“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

Here’s my question: Is it possible to make a wholemeal version of rewena paraoa (potato bread) that looks and tastes good? For the past month I have been experimenting. Rewena comes from the Maori word for potato – rewa, and paraoa means bread in Maori. Before Europeans arrived in New Zealand there was no potato, flour or sugar. Kumara, a type of sweet potato, was one of the main carbohydrate or energy sources for Maori. But this tropical plant was hard work to grow in New Zealand’s cool climate. Potatoes are different. Just throw them in the ground and they pretty much grow anywhere – my type of plant. So it was no wonder the potato soon took over from kumara as the staple food.

I figure the rewena recipe developed as most recipes do – by using the ingredients at hand – in this case potatoes, white flour, sugar and salt. I’d love to know how it started. Perhaps someone accidentally left a pot of boiled potatoes sitting in the sun for a couple of days and noticed that it had fermented. It wouldn’t have looked too great but maybe they recognised the yeasty smell and decided it could be made into bread. If anyone knows the true history, please let me know.