Braggin' on my Man

N has had a number of pieces of work published lately, and one came in the mail yesterday, so it is high time I shared the links with you.  I'm proud of him!

* Part 1 of a four-part series for the Marketplace Institute, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada.

* A book review of a collection of essays for Cardus, Canada.

* An essay, adapted from his public address in NZ recently, in Winter Selection 2012, Maxim Institute, Auckland, New Zealand. (This is what arrived in the mail.  The essay link goes to Maxim's publications site but it wasn't available for upload just yet.)

Plus, you get to see an action shot!  Now just add his beard.  :o)

Here's the pic taken at ReFrame, before we left Vancouver.  The Marketplace Institute is currently seeking funding to film the course for global distribution.  You can see our friend, Mark, explain more here if you want to support this worthy project.  They hope to have secured the necessary pledges by October 31st in order to start distribution by mid-2013.  (Here endeth my shameless plug for them!)

Guaranteed to make you smile :o)

I spotted this on one of my favourite blogs this week.  It is a song by NZ duo Flight of the Conchords, raising funds for Cure Kids.  They collected a bunch of lyric ideas from kids and roped in some celebrities to sing them.  Anyone who has kids (or worked with them) knows how hard it can be to string those random things together.  Bravo!

P.S. I need to get back into the NZ music scene.  I didn't recognise a couple of those celebs!

Independence Day and Rootedness

Today we have joined in the local celebrations for Independence Day.  Happy 4th of July!

It was kind of funny that a Texan (C), a Canadian (J) and a Kiwi (Me) had to scramble around to find anything red, white, and/or blue to wear!  There does seem to be a secret compartment in the closets/wardrobes of Americans that contain outfits for days such as this.  We managed to score a couple of miniature flags to wave from a friendly parade organizer and joined some of N's classmates to watch the fun in the suburb of Lakewood.  I think my favourite float was the kids playing (original, I think) rock songs on  a big trailer - those tweens were talented!  J enjoyed collecting candy (which I kept referring to as lollies) and C munched on his hat and flag (which cleared the way for the appearance of tooth #3 today).  Some of the costumes were elaborate, the political buttons were big (election year here) and the classic cars were cool (or should that be hot?)

Afterwards we had a barbecue lunch with our friends, complete with octopus sprinkler in the back yard.  C took a nap at last, J had a blast in the sprinkler (but wasn't so keen on the sand down his pants from the sandpit) and I had fun talking with everyone.

The holiday today celebrates 236 years of independence from British rule.  Canada celebrated the birthday of their nation 145 years ago on Sunday (belated Happy Canada Day!) and New Zealand commemorated 172 years since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (between the indigenous Maori and the British Crown) on February 6th.  In reflecting on these community markers of national identity I have been struck by how much we define ourselves by (or against) our history - our roots as nations, communities, families and individuals.  It is from our understanding of the past, the values and virtues that were cultivated there and passed on, the stories that we retell and those we choose not to, that we define our present selves and move forward into the future.  For those of us with faith, that identity is even more rich as we layer in the stories that have shaped our beliefs (and, hopefully, actions) too.

I have also been reflecting on these past weeks 'flying solo' most of the time in my role as parent while N has been away.  (I am looking forward to redistributing the wife/mother balance again soon!)  In reading a blog this week I was reminded that our role as parents is really to raise kids to be independent, and to let them leave.  In teaching our boys to be independent, however, I believe we need to teach them how to 'be' with us - within the community of our family, neighbourhood(s), nations, world - in order that they might have healthy roots through which to draw strength and sustenance as their independent identies emerge and they leave the nest.

I left home when I married N at the ripe old age of 20.  Now I realise how potentially scary this was for my parents!  One of my favourite wedding presents was actually orchestrated by my mum in the weeks leading up to the wedding.  Knowing we were setting up a brand new household, she gave me a box of goodies each week with a different theme.  All those little things you need but don't realise you don't have them until you want them to hand immediately.  I can't remember them all but some highlights include gift wrap and ribbons; a bucket of cleaning supplies; a box of stationery and office supplies; lightbulbs, super glue and other fixity stuff; and so on.  It was like getting an elaborate Christmas stocking of independence every week!  Essentially these gifts represented my parents' work teaching me not only to fly the nest but enabling me to soar (as an individual, and together with N in our marriage).

When I dream of what my boys may be like by the time they leave home I hope each of them can draw their identity from who they are in Christ, our family, communities and nations. (We've sure created some interesting scenarios by providing them with multiple passports!)  I pray that they will be both independent and rooted.  I hope they will share the wealth of their heritage, in all its glory and shortcomings, with those they know and love.  And I hope I can let them soar too.

One Week Down

Well, we are one week into our time with N on a business/family trip to NZ.  We haven't had time to get bored, nor to take any photos.  Here's the lowdown...

*Monday: dropped N at the airport in the late afternoon.  Grouchy C in the car on the way home.  Discovered he had cut his first tooth when I got home.  No biting yet - yippee!

*Tuesday: I volunteered at Vacation Bible School (VBS) at church in the morning.  Cool programme.  Had said I could be thrown in the deep end given my teaching experience and was... led the preschool video viewing, discussion and drama session.  Got a bit sick of acting like a pig by the fourth rotation!  Boys had fun in nursery.  Skyped with Daddy each afternoon since now.

*Wednesday: regular playgroup in the morning.  C cut his second tooth.  Had a friend and her Russian visitor over for dinner.  They brought yummy mini pies from an orchard to sample. :oP

*Thursday: volunteered at VBS again.  Much simpler this time - assisting the Godly Play/ Montessori style scripture reading/drama, switching lights on and off and preparing glow-sticks.

*Friday: VBS final day.  Same session but this time I doled out gummy fruit snack fish - no such thing as chocolate fish or Spratz here!  J inadvertantly (I hope) brought home a 'mighty mixer' with his toy cars today.  Knows it will be returned next time we go to church but is making the most of having it at home!

*Saturday: library visit as usual.  Signed up for the Mayor's Summer Reading Program.  We already read at least 3 hours a week, so no extra effort required for child passes to local attractions and chance for prizes at the end of summer.  Hope to use some of the passes in the coming weeks.  Fort Worth Museum of Science and History was this weeks' pass.  Grumpy afternoon and then both boys had temperatures at bedtime. That's what happens when you're in nursery for half the week!

*Sunday: skipped church because of yucky colds, grotty moods. I am sick of their whining but otherwise fine.

*Monday: getting better, ventured out to the shop for some milk and to the post office.  Bought 'Cars 2' stickers for J.  Big mistake!  Tantrum each time I only give 1 sticker.  Goes to sleep with packet under pillow.

*Tuesday (today): J is croaky but otherwise fine.  C testy but okay on the whole.  Hunter family kindly comes over to babysit with their 2 boys (essentially a playdate where I didn't have to mind anyone).  They bring their lunch, lasagne for our dinner (delicious!), and squash & jalapenos from their garden.  Take boys for a walk while I indulge in a long shower, make bread and start tidying the closet.  What a blessing!  J still sleeping with stickers under pillow.  Off to bed for me soon.

ANZAC memories

It is ANZAC Eve here in Dallas, and along with our recollections of our time in Gallipoli in 2006, and the usual remembrances on ANZAC Day in NZ, we are celebrating C being 6 months old today with some poppy pictures in a patch down the road.  (Daddy was wielding the camera for a change!)

Christmas Story

Before the Christmas season disappears entirely, I thought I'd share a link to a great Christmas poem on Sophie Gray's website. She is NZ's Destitute Gourmet and I love her recipes, and own a fair few of her books. They are also very apt for the PhD budget! Find the poem here.

P.S. Food Course: Other Resources

Films

• Babette's Feast
• Eat Drink Man Woman
• Big Night
• The New World
• Fiddler on the Roof
• Garbage
• The Future of Food

Children's Books

• Jam: A True Story - Margaret Mahy
• Whose Garden Is It? - Mary Ann Hoberman
• Mrs. Moskowitz and the Sabbath Candlesticks - Amy Schwartz
• Goops and How to Be Them - Gelett Burgess
• Mice Squeak, We Speak - Arnold Shapiro
• Stone Soup - various versions of this traditional tale
• An Angel For Solomon Singer - Cynthia Rylant and Peter Catalanotto
• A Bad Case of Stripes - David Shannon
• Blueberries For Sal - Robert McCloskey
• Little House in the Big Woods - Laura Ingalls Wilder (and other books in the series, especially Farmer Boy)
• Green Eggs and Ham - Dr. Seuss
• The High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake - Nancy Willard
• The Pipi Swing - Sarona Aiono-Iosefa
• Bread and Jam for Frances - Russell Hoban

Websites

• Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer
• Love Food Hate Waste
• Eat the Seasons
• Koanga Institute
• Salt Spring Seeds
• BC Farm Fresh
• Local Food BC
• River Cottage
• Jamie Oliver
• Simply Good Food (NZ CSA)
• City Farm Boy (Vancouver)
• Kitsilano Farmers' Market

Food Course: Our Mindful Meal

One of the assignments for the food course was a 'mindful meal': "students will work together to plan, cook, serve, and present an evening meal to the class. The presentation should include 1) their rationale for the choices of the particular meal; 2) any history they can discover about the food used, the cooking methods, ethnic origin, and so on; 3) the point of origin and transportation details of the food items. In other words, their job is to awake in us a mindful appreciation of and sense of responsibility for what we are eating - AND a delight in food as a gift of God in creation."

My group discovered early in our discussions that we all came from different countries... me from NZ, Esther from England, Matt from USA, Elly from Canada, Claudia from Austria, and Soohwan from Korea. Consequently, we planned our meal around a simple lamb stew. Wanting to bring a bit of ourselves to this meal, we chose to unite 'homestyle' elements of each of our food heritages, in the same way a stew brings together many ingredients to add flavour to one another. Since the majority of our cultures were western, we chose not to include a Korean dish, but instead, to eat our meal in the context of Korean manners, where traditional ettiquette is governed by social class and respect for elders.

Our menu was as follows (sources in italics):

REFRESHMENTS
Beer, Water, Wine
Beer: Matt’s kitchen (with transport via the ferry with Roxy)
Water: from the farm well
House Wine: from the Wilkinson’s cellar
APPETIZER
Spinach Dip in Bread Bowls with carrots and bread for dipping
Spinach: Matt’s garden (again, thanks to Roxy)
Bread: made right here
Other ingredients from Vancouver Island
MAIN COURSE
Lamb Stew with Dumplings, Garlicky Mashed Potatoes, and Green Beans
Lamb: Campbell’s Farm, Saturna Island
Beans: canned by the Wilkinsons last summer
Fresh Herbs: from the Wilkinson’s garden
Other ingredients from Vancouver Island
DESSERT
Topfencreme
Quark: from Foothills Creamery, Alberta, that makes European style cheeses
Other ingredients from Vancouver Island

We each wrote about why we had chosen these foods and how they represented our cultures, and included this information, along with a summary of Korean table etiquette, on our menu sheets. My ingredient was lamb so I wrote about NZ sheep farming and my grandparents' farm. Our table decorations were 'homestyle' too: bouquets of grass, driftwood to sit breadbowls and hot dishes on, and simple candles.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Matt's beer and his spinach dip were great (and I don't even like beer much!) There was enough lamb stew and dumplings for two dinners (Esther and I made it stretch a long way, based loosely on this recipe). Elly's green beans and mashed potatoes were gobbled up quickly. Claudia's topfencreme (see recipe below) was delicious. By far, the most difficult part of the evening was sticking to the Korean manners that Soohwan explained to us - but that made for a lot of laughter, learning and conversation.

TOPFENCREME

• 250g quark
• 250g whipped cream (250ml whipping cream)
• 500g vanilla yoghurt
• sugar
• mixed berries (fresh or frozen)

Defrost berries if necessary. Add sugar to berries to taste.

Mix quark and yoghurt until smooth. Fold in whipped cream. Add sugar to taste.

Serve cream mixture with berries drizzled over. (Leftovers... if there are any... make a nice topping for sweet pancakes or waffles.)

Serves 4.

Food Course: Salt Spring Island

Our Saturday morning started early. We had a field trip to Salt Spring Island planned. Half of the group rowed 3-4 km across the strait between Galiano Island and Salt Spring Island. The other half drove down to the ferry terminal and caught the ferry from Galiano Island to Vancouver Island, then on to Salt Spring Island. The groups swapped for the return journey, the ferry-ers stopping to shop for the weeks' meals on the way back. I was in the group that took the ferry in the morning.

Our main destination was Salt Spring Seeds. This farm, dedicated to growing food and seed of older varieties of plants, is run by Dan Jason. His 'seed and plant sanctuary' is funded by the sales of his heirloom seeds and the yoga centre on the property. (Some similar heirloom seed and plant growers in New Zealand are Koanga Gardens, Seed Savers, Edible Garden, and Eco-Seeds.) Dan spoke to us about the need to save seed, his philosophy of conservation and farming, the problems associated with genetically-modified seed, and then showed us round part of the farm.

The farm reminded me of my grandparents and their 3-acre farm in Levin, NZ. They have a fabulous vege garden, orchard and flower garden. Grandad enjoys sharing his produce and Heath family Christmasses wouldn't be the same without their potatoes, peas, and salad greens!

After visiting the farm we swapped transport and my group headed back to the boat. (The Wilkinsons use this boat on their summer school boat course each year.) On the way to the dock we stopped at a market day in the settlement called Ganges. There were lots of crafts, preserves and plants from the local artisans and gardeners. The other group had stopped there earlier in the day.The trip back to Galiano took about an hour and a half. It was much more difficult to keep in time with each other than it looked. I'm sure I'd get the hang of it by the end of the boat course, but my fellow rowers may have thrown me overboard by then! There was no wind and......we broke an oar about halfway back across the strait!We got home safely enough, and scrambled up the rocks before reheating some nettle spanokopita (picked by myself and Nathan, and prepared by myself, Joe Ellis and Sarah Crowley before the course started).

Food Course Intro

I am currently on a course called "Food: Creation, Community, and Communion," held on Galiano Island, one of the Gulf Islands off the west coast of British Columbia. I am one of 25 Regent College students who are privileged to be participating in this course in its inaugural offering. It is being taught and hosted by Mary Ruth and Loren Wilkinson, who have taught me (separately) in other courses I've taken at Regent.

So far, we have had a busy time. Our general daily rhythm is lectures in the mornings and rest or chores in the afternoons. We have 50+ pages of reading for each class and some evenings we watch food related movies.

On Sunday night the class arrived at Galiano Island (rather late) and we had gingerbread for dessert and settled into our places of sleep. I am staying at the Fee/Martin house, about 7 minutes walk from the Wilkinson's farmhouse. It has a beautiful view of the water, looking out on Salt Spring Island.

Monday morning saw us consume crepes and multiple toppings for breakfast, before our first lecture in the Wilkinson's living room. Our scripture reading was from Luke, where Jesus invites his disciples for breakfast on the beach. We then introduced ourselves to the class, saying where we were from (before Regent) and why we had come to the course. It was amazing how diverse and how similar many of our answers were!

Mary Ruth then spoke about the main components of a meal: tongue, table, guests and grace. She read two children's books, An Angel for Solomon Singer and Mrs Moskowitz and the Sabbath Candlesticks, and based her lecture on our two readings (selections from Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner, and Leon Kass, The Hungry Soul). It was interesting to see how aspects of a meal we take for granted are quite significant in "being human."

For lunch we had nettle soup (yes, some of the nettles we picked and prepared, Nath) and "biscuits" (scones). Then my group had a 'rest day' so I read and napped in the afternoon.

I picked my 'daily quote' from the required reading for our class anthology from Visser, page 14: "…(the Maori word tapu is the origin of our “taboo”)…" It formed part of a discussion of the etiquette of cannibalism amongst Maori and other cultural groups! I thought it was particularly interesting, given my understanding of tapu as holy, and its use for conserving resources in local areas.

Dinner was kedgeree. Yum! It was an opportunity to put some 'cultural context' around the food. I know kedgeree as a British breakfast dish, derived from India (when occupied by the British). This was confirmed by our two UK students, Debbie and Esther. I explained this to Soohwan, our Korean friend who has spent a lot of time in Bangladesh, and she laughed: "Kidgeree is a dish made from leftovers or the mash fed to babies! I've never had it with smoked fish."

After dinner there was a showing of a Danish film (with subtitles), Babette's Feast. It explored community, acceptance, gratitude, and generosity. A fine way to end our first day.

What's Black and White and Red All Over?

Homemade pizza of course!

This was the glorious result of using up the leftovers in our fridge. The toppings included tomato paste, fresh tomato, bacon, red capsicum, cheddar cheese, cream cheese, and mushrooms (which I forgot until the last minute, which is why they are on top!) All this was served with fresh salad leaves. Yummmmmmm!

Not quite 'black, white and red,' but not far off, is a discovery of our friend, Claire. She brought these 'cookies' over last night to share with us and compare with the NZ biscuit.

So our conclusions are: Dream Puffs are two-thirds the size of Mallow Puffs, have a lesser proportion of marshmallow, are very sweet, and the raspberry is a bit like the 'deluxe' versions available in NZ at present (e.g. jaffa). Worth a try, but not quite the same!

Bible (Edmonds Version)

Being a New Zealander, living on a student budget in Vancouver, Canada, has a tendency to lead one to nostalgia for familiar food. Not that Canadian food is that much different overall, but the influences of Quebec and U.S.A. are obvious to me! Croissants in a can, anyone?!

The first item to enter the suitcase on the big move over was not my Holy Bible (shock! horror!... a theological grad student without a Bible?) because I knew I'd be able to find plenty of those when I got here (and after 8 months we have 5 versions). It was, in fact, my Edmonds Cookery Book - the NZ cooking bible. This wise decision was verified not long after we arrived when, within a week of meeting them, two different Kiwis over here exclaimed, "You have your Edmonds! Can I borrow it?"

This lead me to thinking... I wonder if it is online in any form? and Can you order it from Amazon, etc.? A quick search reveals an even better gem than my 1999 edition - the 3rd edition from 1914 - facsimiled and typed out at an online archive here. I haven't tried anything from it yet, but it reveals the change in NZ culinary history when compared to my copy.

My edition has been put to use tonight. I made the short pastry for a bacon and egg pie that isn't really a pie. It doesn't have a pastry lid so it's more of a quiche. Then again, the eggs aren't beaten with milk, just cracked over the onions and bacon and topped with grated cheese. We've come to the conclusion that it could be a 'piche'. It isn't that glamorous to look at so there isn't a picture, but N did have seconds so it can't be bad.