I like the light in this one

The New Zealand yam

The selection at the farmer's market was kind of sparse this weekend, so I took a thorough look through the produce section at the grocery store.   On the top shelf was a cardboard box filled with these bad boys.  I did a double take, because my first thought was 'OMG tropical grubs'.    There was no label on them to help me out.  A fruit?  Some sort of spice?  Maybe a tuber.  Well, that's what Google is for, I thought, and I put one in my basket.

It rang up on the receipt as 'Yam, $0.38'.  Googling told me that they are New Zealand Yams.  Only called that within NZ, though... the rest of the world would call them oca.  They're a type of potato, one of the thousands of varieties eaten throughout Peru.

I boiled my oca up in a little salted water.  It sloughed off its skin as it cooked (Eek!  it IS a grub!) and also lost its brilliant red color, ending up a golden pink.  Its texture was potato-like, but slightly sweeter.  Maybe like a rutabaga, except pleasant.  Its ends, which were a little more red than the rest of it, had a tangy flavor.

That Mom trick of licking your finger and then wiping a smudge off your child’s face? Yeah. I’ve done that too.

You learn a new vocabulary when you become a parent.  Suddenly you live in a world where you use odd words like ‘onesie’ and ‘bouncer’, and can describe your kid’s poop with ten different adjectives and a straight face. 

Parenting a toddler also requires some linguistic modification.  Instead of new words, though, this new phase involves sentence construction through the apposition of words that I never thought I’d use together.

·         Is there pee on that towel?

·         Don’t be scared; flies are happy!

·         Underwear goes on first.

·         Bath water isn’t for drinking.

·         Take that bread off your foot.

(say it fast.)

So at every grocery store and butcher shop here, you've got your...

Mince beef

Mince chicken

Mince lamb

And now, new from Arnott's...

Couch time!

A cuddly morning in Mom and Dad's bed

The flash on the camera made them close their eyes.  They were very playful and huggy.

Haka

Writing about the All Blacks made me think of another bit of New Zealand trivia for you.

Maori have a style of dance called Haka.  It's performed by groups of men, women, or children, and can be done for fun, celebration, or welcome.  The dances involve lots of posturing with knees and elbows akimbo, rhythmic chanting and slapping of chests/thighs, and facial contortions like showing the whites of one's eyes and sticking out the tongue.  A vaguely creepy version of a hula dance.

There is also a war haka.  Fur-clad, be-speared, facially-tattooed warriors performed this prior to going into battle, preferably with their opponents worriedly watching from a distance.  The odd postures and unsettling facial expressions are exaggerated relative to a non-violent haka.  Lyrics are aggressive and delivered loudly in an antagonistic style.  The idea is to suggest to the other guys that they might wanna re-think their plans, because they're dealing with some guys who are not only awfully big, but also clearly crazy and will not be fooling around with this business of fighting.

Fittingly for their game strategy of 'winning isn't enough, we want the opponents to have to be carried off the field,' the All Blacks perform a haka prior to every rugby match.  So the French team or whoever stand there on the field with nothing to do but watch while these oddball New Zealanders go off their meds in front of them.  I bet a '1-2-3-GO TEAM' doesn't quite fire you up the same way after seeing that. 

Arram's accomplishment!

It was coming down sideways

Twenty minutes before the end of my workday, the skies opened up and it poured buckets.  Curses!  It's going to be a long walk to the train station.  But it's OK, I reassured myself, I have an umbrella and a jacket in my backpack--I always carry them.

So as I packed up for the evening, changing my shoes to sneakers a la Mr. Rogers, I reached for my jacket.  Whoops, not there.  No matter, my umbrella is in here, just a little lower, just.. need.. to... find it... what the?  No umbrella either.  Yeah.  Not a good day to have been absent-minded in the morning.

It really WAS a long walk to the train station.  Oh well.  It was refreshing, yeah, that's it.  And I haven't been made of sugar for quite some time, so I didn't melt.

And on the way home, I watched a really bright double rainbow.

Sports

If you know me, you know that I don't exactly follow professional sports.  So this blog post represents absolutely everything I know about NZ sports.  And some of it may be wrong, because I am unable to summon the motivation to fact-check.  Here we go.

Soccer is called soccer here.  You can enroll kids as young as 18 months in soccer classes.

Nobody plays basketball.  If you must toss a ball in the air, you play netball.  Netball hoops have no backboards, and there are some different rules about traveling or dribbling or something.  

Rugby is THE sport.  It is a rough game played without helmets or other safety equipment, and as a result, NZ has a higher proportion of sports-related brain injuries than most other countries.  It involves a chunky oblong white ball that must be moved to either end of a field by large, fast men trying to murder each other.  THE team in NZ is the All Blacks.   They were originally called 'The Originals' (how original).  But then a complimentary article on the sports page said that every member of the team was equivalently murderous as the depraved animals playing the kill position:  they were 'all backs'.  An unfortunate typo later, the name stuck.

Cowboys!

Check out our little cow pokes!

Nothing too exciting here, but couldn't you just hug them.

The meat pie!

I can't believe I've done all those food posts without including the meat pie!  Here's a fine example.  They're always this shape, always this nice-little-solid-handful size.  Flaky crust, and fillings all soft suspended inside a gooey gravy.  This one is steak and cheese. 

Take that, kiwano.

New pajamas!

Made of 'wincey cotton', whatever that means.  Fluffy fabric, I guess?

Amiri got polar bears and snowflakes.  Arram got dinosaurs.  They were happy and hugged.  They will be nice and warm at night.

Maybe he needs a little work on his pronunciation, but he's got the right idea.

Happy Mother's Day to me!

The nice thing about having kids in school is the precious bits of junk that they make for me during arts and crafts time.  Today, the Friday before Mother's Day, they went all out.

They both cooked for me!  Amiri helped make a batch of cookies from scratch, and then he spread frosting to make them into sandwich cookies for me.   Arram's class made scones, and I saw a photo of him concentrating really hard while dumping the cup of sugar into the big bowl.  Then the treats were wrapped up nicely and proudly presented at pick-up time.

Amiri also made me an awesome card.  Unfortunately, the picture of his face fell off.  Arram found it on the floor.  As is his wont to do with his brother's art projects, he tried to eat it and I had to fish it out of his mouth.

Now THAT'S tired

We had a very big day of exercise outside.  Amiri needed to use the potty upon arriving home.  But he was so worn out...

That's right, he's asleep on the toilet.

'But what of fashion,' they asked...

Remember the rat tail, also known as the Timid Mullet? 

There are a shocking number of rat tails in New Zealand.  They tend to occur in young men of Pacific Island origin, who tend to co-localise with low socioeconomic status areas.  The rat tail is clearly one of those cross-cultural universalities, if it can link residents of the South Pacific and Tennessee.

A brush with fame

I picked up the boys from daycare as usual this afternoon.  As we left, I pressed the button to open the automatic door.  Amiri asked to be lifted up to push the button, but I told him no, that the button was only for grownups.  'When will I be a grownup?' he asked.

As we left the building I explained to him.  'Grownups are over 18 years old.  So when you turn 18, you will be a grownup.  Now you're three.  So you have 15 years to go.'

A man who was also leaving daycare overheard us.  He stopped, looked at us pointedly, and asked, 'Is your son's name Amiri?'

I was a bit startled because I didn't recognise him as one of the other parents, but said yes, and asked how he knew.  He told me that his wife works in the front office at the daycare, and Amiri is famous there.  Everyone knows Amiri's name because he's unusually polite, and helpful, and smart.  He said that he and his wife had been talking about Amiri just the other day at home, after our little boy had been paraded around the office by his teacher who wanted to show him off.  Of course, he thoroughly charmed the man's wife and they'd theorized that Amiri's parents must talk to him like a little adult in order to make such a precocious little fellow.  And when he overheard my matter-of-fact explanation, and saw a 3-year old boy with curls, he put two and two together.

I told him he'd just made my day.  My mama's heart was bursting with pride!

A fine assortment of cutes

Amiri was having so much fun playing that he didn't want to stop for his nap.  Then nature intervened, and he slumped right where he was.

And then here's our little mischief-maker, after his latest accomplishment.