December Meeting – Argentina

I can’t believe we are in the end of the year and next week will be Christmas!!! These last months certainly flew by! We had a great last meeting of the year this Saturday with our guest speaker from Argentina – Laura. Thank you so much for coming and sharing a bit of your country with us. Laura talked about the language, culture and traditions in Argentina. I really enjoyed the pictures of the Gauchos  - what you may have know as the “cowboys of South America”. We also have gauchos in Brazil, so it was great to see some similarities in their costumes and the way that they deal with the cattle and horses. They also have this very traditional drink – mate, that I knew very well from Brazil. The presentation ended with a beautiful video of a couple dancing Tango! Absolutely amazing! How do they move their feet so fast? Beautiful traditional dance of the capital city - Buenos Aires.

Laura made these delicious empanadas for our lunch that was a great success among the group. Children and adults all enjoyed the baked pastry filled with mince beef. Yum!

After our lunch we headed to the Carter Observatory for our end of the year celebration where the families could have some fun together and the children could discuss the “Big Bang Theory”.  It was great to see the children interested in finding out how everything started… the birth of the Universe!  Carter has a great exhibition about the subject with videos and interactive experiences for the visitors. We all had a great time!

Before saying goodbye I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas. May this new year bring you and your family much joy and laughter. To be happy is the greatest wish in life.

Feliz Navidad!!!

Renata

Find below pictures of the day

Laura talking about Argentina

                               

Laura, Gregory and their son Francisco. Too cute!

Empanadas

Children enjoying the Argentinean Empanadas

                            

Big Bang Exhibition at Carter Observatory - Wellington

                                    

The children had fun also at the other galleries

 

November Meeting - Turkey

Thank you to all of you who came to the meeting this month and a special thank you to Marian who accepted the invite to talk about this amazing country with such an interesting history. Did you know that the Republic of Turkey was not created until 1923? And with its modernization, a language reform was also established by the Turkish Language Association in 1932 to replace words of Arabic and Persian origin with Turkish equivalents! I certainly learnt a lot and I hope you and your children did too.

It was a lovely day filled with great information, games and of course our communal lunch in the end where all the families had a relaxing time to talk and get to know each other. On the menu was Lahmucan - "a round, thin piece of dough topped with minced meat (most commonly beef and lamb) and minced vegetables and herbs including onions, tomatoes and parsley, then baked. Lahmacun is often served sprinkled with lemon juice and wrapped around vegetables including pickles, tomatoes, peppers, onions, lettuce and roasted eggplant. It is commonly referred to as "Turkish Pizza".  Yuuuummm!!  
Find the recipe in the end of this post.

 Have a look at the pictures of the day below:

Marian introducing Turkey to the group

Children watching the presentation sitting on beautiful Turkish rugs and cushions

Snacks were served during the presentation - dried apricots - a very traditional fruit in Turkey

Some words of the Turkish Language

Serious work at the kitchen! Thanks, Richard!

Wow - that's a lot of Lahmacun - what we know as "Turkish Pizza" Yum!

Rob preparing some of the lemon and lettuce to go with Lahmacun

Our search for countries begin!!

The Continents' names are put down on the floor and replicate same position as on the World Map

Children play with repositioning countries within the continent they belong to.

We also added the Equator line to divide the Earth and talked about Northern and Southern Hemispheres.  

Hmmmm... Delicious Lahmacun!!! 

                                                                                       

Please find the recipe for Lahmucan kindly given by Marian. Thank you!

Turkish Lahmucan 

This recipe will serve a family of four or five for dinner.

For the crust – part 1

• 5 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1.5 cups of water
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 20 grams of yeast mixed with warm water to activate

Combine all the ingredients for the dough in a bowl or mixer. Kneed or mix the dough for about 5 minutes and let it rise for two hours. It doesn’t rise a great deal, so don’t worry if it doesn’t do what bread does when it rises. Lahmacun crust is not like pizza crust, we aren’t after bubbles when rising.   

For the Topping – part 2

• Half a kilo of minced beef (we mince our own meat to get top quality, little fat meat)
• 1 red capsicum
• 1/2 a green capsicum
• 1 large tomato
• 1 large onion
• 3 tbsp tomato salca (pure tomato paste will work fine if you can't find salca)
• 2 tsp Pul Biber in Turkish but you may know it as Aleppo Pepper Flakes.  You can use paprika too, the flavour may alter slightly. 
• 1.5 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 – 1.5 tsp salt
• A handful of parsley.  Flat leaf / Italian parsley is preferable.  We grow our own.
• 1/5 cup olive oil

Put the capsicum, tomato, parsley and onion in a food processor and mix until everything is well ground. The consistency of the mixture should be in between a paste and sauce. Taste to see if you have the right level of heat, the mince will take the kick out of some of the spices but it’s best to add a little bit at a time to reach your own desired heat.
Combine your vegetable mix with the salca / tomato puree and olive oil. Bit by bit combine the spices to ensure you are getting the right heat for your family.  Then mix into the minced beef.   
Putting it together – part 3
When your dough has risen, start with forming little balls out of it. Mine are a bit bigger than a golf ball. Cover the balls so they don't dry out as you are batching them up.
Flour your work surface, take your roller pin and roll out your balls. You want your dough to be very thin, about two millimetres. Then, take a spoon and put the mixture on the bases and spread with the spoon. 
Pre-heat your oven until 200Cs and bake the lahmacuns for about 5-10 minutes (watch your first batch to test the oven/time ratio).  Now if you rolled them out thin, they will crisp up a bit, if they came out thicker then you can expect the colour of the dough to be much lighter. 
Serving – part 4
Squeeze a bit of lemon juice, put some salad on your lahmacun, wrap and enjoy!
Afiyet olsun!

September Meeting

In September we talked about Germany. We had a guest speaker, my friend Mai, to talk about her experiences whilst living in Germany. Mai is actually French, her husband is German and they lived in Germany for a while. It is great to hear stories about a foreign country told by a family with different nationalities. Mai took us in a cultural journey while talking about traditional customs, books, language and we listened to beautiful classical music. We also played the continent game and kids had the opportunity to find the countries in the world map and discuss the geography of various countries.

Our highlight of the meetings is our communal lunch, where we can try and taste a bit of the food from that particular country. Mai and her husband showed us how to make Spatzle A hand-made noodle that are very popular and an important ingredient of several dishes, such as Linsen mit Spätzle or Käsespätzle.   We also had frankfurter sausages. A smoked sausage made from pure pork, which is eaten hot and usually accompanied by bread and mustard. Not to be confused with the American hot dog "Frankfurter"!!

Germans are very proud of their mustard! We had a food game where the children had to guess what mustard they were having.... English? American? French? German? And they did pretty well!!

Check out some of the moments below:

Mai introducing us to Germany

Kids start the search for the Continents

Making the Spaetzle

The food game. Do you know your mustard?

English mustard? Too hot mummy!!

Lovely lunch! Thank you everyone!! And a special thanks to Mai and her family.

We are back!!

It is just unbelievable that my last post was over a year ago! Where is the time going? Last year we went to England to see friends and family and when we came back so many things happened that we didn't get back to have our meetings.... then in December we went to Brazil to also see friends and family there. We had a great time in the hot hot Brazilian summer! My husband stayed with us until New Year's but then had to come back to New Zealand. The boys and I stayed for another two months to make the most of quality time with grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunties. It was priceless! Leaving in a foreign country is a great experience for the whole family but it seems we are never 100% complete. With friends and family scattered around the world we always feel something is missing... Travelling back and forwards made me realise how lucky we are to offer the opportunity for my boys to experience all these diversity, customs and beliefs from different parts of the world but still within our one family. I guess I worked so hard to have them committed to my and their father's culture that I unconsciously put a hold on the International Children's Group. 

But the good news is that I am ready to re-start our meetings and have already been talking with some parents about a new format for the meetings and new games to get the children involved, learning and having fun at the same time!

Watch this space for more news soon.