Pretty Pictures of the Fashion Show

Every year at about this time our school has a Fashion Show to showcase all the work of the Technology students. It's a great celebrate of our Faculty and school with garments made by our students, our guest retailer Where the Fox Lives, supper made by the Food students, music by the Jazz band, songs by our Pacifica group and even the staff modelling outfits. This year our Little Miss got to model a dress in the Vintage section of the show. So much excitement in our house: getting to hang out with the girls, getting hair done, all eating pizza together for tea, and dressing up and going on the stage made for some of our little girls favourite things to do. Here's what happens when you leave the camera with a 5 year old and her Villa buddies.

Someone is super excited to be waiting to go back on stage for the finale.

Its always a pleasure and an honour to work with all these great girls. 

Snap Shots of Tonga

What an amazing time we have had visiting our Tongan sister school Takaulai College in Lapaha. Such lovely hospitable people who really looked after us. We were supposed to be helping them out, but I think we learnt more from their open hearted generosity and the gratitude they have for their family lives. 

This lovely lady is Sr Kilistina. She is the super Nun who did the Tonga end of the organising of our trip, looked after us, organised which classes our girls were to help in, smoothed things out when we didn't quite know what the correct cultural way was, drove us everywhere we needed and wanted, took us to the best swimming spots and so much more. We couldn't thank her enough.  

View from the balcony on the day we arrived. I didn't realise what great gardeners the Tongan people are. Every family has a block of land in the country where they grow food for their families and for the market. Having an excellent garden is also a source of great pride.  

The indoor produce market in Nukialofa. Everything was $3 Tongan dollars. It was heavenly.

My lovely host and Tongan Colleague and friend Teisa. Staying with her family was a definite highlight. They made the girls and I so welcome. We were never hungry with all this great traditional Tongan food and they were also such great company to sit and chat with. Teisa sewed my traditional Tongan dress for me so I could be appropriately attired to attend Mass. It was such a special day.

Teisa's nephew cooking the pig the traditional way for Sunday lunch. It was delicious. They clean and baste it throughout the cooking process with coconut water from the green coconuts. 

One cooked piggy. It was delicious.

Some of the Vaka family just prior to Sunday lunch. They told me I had to eat like a Tongan, and it wasn't hard to give it my best shot with all the delicious food on offer. The Tongan kumara - it's purple like a Maori potato - was really tasty, as was the raw fish salad. In Tonga the land is never sold. It passes down the males of the family, so each generation is the caretaker for the future of the family.

My dear friend Sr Monica. Without her the trip would not have gone ahead. She nursed us through all the cultural differences and acted as out go-between with the school we visited. I love this photo because she looks so happy and relaxed to be back in Tonga.

Teisa made these amazing cakes for the Primary School assessors that visit every year to run the assessments that decide which High Schools the students go to. She gave me the recipes to try out, so I hope to blog these in the near future.

A little group of Takaulai College students. Helping, where we can, these beautiful children was the whole reason for our visit, but I think they taught us more than we did for them.

And the last picture goes to Neo. This super little man is the youngest of the Vaka family. He is actually 4, though so tall you would always guess him to be older. We really enjoyed his company in Tonga, and I know he enjoyed the attention of all those visiting Villa girls.

If you ever get offered the opportunity to experience life in a Tongan village, take it with both hands. Malo, Kingdom of Tonga, you have treated us so well.

A Cake for Wolf - Celebrating 45 years at Villa

 
We use food to mark and celebrate the many milestones that life brings us. Birthdays come and go; anniversaries, arrivals and departures all carry their own set of rituals and conventions. Though the details of these differ, the one thing they have in common is the sharing of food. Food nourishes our bodies, but also our souls. Breaking bread with our friends is more than just sustenance, it's showing kindness, taking the time to craft a special treat for someone else. 

This week it was my very great pleasure to make a cake for my colleague Wolf Just. He is a Villa legend who has taught at the school for upward of 45 years. Yesterday he told me that he was now teaching the third generation of Villa girls and many of the current staff remember him as their teacher. His teaching and story telling is legend among all those he has taught. Now 45 years is a fair while to teach English to the teenage bred and so this occasion called for a cake of some distinction. I wanted to acknowledge his subject area and also all the many thousands of photographs he has taken for the school. At the same time I didn't want the gluten free people amongst my colleagues to miss out on their helping of cake. And so I came up with the two 'book' layers of cake, the flowers and the chocolate photos and lettering. The bottom 'book' layer of the cake is Carrot and Black current. The recipe is here. I just doubled the recipe, left the cranberries out and added a handful of black currents to the mixture before baking it in a large cake tin. The top 'book' layer is a Gluten free Spiced Apple cake which I am very happy to say I adapted myself. 

Gluten Free Spiced Apple Cake

1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
100g butter - melted
2 large apples
1 cup bakels Gluten free flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda
2/3 cup walnuts - chopped





Preheat the oven to 175deg. C and line a 20cm square baking tin.

Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Using a spatula, fold the melted butter into the egg and sugar mixture.

Peel, core and chop the apples into even sized pieces.

Once the apples are chopped be quick with the remainder of the mixing so the apples don't brown. 

Sift the dry ingredients and fold them into the batter.

Lastly add the apples and walnuts and fold together.

Pour the batter into the baking tin and bake for about 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

 Take the cake from the oven and let it cool in the tin. The cake texture is very delicate and needs to be gently handled.

I made a butter cream frosting and flavoured it with orange liqueur. 

For the carrot and black current cake I made Cream Cheese frosting and added blackcurrant juice for colour and flavour.

Wolf did the cutting and speech honours in his usual witty way. Congratulations to you my friend - 45 years and still going strong.