Hi, this week I am away in Nelson situated at the very top of the south island of New Zealand. I’m a guest speaker at an Aquaculture conference and my presentation will be about the benefits of Omega 3 in one’s diet, and ways to promote it’s health benefits. It’s been wonderful here so far, am thoroughly enjoying being back in the heartland of New Zealand, even if it is only for a week. I thought I’d post a few of my powerpoint slides here to give you a little taste of what it is I am going to be talking about.

By the way, if ever there was an idyllic place to grow up as a kid, two of the pics here show that place: Matauri Bay in another (northern) part of New Zealand, sometimes called “The Winterless North”, with views out over the Cavalli Islands … my husbands home for the first six years of his life!

“See that manuka tree over there?” My father-in-law pointed to a lonely manuka by a small stream cutting through a horse paddock. “That’s where a cart fell on Te Kooiti’s leg and broke it. He died three days later. As a child my grandmother used to sit me down by that tree and tell me that story over and over again. I used to think: Oh no, not the same story again! Now I understand.”

For years my father-in-law, Haare Williams, has told us about how he grew up with his grandparents in a raupo hut on the side of a hill by the Ohiwa Harbour. They were given a strip of land where Te Kooiti, the famous Maori chief, was mortally wounded to be the kaitiaki (caretakers) of this historic, some would say, sacred spot.

The short answer is yes – you can eat mussels if you have high cholesterol. Mussels are low in kilojoules, cholesterol and fat. The little fat they do have is mostly healthy unsaturated fat with plenty of omega-3’s to help stabilise the heart muscle, reduce triglycerides (a type of fat in the blood), make arteries more elastic (which helps reduce blood pressure) and reduce blood clotting and inflammation.

Douse your mussels with butter, cream or other saturated fat and they will be more of a heart hazard than anything else. But if you eat them as we did at the Boat Shed Cafe in Nelson (northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island) – steamed with garlic, wine and parsley and served with a local pinot gris – your heart and your taste-buds will be very happy.

Last week we jumped on board the Pelorous Sound mail boat which chugs the length of Pelorous Sound three times a week delivering mail