5/18 You've Been Served

Every Monday night Jess teaches a cooking class here at the cafe. A bunch of middle aged and older women congregate here to learn how to cook a vegetarian 3 course meal from start to finish. The girls and I usually sit in the other room and hang around the fire and take our place at the table to enjoy the finished product. The first Monday I was here the meal was ratatouille, polenta, and some fancy bean dips. Tonight it is winter sushi. I had the option of sitting in on the class, but the fire had me caught in its tractor beam so I had Henriette fill in and document it with my camera.

The best part of the evening aside from the food is sitting around the dinner table with a bunch of Kiwi women and listening to a variety of ridiculous, mundane and hilarious conversations. Last week there was talk of beans making you expel gas and this week we touched on the ethics of tourists smuggling in potential harmful critters. Tonight one of the older women was talking about one of her American wwoofers that brought in raw, untreated wool from the states in hopes of spinning it and making a hat. The two old women talked about how dangerous it was to bring raw wool into NZ in the fear up it carrying some parasite or disease that could take down the New Zealand wool industry. I tried to assure them that American put so many parasites on everything, so the chances of something harmful being alive were slim. One of the women, an obvious European descendant responded with a "damn foreigners!" where I casually inserted a, "So what Maori tribe are you from?" Then the conversation died...