhere special to create the classic Kiwi camping meal, damper. They had to collect their own ingredients for the damper along the way.
The damper challenge
Turning flour and water into a delicious treat over an open fire is a Kiwi camping tradition. The challenge for Amber and friends was to make both a sweet damper and a savoury damper using ingredients they found along the way.
Amber and her team were given a Food Adventure Box, which contained the dry ingredients for a damper, and a herb and harvest identifier to help the team make it. Finding local fruits and herbs helped them create gourmet dampers using nature’s own ingredients.
Click here for our delicious damper recipe.
Scroll down to find out how you can win your own food adventure box.
Adventure awaits
There are plenty of food adventures for families around NZ – from gathering seafood at the beach to picking berries and fruit at your local food farm. Here are seven more ideas to help inspire your next adventure – no matter the season or the location, there’s a food journey waiting for you.
1. Visit your local dairy farm – many offer open days or tours when you can take your family and see how one of our largest industries actually works. You’re never too young to learn how to milk a cow!
2. In areas like Rotorua and Northland, you can experience the traditional Māori way of eating with a delicious hangi, where meat and root vegetables are wrapped up and cooked in a pit in the ground. Find your local hangi spot to try this earthy, smoky meal.
3. In the warmer areas of this country, you’ll come across local orchards. Whether it’s a summer bounty of strawberries, or autumnal apples and feijoas, there’s plenty of fruit to pick from in New Zealand. So find a local orchard or farm and pick your own fruit.
4. Many areas also offer a farmers’ market, which can be the best place to try produce and meet the local experts. Learn what’s being made in your own backyard – and get to know the actual people making it. To get your hands dirty yourself, try a foraging expedition.
5. Some companies run official foraging tours, but you can also find native ingredients by using a herb and plant identifier. People have been living off the land in New Zealand for hundreds of years, using native food.
6. Or if you want someone else to find the ingredients, head along to a cooking school and learn a new style of cooking. New Zealand is blessed to have 200 ethnicities here, and they all have different, delicious ways of cooking.
7. From August, you can try your hand at whitebaiting. Head to local rivers to watch whitebaiting crew catch the teeny tiny fish once the season starts, or hire a proper scoop net and try yourself. Find your local fritter maker for the ultimate feast.
Note: Make sure you’re following sustainable practices by checking the Department of Conservation regulations first!
Start your family adventure today!
Your next family adventure is only a car ride away, with the stunning Subaru XV, you get the best of both worlds thanks to the combination of cutting edge design and safety focused technology. As with all our SUVs, there’s the legendary All-Wheel Drive and Boxer engine, as well as the EyeSight Drive Assist Technology to keep your family safe on the road. www.subaru.co.nz/xv
For other additional information go to our Keep Me Informed section on our website: www.subaru.co.nz/keep-me-informed
Download the Subaru Family Fun Box Planner for more ideas to take on your next family adventure.
WIN YOUR OWN FOOD ADVENTURE BOX
We are giving one lucky family the chance to win their very own Food Discovery Box complete with damper ingredients, Instax camera and all the essentials you will need to recreate this day in your own neck of the woods. Enter below for your chance to win.
