Dinner in New Zealand
In our trip around the world, we've been spending time in New Zealand this past week. Along with the usual map work and reading about the country, we've done some art projects and eaten some food.
The art projects were not our most successful. We looked at some Maori koru art, and then tried to make our own. The instructions I was following were a little vaguer than I usually use. That's my excuse. Also, just for future reference, if you are doing a project with oil pastels, and you want the black paint to be resisted by the pastels, do not use acrylic. Either it adheres to the pastels, or you have to dilute it so much that it doesn't turn your white space to the degree of black you had hoped. Here are the less-than-spectacular finished projects.
Our dinner was much more successful. We made a Pineapple, Chicken, and Kumara (sweet potato) salad. It was a salad with lettuce greens, tomatoes, and cucumbers, as well as poached chicken and boiled sweet potato. On the side was a pineapple salsa. Everyone ate it up, though not everyone enjoyed the salsa. There was much sweet potato eaten.
To go along with it, we made Maori fry bread. It's fried bread, so it's good. There was none left. Because fried bread...
The hit of the evening, though, was the pavlova we made for dessert. A pavlova is a baked meringue base, topped with whipped cream and fruit. We used kiwis since we were studying New Zealand. I don't normally like meringue, but I really did love this. I'm sure it will make more appearances on the dinner table in the future.
During dinner, we listened to an album that TM found for me of Kiri Te Kanawa singing traditional Maori songs. This worked out particularly well because all week we had been reading Maori folktales which were collected by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in a book called, Land of the Long White Cloud: Maori Myths, Tales, and Legends. It's a lovely book, and everyone has been enjoying it. What I like are the introductions she writes to each story about her memories of hearing it as a child.
To finish up New Zealand, we are still going to watch Whale Rider (we've already read the book), and there are a couple of other picture books we will read which focus more on the English culture of the country. But before we can do that, we first have to get through K.'s bone graft surgery on Monday morning. We are due at the hospital at the bright and early hour of 6:30 am. The good news about that is it means he is first on the surgery schedule. I'll keep the FB page updated as to how things are going.
The art projects were not our most successful. We looked at some Maori koru art, and then tried to make our own. The instructions I was following were a little vaguer than I usually use. That's my excuse. Also, just for future reference, if you are doing a project with oil pastels, and you want the black paint to be resisted by the pastels, do not use acrylic. Either it adheres to the pastels, or you have to dilute it so much that it doesn't turn your white space to the degree of black you had hoped. Here are the less-than-spectacular finished projects.
G.
L.
G.
H.
K.
R.
Our dinner was much more successful. We made a Pineapple, Chicken, and Kumara (sweet potato) salad. It was a salad with lettuce greens, tomatoes, and cucumbers, as well as poached chicken and boiled sweet potato. On the side was a pineapple salsa. Everyone ate it up, though not everyone enjoyed the salsa. There was much sweet potato eaten.
To go along with it, we made Maori fry bread. It's fried bread, so it's good. There was none left. Because fried bread...
The hit of the evening, though, was the pavlova we made for dessert. A pavlova is a baked meringue base, topped with whipped cream and fruit. We used kiwis since we were studying New Zealand. I don't normally like meringue, but I really did love this. I'm sure it will make more appearances on the dinner table in the future.
During dinner, we listened to an album that TM found for me of Kiri Te Kanawa singing traditional Maori songs. This worked out particularly well because all week we had been reading Maori folktales which were collected by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in a book called, Land of the Long White Cloud: Maori Myths, Tales, and Legends. It's a lovely book, and everyone has been enjoying it. What I like are the introductions she writes to each story about her memories of hearing it as a child.
To finish up New Zealand, we are still going to watch Whale Rider (we've already read the book), and there are a couple of other picture books we will read which focus more on the English culture of the country. But before we can do that, we first have to get through K.'s bone graft surgery on Monday morning. We are due at the hospital at the bright and early hour of 6:30 am. The good news about that is it means he is first on the surgery schedule. I'll keep the FB page updated as to how things are going.
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