Henry, 26, a data scientist in the energy industry, lives with his girlfriend, Catherine, also 26, an analytics specialist in the airline industry. The couple shares an apartment in Auckland's Pakuranga Heights with Catherine’s sister Avo, a 22-year-old AUT student, and Henry’s brother Max, 24, a risk analyst in banking. They like to shop at a mix of Asian Grocers and PAK'nSAVE.
Henry talks to Polly Wenlock.
Since we have hybrid working arrangements and Avo has class, we try to make it so that whoever is home is cooking. That way dinner is ready once everyone is back from work.
We eat together around 6pm and all watch the news bulletin together. Luckily we have pretty similar tastes, no dietary requirements – only Max doesn’t like mushrooms and eggplants.
The rice cooker, Nutribullet and airfryer are the key pieces of kitchen equipment we use.
We all share a a single credit card. At the end of the month whatever the grocery spend is we divide by four and pay off the card. We have noticed it getting more expensive year-on-year. In the past, a $100 shop would be quite massive and now it feels standard.
We find a lot more deals on fruit and veggies at Asian Grocers than at name brand stores. We follow a page called “Asian Grocer” on Facebook which is helpful since most of the Asian stores don’t have their own websites and it tells you deals available at different stores. For example avocados were only 19 cents at one today!
We shop at PAK'nSAVE for things more like meat, Vogels or Plowmans bread, icecream.
Catherine and Avo are Vietnamese, so celebration food is more part of their cultural background.
I’m ethnically Chinese. My partner and I have similarities and differences in our cooking culture backgrounds. Obviously both cuisines are Asian and emphasise staples like rice and noodles. Some differences I’ve noticed in our cooking is that Vietnamese tends to have more raw things, fresher veggies for example. We had a fresh veggie-fish meal the other night. Chinese food is what we would go to if we wanted something more hearty and warm.
Most often our lunches are leftovers from dinners and breakfast will either be cereal with yoghurt or, if we have enough time, something like avo on toast.
Some of the stuff I cook is similar to what my parents would make, it’s nice having that memory of being a kid eating my parents' meals. There’s a heart-warming tomato egg soup I have, or Hotpot, sometimes we have a simple snack of seaweed with rice which is a bit of a school throwback.
Catherine and Avo are the much better cooks out of the four of us. They’re much more flexible with what they make. We try to have meat with every dinner. The vegetables we cook with are somewhat dependant on the seasons.
Usually when someone is craving something specific, for example Avo the other day was craving a Vietnamese springroll called Goi Cuon, we’d chat about what we want and make it.
An easy meal to make for if we’re tired or time-pressed is scallion rice, all you have to do is cut up scallion and put it in the rice cooker with sauces and you’re set.
If we were to attend a pot-luck type event, Catherine makes great Vietnamese summer rolls with prawns, lettuce, vermicelli, hoisin sauce in them, that’s what we would bring.
This week Henry, Max, Catherine and Avo's total spend was: $293.55
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