Cara – Te Atatū Peninsula
The meal that I shared with someone would have been yesterday. We did a family dinner which was a big Island feed. My partner is Sāmoan, but plastic-Sāmoan so they don’t get the island feed very often.
So I requested his mum to do it for us. There were about 15 of us together sharing a nice Samoan Island feed of corned beef, chop suey, green bananas and taro. It was awesome, and I finished it off making pineapple pie. My mother-in-law prepared it; as she is Samoan. I personally think that she’s lost the whole traditional thing. I guess phasing it out with European food; pastas and pizzas and whatnot. So, I think she thoroughly enjoyed it and she documented everything and put it all up on the family Facebook page. It was a good few hours of preparation, but we loved it. Everyone loved it. We were all super-full; all had to have a nap after. That’s quite traditional; having a nap after a massive big feed.
Humanity is sharing, I think, in a community. I know that there’s a Facebook page about sharing excessive amounts of fruit that drop down, and just putting it out there, instead of having to fork out heaps of money, and instead of food going to waste, everyone can help out and just come over and help themselves – not be greedy; just sharing.
It’s definitely good to sit down and be a family; getting off devices, because devices just take over everywhere. I always find that my kids just want to sit down and have their dinner while looking at the computer or watching something. So I like to sit down, sit outside, get out into the fresh air, stay away from electronic devices and just sit there and talk about our day. It doesn’t happen very often, because we’re all so busy, but I enjoy it. They’re distracted, so they’re not looking at what they’re supposed to be doing. Half the time they don’t even eat their food, because they’re too busy switching to this screen and changing to his YouTube video. You’ve really got to pry them open and try and squeeze out everything. Otherwise, they’re just pre-occupied with watching stuff, which is consuming. I guess that’s just the modern kids.
My kids are a blend; they’re quarter European, Māori, Samoan and Dutch. We don’t actually consume any Dutch meals, and it’s a rare treat for us to get any Samoan meals. I guess out of convenience, my kids have kind of been brought up eating European food – convenience food. So heritage-wise, it would be awesome – I do try and push onto them to try as much stuff as they can. Hāngi-wise; we have that now and then. That’s a real treat. I try and try, but I guess because I say that I am quite plastic Māori-wise, I’ve kind of lost all that. I guess that’ll be something we’d learn later on, hopefully. I personally don’t know much Māori, and we don’t have a Marae, and I don’t always prepare traditional Māori food.”
