February already!

Can you believe February is here already?  My whanau and I have settled back into the rhythm of life, and the last of the fabulous five has contracted and beaten chicken pox.  That disease is frightening to say the least.  And while waka ama Nationals have been and gone (the 8 year old won a silver medal!), its straight into basketball for all and secondary schools waka ama for one.  Sport will continue to play an integral part of our lives this year.  Yes I plan to play sports.  We are talking fuel needs for bodies that are in training.  It ties in nicely with the restraint we are all exercising when it comes to buying unhealthy food.  We have runs of good days where we think to buy healthy, we eat sensibly and don’t waste food, and we are thankful.  Tiredness, and busyness sees old habits creep in a few times though.  This will be a slow journey!  

Back to Kura for all the kids tomorrow.  Another year of weighing up the challenge of children participating in a schooling system that I believe is something that meets their needs as Māori, while simultaneously and confidently working full-time in a system that holds other beliefs true in education.  The mental struggle to stay true is hard when confronted by some of the dominant systems and processes, policies and practices, statistics and attitudes.  For every blow taken in that environment, the happiness and joy of seeing my kids grow and succeed as a result of their Kura more than compensates.    

I have returned to commuting by train because I am hopeless at keeping a carpool going.  My irregular start/finishing times and the need to be responsive at home/work wasn’t compatible with set leaving times.  Such is life.  I could persist with a carpool group I suppose, and commit (again) to times but the chance to unwind on the hour long train trip home is too attractive.  And after a spate of work ($$$) on my car, I am quite prepared not to have to deal with car maintenance and the soaring price of petrol this year.  Plus it allows me time to, surreptitiously, observe people.  NO not spying or being a nohi.  Observing.  I find after two years of discovering who I am (and continuing to discover) I am keenly drawn to understanding how humans connect and relate to each other.  I guess when you have a relationship break up, understanding those things becomes important!

And understanding those things differently has definitely helped.  I find I am a little more open to redefining a friendship of sorts with my ex.  We will always have children and so a relationship needs to exist, for their benefit.  But increasingly, though slowly, some of the enduring parts of our former relationship have become grounds to build new connections.  Common values, beliefs, understandings are still there.  Each point of connection becomes something that two adults can discuss.  No friction, no tension, no reliance on former knowledges we had of each other.  Just simple new beginnings.  Who are we and what do we know, now.  It is a strange place, and a sadness exists in the shadows, but it is bittersweet, and not malicious.  Oh, I am growing up.

Conquering the Kidney Bean

The kids and I are back home now from our wet Christmas and New Years in Auckland.  And I have begun in earnest my attempts to reshape our thinking around food.  I dug out some dusty tins of red kidney beans, which I bought many moons ago and decided that was dinner for the night.  It had to be - I hadn’t pulled anything out of the freezer, I am choosing not to grab food at the last minute from the supermarket when we have stocks in the cupboard, and takeaways are out.  I googled kidney bean recipes and tossed around kidney bean salad, kidney bean pasta, or kidney bean salsa before deciding on kidney bean dip with nachos.  Miss 14 rolled her eyes and declared kidney beans her mortal enemy and flounced out of the kitchen with a toss of her indignant self and her hair.  My chief helper Miss 10 got busy dicing onions and chopping garlic and sauteing these in some butter and oil.

Kidney beans.  I don’t know why I buy them.  The few times I have ever cooked them and mixed them with mince my kids have just eaten around them, left them on their plates and they were wasted.  Waste of energy cooking them, waste of money buying them.  And yet I still buy and cook them.  All those cooking magazines that talk of how nutritious they are and how fibrous and good for you they are?  Pah.  We need cooking magazines whose target audiences are kids.  An editorial team made up of kids would be all over those articles with their kid stomach filters going yuck, yuck, and double pukey yuck.  The problem with beans is they look like beans.  That was Miss 14’s rationale for dissing them.  Oh and they are red “that’s just wrong”, she announced. 

So I’m cooking thinking on my feet and various Treasures magazines tips about introducing new foods from back in the babyhood days (I knew collecting all those points off nappy packs and getting free magazines would eventually be worth it) are penetrating and ‘simple’ and ‘fun’ come across as common themes.  My recipe called for lime juice and individual spices, cumin, turmeric and something else.  I’m also supposed to use other vegetables too like capsicum and celery, and fresh tomatoes.  That’s not very simple.  I improvised and used garam masala, chicken stock and tinned tomatoes.  Things I already had in the cupboard.   Introducing other vegetables like capsicum and celery together with kidney beans was not happening, mainly because I didn’t have any and also because I think those vegetables, cooked, may be classed as an enemy too.  All good parents know to serve new foods, especially vegetables, you need to be strategic and only ever serve one at a time.  I am treading carefully.  My kids will eat capsicum raw in a salad and celery raw with peanut butter, but they wont eat either if they’re  cooked.  Go figure.  Their cooked time will come though.

The original menu was adjusted (see below) to include a red kidney bean dip with nachos and a whole red kidney bean sauce with nachos.  Two options.  And the kids get to vote on which option they like the best and which subsequently we get to include as one of our new dinners for 2012.  Hah!  That’s the fun part nailed in my strategy.  Genius.  Now whoever it was that discovered the sauteing of onion and garlic together as a base for most meals deserves a medal.  Those aromas wafting through the kitchen had my kids mad keen for whatever was cooking.  The kidney beans were added and Miss 14 couldn’t resist sneaking one from the pan.  I think I like them whole she declares.  I’m still trying to decide if that is because I specifically said I wanted to blend them into a dip and so conversely she naturally preferred them whole, or if she actually just liked them.  Half and half then.

The chief and I served dinner with a flourish.  Nachos, with the option of kidney bean dip, or kidney bean sauce.  Lots of grated cheese and sour cream.  Okay on the fat option – I usually offer the kids cheese or sour cream but not both.  Tonight I needed both.  And the winner is?  The kidney bean sauce.  By default.  It emerged triumphantly as a winner because Miss 14 rallied her two younger sisters to her cause,  ganged up on my option and my dip was relegated to the “umm...no” department.  But one other theme I forgot was ‘involve your kids’.  The girls were won over because they helped get ingredients, they opened tins, they hung around while the chief and I were cooking and we chatted together about my thinking around the humble red kidney bean.  They fell for the whole option and voting angle too.  My son, who hadn’t been involved was not won over so easily.  He raises an eyebrow, peers suspiciously at both options and says simply “where’s the meat?”.  Bugger.  I’m lining him up to be chief cook for the next phase.  Lentils.  Let the fun begin.   

My New Year's Resolution(s)

Happy New Year!  Did we all make New Year's Resolutions?  I have never been a big fan of these and have yet to make one in all my living years.  We all make plans of course, a new year is such a goodtime to be hopeful of change, in all areas of our lives or just one area.  Hope is good.

This year I hope for simple things.  Simple food things.  That my children will value the food on their plates, no matter what it is.  That I will buy food as is necessary - not because the demon of empty cupboards borne over from my childhood still haunts me.  I'm thinking of bringing back a simple karakia at mealtimes.  I think even if we don't go to Church on a regular basis, it is good to say the words out loud "we are thankful for this food".  My grandmother taught me that karakia.  I used to believe in whole foods, and slow cooking once upon a time.  I am bringing that back.  I choose not to hide behind my busy working life, hectic sporting schedules and exhaustion. I choose not to make excuses to keep takeaways and overprocessed foods in our lives.  The inner chef shall emerge this year.  Along with the inner gardener and the inner take my lunch to work everyday.

Yep.  For the last two years I have lived some sort of fantasy existence when it  comes to food.  I have been trying to maintain a lifestyle of well, I'm not sure really.  Buying what I want when I want.  Sushi for lunch three days a week, mochachinos daily, sometimes two or three a day!  MacDonaId's for the kids and I - because we can.  Shameless.  Who do I think I am?  I don't do my waistline any favours and thank goodness for that sporty lifestyle or my kids would balloon in size.  That is not a future any parent envisages for their children. 

I have psychoanalysed things a bit, because all good change comes from clear thinking and reflection I reckon.  And the results are not earth shattering. In my attempts to look like a successful, solo Mum, with a full-time job and the means (on paper at least) to live 'the good life' I have been a total food snob, a total money snob and other ridiculous stuff.  A sucker for perception.  I can't do it anymore.  I watched two programmes recently too that have cemented my decision to change.  One about the enormous amount of waste that the world's societies throw out in term's of food everyday, and two, the earth's ability to sustain our current and evergrowing populations, with the resources available.

We threw out so much good, edible food last year. Every single day in the modern world, food - good edible food, that could feed thousands and thousands of starving people is thrown away.  I cried, literally shameful tears at the thought of the wasteful person I have become and of the people that would happily eat the food I casually threw away, if only they could.  I thank God my grandmother is not alive, if she knew or saw any of that, I would get one of those back-in-the-day-it- was-okay hidings of a lifetime.  That will not happen this year.  And I can plant vegetables and be resourceful and teach my kids all those things my Grandmother taught me.  Simple food things. 

And the rewards shall be a longtime coming for my children and I, and far  reaching.  But I can feel it, they will be so worth it.

A Rare Saturday

It is a rare Saturday in Otaki that sees my three beautiful girls playing nicely together and my two sons engrossed in their own worlds.  My oldest son is obviously in a haka mood.  Various war cries replay through his head often, and the floor echoes with the bass thump of his heavy feet stomping out some action.  The girls are playing Bingo in the room – in Te Reo Māori.  Now that’s the vision at play for sure!  They use so much Te Reo when I remember not to beat them up about not using Te Reo!  My grandmother told her children, who are native speakers, that you should teach your children to speak Māori, so that you always have someone to laugh with. 

I have very happy memories of all my uncles and aunties laughing hilariously together with my Grandmother, all speaking Māori.  My mother never taught me, and I remember trying to have conversations with her, as an undergraduate student ‘new’ to te reo.  Lol, she looked at me with my grammatically correct sentences (they were back then), my non-rolling-off-the-tongue very enunciated words and probably wondered what the hell I was saying!  The fact that I had a very ‘eff’ sounding ‘wh’ for a pair of very Northern taringa would have been an onslaught and a half too.  The very beautiful and distinct Te Aupouri ‘hu-wah’akarongo versus my learnt ‘f’akarongo still makes me cringe and laugh when I think of my Mum.

The house is clean for once too, that is especially rare on a Saturday!  Usually we are out at some sport or another and cleaning has to wait till we get home, or Sunday, or whenever.  But today is rare and just peaceful.  It wont last but while it does, I will sit back and enjoy my picture perfect children and thank god for each of their gorgeous selves.