At the Movies

I never go to the movies and seldom watch a movie on TV from beginning to end without falling asleep, but I have watched 3 full movies since we arrived in NZ – two at a cinema and 1 DVD.

The first one I saw was “The Help” – I read the book and loved it and tried to get to see the movie at home and then on the plane over, but to no avail. So when it was still on at the Rialto – classy cinema complex in central Tauranga – Pete and I went. It lived up to the book – really good actors who gave the story enough depth to make it believable. The next one – at the Rialto but on my own this time – was The First Grader. I had seen a trailer of it at the Intel conference in July, and then gone to Kenya and spent time in schools in September, and expected a feel-good movie with lots of familiar scenery. It was, and it wasn’t – the story behind the story of the struggles of a freedom fighter to fit in in later life was disturbing, as were the scenes of the Mau Mau uprising. But it ended happily – perhaps a bit too happily, but it would have been unsellable if it had ended realistically.

But the movie that had the most impact was “Boy” – a DVD about the life of a Maori boy on the East Coast of NZ in the 1980s. We saw the DVD with Nic and Ray, his parents and a friend on New Year’s Eve. Parts of it were hilarious – especially to those who have been teachers and have taught “those” kids – I think kids are universal and the child who wants to make him/herself with tall stories is one we’ve all taught. The 80’s names were great, too – the sisters called Dallas and Dynasty and the girlfriend called Chardonnay. The “tattoo” drawn on with a permanent marker, with arb things like “back” and “arm” gave us all a good chuckle. The blending of Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance with the Haka into one dance was hilarious. But the pathos of a story where the Gran is the only stable person, and when she goes away, the oldest child, Boy, having to take responsibility for his sibling and cousins, is too close for comfort. Watching the jailbird father behaving like a child – “shooting” the enemy with driftwood guns, lying to his children and trying to re-establish his youth through drinking and dagga after he is released from jail was just sad. Especially when you see the child wanting to believe him and be like him, but being cast off by him in the end.

We watched it to get a picture of Maori life in modern times, but in the end, it was a universal story – adults who let kids down, grannies who end up looking after all the kids, sad people with no future and no hope. Graham summed it all up when he said “What a sad movie” as it finished.

Cooking for Christmas

Let’s face it – we are a family of foodies. And never more so than at Christmas. Last Christmas, we took so many photos of the food that we forgot to keep a record of who was actually there. Sarah, Nic and I are all great cooks throughout the year, but at Christmas, somehow, there is a collective rush to produce all our favourite Christmas goodies.

This year, the rush started in November as I baked Christmas cookies, cheese biscuits, mince pies and shortbread all to our family recipes, so I could leave them for Sihle, Sarah, Riaan and Kev before we left for New Zealand. This despite the thermostat in my oven packing up, and having to do all the baking in a small oven which lives in the scullery – running down steps between rollings out to check that nothing was burning! I still had Christmas puddings from last year – and they do keep forever with the amount of brandy I put in them – so was able to leave one for Jen and one for Sarah. When I arrived in New Zealand, I was on mince pie detail, and made 3 or 4 batches before Christmas. The week before Christmas, I made cheese biscuits, shortbread and Christmas pud. I was going to skip the shortbread, but ended up making it after protests from Pete. And on Christmas Eve I glazed a huge ham AND a cooked and glazed a pickled pork – the closest Nic could find to a gammon in New Zealand. Nic maintains it’s not Christmas unless you have leftover gammon to eat on fresh white bread on Boxing day. And then for days after.

I thought about family traditions and food that we like to prepare. Many of my recipes come from generations back. My Shortbread biscuit and cheese biscuit recipes come from my paternal grandmother. The Christmas pudding recipe comes from an old Royal baking powder recipe book and was made by my maternal grandmother. The shortbread recipe comes down from the Lyon/Mann family somewhere – how far back to Scottish family I don’t know. I don’t make Christmas cake often, but we have the family recipe – with my Mom’s note – George V’s favourite cake! – written above it. My mince pie pastry comes from an old WI recipe book – and no doubt, will go down in history as Granny Deb’s recipe.

The gammon and bean salad that we have most years are relatively recent additions to our family Christmas meals. As a child, we had roast chicken (a delicacy) and hot veggies, cooked by the domestic help, who were then allowed to have a half day after they had washed up. We gradually moved to a cold meal (more suitable in our summer Christmas climate) and pickled pork was cooked and decorated with cherries and pineapple and later replaced by gammon, and we introduced salads – some more successful than others! The bean salad has lasted – copper penny (a gross carrot salad) and green cucumber mousse were thankfully discarded! Baby potatoes from the garden, boiled with a few sprigs of mint, were always my dad’s aim, but weren’t always ready by Christmas Day.

But in my family, it was the puddings that really counted. Christmas pudding – stirred by all the family and visitors and boiled for 6 hours in the heat of summer, and then reheated for an hour with the coins jingling in the bottom of the pan. Even non-raisin eaters like my nieces and nephew had pudding so they could get the money. This was always my Mom’s preserve, and even when she got too senile to manage the measuring and tying of the greaseproof paper lids on the pans, the pretence that it was her work was surreptitiously preserved. I nearly burned the house down a couple of years ago, when I went to sleep and the pots boiled dry in the middle of the night! Pete woke to smoke and a glowing pot on the stove – and a melted plastic toaster which had been next to the stove.

Fruit salad was a big hit when we were kids, and my Aunty Hazel’s fruit salad was the best. Sadly, there was always so much of it and so little fridge space that it would always ferment before we could enjoy it the next day. Nic has added Pavlova to the pudding repertoire, and this year, we picked the strawberries to pile on top of it.

The most enduring favourite, though, has to be “our” trifle. Mom’s generation invented it, I think - or it may even have been her mother's family. I can remember making it with my cousins when we were all young teenagers, and getting drunk on the sherry we poured in so liberally. Jen and all my cousins know the recipe – and I know some of them make it each Christmas. And certainly my children and Jen’s know how to make it. Nic doesn’t even like trifle, but if trifle is to be made, it has to be “ours.” For me, it is Christmas food – and having a bowl full for breakfast on Boxing Day means that tradition has been continued.

A foodie family indeed.

The “Lyon” trifle
1 or 2 packets of Boudoir biscuits (ladyfingers if you aren’t in South Africa)
Youngberry jam
Sweet sherry
Home made custard
Whipped cream
Sandwich the biscuits with the jam and layer them in a bowl – the number of biscuits depends on the size of the dish. Nowadays, I use a rectangular one, but as kids, we used a round bowl and cut the biscuits to fit.
Sprinkle liberally with sweet sherry and leave to stand for a couple of hours.
Make a thickish pouring custard – enough to cover the biscuit layer adequately.
Pour the custard over the biscuits and leave in the fridge until just before serving.
Whip cream and cover the top of the trifle. Decorate with cherries and almonds.

140 years of marriage

Today is our 35th wedding anniversary and we have just spent a week with good friends, Richard and Vanessa, who will celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary on Wednesday. As we sat at dinner the other evening, we decided that our 70 combined years of marriage were pretty unique nowadays. A little while later, Richard spoke of 140 years of marriage, and after a bit of discusiion, we decided that it was a more accurate way of describing our experiences of marrigae - each of us has experienced the past 35 years in a different way. So together, we represented 140 years of being married.

We talked about whether any of us had ever thought about getting out of marriage - and for all of us, it has been a lifetime commitment, even though all of us have gone through some tough times. Marriage has involved work - and all 4 of us had the Marriage Encounter experience to give us tools to deal with it. Another way of strengthening our marriages was meeting regularly with other married couples and talking honestly about what makes our marriages tick and what are the hardest things about being married. And being part of a church community has also been a way of building our marriages.

I feel so blessed to have so many years of marriage to look back on, and look forward to many more years.

Happy anniversary, Pete, Richard and Vanessa. 140 good years between us all.

A Rotorua Ramble

The 1st December is the day the trout stream open for fishing - at least in the N Island - so it was not really surprising that we set out for a stream in the Rotorua area on the 1st.

The road to Rotorua is beautiful - first through farmlands - fat sheep and alpacas, black and white cows in lush green grass, the strange, tall flat hedges that serve as wind breaks for the kiwi fruit orchards. Then the scenery becomes wilder as you pass through the gorges on the way to the rivers, and finally, back to thw flat plains as you reach the lake.

It was a patchy day weatherwise, with cloud, sun and wind playing tag with one another. We walked around the Kuirau thermal park - I am fascinated by boiling mud, and then visited the Museum. It was built originally as a bath house and there are remnants of the crazy "electric" baths, the equipment and the pipes. We also watched a movie - complete with moving seats and bangs - about the volcano that destryed the pink and white terraces.

After checking into our motel we spent a couple of hours out - Pete fished and I read. We'd hoped to go to the Hamurana River mouth on the lakew but it had got so windy, we decided to go to the Ngongatha stream inland. Lots of cars at all the Anglers' Access points - all the locals were out fishing on this first day of the open season. A dad arrived with his blonde haired daughter - about 3 or 4 years old - and they set off down tghe strwam together. Unfortunately, the fish also seemd to know it was 1 December and had hidden - pete didn't see a single fish.

The next morning was mizzly - perfect fishing weather - but not not great for sightseeing, so I joined Pete on the Ngongatha road while he fished. This time he saw fish, but none of them took his fly or paid any attention to him.

The way home was raining but interesting as we took the long road home. At lunch time we stopped at Lake Rotiti and had a meal with the Swan family - Dad - Cob, Mom - Hen, and 4 children - Cygnets 1, 2 3 and 4. Cob had very few manners - waddling up to the car and banging on the window, demanding food. Hen was little more polite and protective of her babies - shooing the greedy seagulls away with a flick of her head.

We drove through Whakathane and Te Puke on the way home. A pleasant little ramble.