An artist's impression of a Haast's eagle (L) attacking moa. Image / John Megahan in the PLoS Biology

New Zealand Maori legend of a giant killer bird has recently been confirmed by scientists.   This bird known as the Haast Eagle was the worlds largest bird, and also the main predator of the Mighty Moa (well before Man came along)

The eagle’s talons were the size of a tiger’s claw!

What a monster!  Pity the poor Moa’s when this eagle attacked..

Full details: NZ Herald

What biscuits (or cookies!) are you giving to your customers?

Full details: BBC

Last year the boss actually went to Turkey for the Dawn Service on at ANZAC Cove.   Lots of lack of sleep, but a great time, Turkey sure is an interesting place.  No idea that Istanbul has so many people living there! (about 30 something million!)   A great place to go and check out, and if you have any kind of NZ/Australia link then the Dawn Service is something special.

As part of this we at Mighty Moa have made another batch of ANZAC cookies to celebrate, so head on down to Flat White to pick some up, otherwise contact us and we can get some posted out to you!

Go check them out, buy some cookies have a nice coffee and relax..

I’ve had one cafe confirm already today that they want to stock my cookies. A number of the other cafes the boss wasn’t around so will have to wait a few days and see what happens.

In celebration of this day tomorrow the crew from Mighty Moa will be participating in that crazy event, the Circle Line Pub Crawl!

Come along and join in the mayhem!

They turned up today!  Out of the three recipes, the White Choc and Cranberry one was great and just how it should be.  The Golden Oat one was down in two different types Bicarb/Water version, and one without.   The one without tasted the closest to what I’m trying to achieve.   Also the chocolate chip one was sent down, but it seemed too undercooked.

Takes a while to sort out the oven temperatures and times and relate it back to the recipe your doing.  Each oven seems quite different and takes a bit of getting used to, as well as having someone else make the ingredients for me!

But the Mighty Moa is getting there..

Sample box of cookies

However back into action and making progress now.    Got back into contact with a couple of companies that I talked to back in December, but they said they were too busy to do anything.   One of them said they might be able to help provide a list of other bakers that would be able to help me instead.

I never heard anything from back in December (some of the directors were going to get in contact with me, but none did), so I followed up to find out what happened, and one of the helpful people there sent me a list of other places that they found on the internet.

From that I followed up and tried a few companies there, but not much luck.   I went back to some previous brochures and contacts that I had, and tried a couple there.

Finally I talked to one helpful baker that does a reasonable amount of baking (they have 8 ovens!) and he’s willing to work with me on the product.   So I sent through my recipes and some photos of what the cookies currently look like.   They have the time to work on/look at this now as it’s January and a bit of a quieter time for them.  The baker is going to try some of the recipes and see how they go.    Progress!

Read the full story [source: Dominion Post]

I like the final comment on the story regarding what happened to Australian birds - “A key question for us is, `where has all the Australian poo gone?”‘

Any appropriate comments?

This means I can now put the small R (®) in a circle beside all the words - “Mighty Moa”®