APANUI School students are putting their green fingers to the test, designing outdoor classrooms in the hopes of winning $10,000 to make them a reality. The school beat hundreds of other entries to make it to the final round of the TREEmendous competition. “We are really pleased to have made it through to the final […]

DESPITE having never competed in a beauty pageant before, Reon Mahalia is confident about her chances of taking out “Miss Rotorua”. “I get a little nervous about speaking on stage, but if I be myself, and allow myself to be myself then I think I have a good chance,” said Miss Mahalia. The 21-year-old has […]

WITH video shops closing across the country, the term “end of an era” is not a cliche but a sign of the times. Whakatane Video Ezy owner Nigel Hastie said his plan to keep the store open was quashed more by the way the industry did business than dwindling numbers of customers. “The thing is […]

A WHAKATANE man has been sentenced to 36 months in prison after swindling over $400,000 from naïve investors. Tyler Rawiri Tetera appeared in the Whakatane District Court on Wednesday charged with seven counts of obtaining by deception, impersonating police and theft of a car. Through his then legitimate car buying and selling business, Tetera came […]

Across my kitchen table by Rosemary Sloman

THIS is the time of the year to be preparing culinary gifts for your foodie friends, or family you will spend your end-of-year celebrations with.

Further to last month’s article with two lemon-based recipes, this preserved lemon idea is another way to make use of this fruit that is so plentiful at the moment.

Preserved lemons are so easy to make, relatively expensive to buy and oh-so-good to add into all of those delicious chicken and fish dishes. Though you preserve the whole fruit, you just eat the softened peel. They can even be finely sliced into your favourite coleslaw and added to roasted olives. Sensational.

Our abundant op shops often have lovely-shaped jars for a gold coin that will look sunny filled with this delicious treat.

Moroccan preserved lemons

6-8 thin-skinned, clean lemons: new season are best
Rock salt
1-2 extra lemons
Black peppercorns, bay leaves, star anise, cinnamon sticks (all optional)
Boiling water
Olive oil (optional)

Prepare the jar by making certain it is clean and dry. Place it in the oven to sterilise, if necessary. Wash the lemons.

From the stem end of the lemon, cut almost to the tip in quarters so that the lemon is held together by the tip. Insert one tablespoon of rock salt into each lemon and close tightly.

Pack into the jar with a tablespoon of salt between each layer of lemons. Add whatever flavouring you like – peppercorns and bay leaves or cinnamon and star anise, and perhaps a teaspoon or two of smoked paprika. It’s not an exact science.

Squeeze over the juice of two-to-three lemons and top with slightly cooled boiled water.

Top up with a little olive oil. Top the jar with the skin of one of the squeezed lemons and seal.

Store in a cool dark place, for four weeks until ready to use. Gently shake the jar daily for the first week to help dissolve the salt.

To use the lemons: Remove one lemon from the jar with a fork and rinse under running cold water. Remove the pulp and discard. Separate the lemon into quarters and use as directed in recipes.

Store in the fridge after opening.

-Contributed

THE creative talents of Opotiki woman Louise Pickford have earned her the chance to see her work modelled on an international stage.

Louise has been named as a finalist in the 2018 World of Wearable Art, the prestigious annual event held in Wellington that attracts entries from designers worldwide.

As one of 65 New Zealand finalists selected, with a further 83 international finalists, Louise says she now has to keep details of her entry under wraps until the event takes place in Wellington later this month.

“I can tell you, though, that I made it out of recycled woollen blankets that I plant-dyed, using things like walnut and feijoa leaves. It’ll be in the open section of the competition, and it’s a two-model outfit.”

She says receiving the good news while on holiday recently was exciting. “I was in Berlin for my nephew’s wedding and I got the news on the day of the wedding.”

But she very nearly missed it. “I knew an email was due and I had been watching for it, but nothing arrived so I was thinking ‘oh well, that’s that, I didn’t get in’.”

But as entrants had been advised an email would come regardless of their outcome, she says she thought she’d better check. “I rang the organisers and they said to me, ‘I think you better check your junk mail,’ and there it was.”

It’s not the first time, Louise’s creations have brought her recognition. She was also a finalist in the event years ago when it was still being held in Nelson, and she has succeeded in capturing the eye of judges in events closer to home too.

A strong supporter of Fibre and Fleece, the biennual event held in Opotiki, Louise has entered several times over the years, winning various accolades including a first in section for an entry she sent in from Japan. Living in Osaka at the time, her entry was a dress made from woven Japanese paper, named Osaka ku,.

Louise describes herself as a kiwifruit grower – a creative one. “I manage our family kiwifruit orchard, but I’ve got five sisters, and all of us have always been creative.”

Growing up in Opotiki, she says the years that followed school saw her embark on a number of creative endeavours. “I ran a pottery business in Opotiki for a few years, and I also did a textile design degree at Massey.” A stint spent working as a props screen printer

in the production unit for hit movie, Lord of the Rings followed. She then left for Melbourne where she undertook a residency with the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, indulging another of her passions. She moved to Japan to teach English for four years and then came home.

“I’ve always dabbled in a lot of different creative pursuits, though I’m not always so good at seeing everything through,” she says.

“I’m addicted to life-drawing, and I also have a big new tapestry project under way.”

Inspired by a recent five-day tapestry weaving course she attended in the hills of Tuscany, Louise says she’s putting her newfound skills to the test.

With a number of friends and family accompanying her to the World of Wearable Art event, Louise says seeing the entry that brought her “moments of great desperation, and moments of triumph” finally revealed will be lots of fun.

World of WearableArt takes place in Wellington from September 27 to October 14 and is expected to attract attendance of around 60,000.

By Lorraine Wilson

-Contributed

RICE  goes a long way and there are many ways to make it a bit more interesting.

This recipe can be made using any sort of fresh or tinned fish or even shellfish. You can use tined tuna, mackerel, or, for that special touch, a tin of shrimps or salmon.

Fisherman’s Rice

Serves four

1 onion
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons oil
1 packet dehydrated fish chowder soup
1 cup of rice
½ teaspoon chilli flakes or curry powder
Salt and pepper to taste
1 to 1½ cups cooked fish

Make up the soup mix to two cups. Dice the onion and crush the garlic and fry in the oil using a large pan. Stir in the rice until well coated with the oil, add the soup, chilli flakes and salt.

Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes or until rice is tender and the liquid is all but absorbed.

Add the fish taking care not to break it up too much by over-stirring. Allow to heat though and adjust seasoning.

Serve sprinkled with either chopped parsley or dill.

by Budget Advisory Service

– Contributed

ON July 31, 1971 Mary Gundry WiRepa, 67, died in an Auckland hospital seven days after suffering a subarachnoid haemorrhage.

It is not know whether the haemorrhage was caused by repeatedly inhaling the turpentine she cleaned her artist brushes with, the cadmiums she moved around on her canvas with her bare fingers or a malady no one could have foreseen?

Mary’s home in Opotiki, now 53 Wellington Street, was full of art from the floor to the walls, from the bedrooms to the halls and in the chock-a-block garage.

In her day, access was down a long driveway off Bridge Street. Her house and garage were bulging with oil paintings destined for either a gallery or a commission overseas. If Mary ran out of board she would paint on the back of a finished painting.

It is not unusual to peel the old paper back on a framed work of art to find another. Where, then, did her extensive cache of paintings go after she died?

Mary took up the brushes around 1957 when she was 52 after submitting a still wet painting at the eleventh hour in the Opotiki A&P show. It gained first prize and she was encouraged by friends to develop her talent.

She had been selling small paintings from the converted corner room shop of her home in Whanarua Bay and, as the shop gradually became a stopping place for tourist buses, she developed a reputation for her work. She was selling to travellers from mostly England and Canada.

Mary, known to be a charming, modest and hospitable person with a love for music, had planned to attend the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland when she was 19, however, she chose to marry Romio WiRepa instead and they brought up nine children and three grandchildren.

She credited her talent to her grand uncle Arthur Gundry, who had been tutored by Joseph Jenner Merrett. Arthur won a scholarship to travel to the Royal Academy of London, carrying with him letters of introduction from Albin Martin, Sir George Grey, and later from Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (sister of Florence Nightingale), who found him to be “a fine young man of promise”.

He completed probation by first attempt in 1864, successfully achieving a silver medal with his first exhibition. Mary was very proud of him.

Whanarua Bay to the East Cape were areas that Mary depicted often. The colourful scenery was depicted in some of her best paintings. Between her, Ivan WiRepa jr, her grandson, and daughter, Alice Bernadette Higgins, affectionately known as Lilybud, they were producing at least three finished paintings a week at one stage.

A trained eye can see the expressive fingered clouds by Mary and the finishing done by Alice in paintings produced in the early 1960s. Both women featured in New Zealand’s Women’s Weekly in 1963, Mary being brightly dressed.

In the same year, only six years after she took up the brushes, Mary was painting for an American syndicate. Her contract was to produce 100 paintings to be packed and sent overseas.

Coupled with her deep desire to learn and her incredible painting speed, she would produce up to 40 finished paintings in six months, excluding many rejected. This led to an increased sale of her paintings and national recognition.

She learnt to drive a car while in her 50s so she could travel the narrow and often hazardous roads seeking new scenery for her work.

After 14 years she had won the art competitions she coveted, had privately studied under numerous art tutors including Mrs Spittal, a talented Opotiki artist from whom she received unfailing advice and help.

She had the exhibitions she desired and had painted for sizeable overseas commissions, starting as a traditional landscapist and moving into op art – an art style that uses optical illusions.

She resonated with the romantic belief that God emanated through nature, endeavouring in later years to capture the living spirit of the sea and trees.

Mary exhibited at the Willeston Galleries in Wellington in 1964 and her work is included in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s collection. She also has an impressively large painting in the Auckland City Art Gallery, Otoko and is featured on Wikipedia. Her paintings hang in Waiaua, Te Kaha and Pahaoa maraes as well as in private collections throughout New Zealand.

1 of 8

By Silvana WiRepa

– Contributed

CHILDREN and educarers from Waiapu Kids Homebased Bay of Plenty early childhood care service made their annual visit to the Whakatane Fire Station on Friday.

Fire chief Ken Clark talked to the pre-schoolers about the importance of every household having an escape plan and ensuring visitors to the home know how to get out and where to meet.

The children all got to see the fire engine up close and most were brave enough to sit inside.

Extra learning and understanding came when there was an actual call out, and everyone watched the procedure from a safe distance.

Visiting teacher Dianne Bulled says they visit the fire station around once a year.

“As well as many of the children having a fascination for fire engines, it is also important for the pre-schoolers to see the firemen in their full protective gear and with breathing apparatus, so that they don’t hide from them in an emergency situation.”

1 of 5

HELP will soon be closer at hand for sufferers of chronic fatigue syndrome when a Tauranga-based support programme – the first and only of its kind in New Zealand – expands into Whakatane.

Complex Chronic Illness Support, a small charitable organisation supporting sufferers of the syndrome and associated conditions, has been running its Toward Wellness Programme in Tauranga for the past two years. The series of 15 workshops that make up the programme teach the patient how to best manage the condition through rest, stress management, nutrition and restorative movement and have been endorsed by Doctor Ros Vallings, New Zealand’s leading expert on the condition. The success of the programme has led to enquiries from around New Zealand.

The support group’s Whakatane field officer, Elizabeth McGougan, says the organisation is working hard to make the programme accessible to other regions, with Whakatane first on the list.

Born and bred near Taneatua, Elizabeth, a former Trident High School head girl, will be instrumental in presenting the workshops. All things going to plan, she says the support group hopes to have it running in Whakatane by next year.

Once known as Tapanui Flu, the condition has morphed its way through a number of names before settling on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or its clinical name, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or ME. Sufferers of the condition have endured a long battle for recognition. There is still no formal laboratory test so diagnosis is achieved through a process of elimination.

A complex and multi-faceted condition, symptoms include profound fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, pain, sleep disturbance, extreme sensory sensitivities and can result in some sufferers becoming bed-bound by its severity.

While little was understood about the condition until the early 1990s, Elizabeth says targeted research over the past couple of decades has helped with diagnosis and the development of treatments. Importantly, she says, “underlying biological abnormalities that accompany the condition are being identified,” enabling practitioners to identify the condition in isolation of other conditions that typically accompany it, and of similar fatigue-inducing illnesses such as fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis and depression.

The difficulty with diagnosing the diseases has led to much misunderstanding, Elizabeth says. But those who suggest, as is typical, that the illness is not actually real, that it is psychosomatic, “are far off the mark”.

As a sufferer herself, Elizabeth says dealing with the crippling effects of the condition as well as people who don’t understand the disease, are all too familiar. The former television and documentary producer spent 18 months in bed after developing ME in 2005.

“I still have it but I’m now well enough to work part time,” she says. After completing the Towards Wellness Programme in 2016, Elizabeth was offered a position with the support group and is now training to assist with delivery of the programme.

Mandy Dawes is one of the people delighted with plans to bring the programme to Whakatane. Having moved to the Eastern Bay earlier this year, she travels to Tauranga fortnightly to take part in the workshops.

“I’d like to see it accessible to all CFS/ME sufferers,” she says. “It’s been absolutely incredible for me, even though I’m only in the early stage of the programme. It’s been a total eye-opener in terms of understanding the disease and finally accepting my diagnosis instead of fighting it – about finally accepting it.

Elizabeth says Mandy is a personality type common in ME statistics – “driven, hard worker, perfectionist. A definite type A. We do see people who have left high-powered careers due to developing ME.”

For Mandy, looking back on the 10-to-15 years preceding her illness, she now views her former lifestyle as “crazy”. As a commercial baker for most of her career, at times managing up to 30 people, as well as owning a café with her former husband, Mandy spent those years regularly working 12-to-18-hour days, averaging three to four hours sleep a night. “Bakers always work ridiculous hours,” she says. “I’d be at the bakery by two o’clock in the morning, and when I finished in the afternoon, I’d head to the café to help out there and then do the office work.”

“I could always do it, though I always had health issues. I always have,” she says, referring an additional autoimmune disease she has long had, as well as a more recent battle with depression. “I was always tired and there was always pain and feeling sick, but I’d somehow learnt to keep on operating through it. Mum’s nickname for me was Mandy-Tired.”

Mandy says doctors she saw always put her pain and illness down to overwork, her tiredness down to depression, or always “something due to something else”. There were so many complexities she says, no one could see the overall picture – that something else was wrong.

A self-confessed perfectionist and “people-pleaser”, Mandy was still managing to do “all the little things” she liked to do for her friends, the favours of last minute birthday cakes, the food for a friend’s special celebration. “I’d never say no. I’d never let anything go. I always kept going no matter what because I never like to let someone down”.

Until 2015, she was able to keep on top of everything. Having given up her bakery job and the cafe, Mandy was running a cake-making business from her Hawke’s Bay home. “I’d thought, okay, I’m sick, and it might take a while to come right. I’ll just run this small business at home and everything will be fine.” Mandy did run the business for four years, but her health issues continued to plague her, and eventually escalate, until everything tumbled down.

“I rarely got out of bed for the next six months,” Mandy says of the “crushing tiredness,” pain, and sickness that finally overwhelmed her. “I did nothing but rest for three months and it just got worse.” Later that year though she was barely able to look after herself, she brought her beloved mother, terminally ill, to come to live with her. “She really couldn’t look after herself any longer, and nothing mattered more to me than Mum.”

Mandy says she is so grateful for the year that followed, which was the last year of her mother’s life. “Yes, it was hard in so many ways, but caring for Mum, cooking for her and trying to make her happy actually helped me as well. I’m grateful to have spent her last year together. Maybe some things are meant to be.”

Two years on now, Mandy continues to battle with her illness.

“It’s so hard for people to understand ME,” she says. “You can tell someone you are tired, but people really don’t understand what that tiredness is actually like. It can be so heavy and oppressive that it’s literally difficult to breathe. There is joint and muscle pain, pain everywhere, and everything else that comes along with it.”

Trying to go out to meet a friend, Mandy says just to have a shower can sometimes be out of reach. “On an average day, it takes me about an hour and half if I’m washing my hair. I need to stop and rest, my arms get so sore, and by the time I’m finished, I’ll be exhausted and need to rest before I can get dressed.

When I’m finally ready and a friend sees me, she might say something like hey, you’re looking so well. Why does it take you so long to get ready?”

Dealing with other people’s perceptions of her illness is one of many things Mandy says the Towards Wellness Programme is helping her with.

“I’d become paranoid about people thinking I was a hypochondriac,” she says. “I wasn’t getting any better and I was starting to even wonder myself.” Always trying to fight off the fact that she was ill, Mandy always tried to keep up a front, often finding herself compelled to get the dishes off the bench if someone was coming or to keep the front garden weeded and looking tidy. I’d try to do these things even when I could hardly stand, because I couldn’t bear for anyone to think I might be lazy.”

She says taking part in the programme is changing many things for her. “I’m learning not to feel guilty when I need to rest. I’m learning to come to terms with the fact that I have this illness and need to accept it and focus on finding the best path towards getting well.”

And she says it has helped her to deal with the familiar suggestions she so frequently hears; “you need a distraction, you’ll be better off when you get back to work,” and the age-old “toughen up and get on with it,” or, Mandy’s favourite, “you don’t look sick at all”.

“It’s an incredible programme,” she says. “It is helping me to finally stop fighting the illness and just focus on getting better. It’s given me hope.”

By Lorraine Wilson

Grey matters by Ruth Gerzon

LIKE many older people, I fear a loss of mind or bodily function as I get older, knowing that some form of impairment becomes more likely as I age.

The reality is that 60 percent of people over 65 have a disability. If not a permanent state, injuries in ageing bodies take a frustratingly long time to heal.

There are guides in the journey that may await us. Many people in our communities have lived with impairment, intellectual or physical, since birth. They have learned to adapt and still live good lives in spite of the double whammy of both their impairment and the discrimination they face.

A word or two on language is needed here. Impairment means the actual physical or intellectual loss or damage. Disability refers to not just that, but also to the many barriers society creates that disable people with impairments.

Often those barriers have a greater negative effect than the impairments themselves. The lack of accessibility, discrimination by employers, the impatience of people who do not give others time to communicate, all these contribute to exclusion.

Over the past year, older people and younger ones with experience of disability have begun to work together in our district to make it more inclusive, more age and disability friendly.

They find they have much in common. This journey began last year with the Whakatane District Council’s Ki Mua project to develop a common vision and priorities for our district.

Leadership was shown by members of the Whakatane branch of People First, a national organisation run by and for people with a learning disability. They initiated well attended meetings for disabled and older people to ensure their views could be voiced and heard in this new, district-wide vision.

Many ideas were mooted: improvements to kerbs and toilets, an easy-to-read council website, more pedestrian crossings, accessible buildings, shops, playgrounds and beaches, and more opportunities for employment. But, most important of all, participants wanted a way to ensure their voices would continue to be heard in our district.

A Disability and Age Friendly Advisory Group was launched at the end of 2017. In other communities such groups give advice only to councils, but ours is independent.

It is available to advise anyone, from shopkeepers to police, councils to clubs, on how to get things right, to ensure people who experience disability can play a full part in life in our district.

Through this joint venture between younger and older people experiencing disability, Whakatane has joined the Age Friendly Communities movement begun by the World Health Organisation in 2006, and promoted here by the Office for Seniors. Having an age-friendly community makes good economic sense, both for tourist enterprises and for other businesses.

I have often heard older people complain that shops, where they would like to spend their money, are just not accessible. No wonder some disabled people move towards online shopping.

An initial project of the new advisory group is designed to ensure that everyone can get around our communities safely, with improvements to some of the kerbs that are dangerous for people using mobility scooters or powerchairs.

A submission to the council’s 10-year plan asked for a blue line to be painted on the pavement to indicate safe ways for young children and people on scooters to travel, from the hospital to Kopeopeo to town, past the schools.

These routes would then have priority for improvements to kerbs, and more pedestrian crossings and islands on busy roads.

The council’s response was positive, suggesting this project be included in the walking and cycling strategy. They also noted that the group would need to consider the balance between access for those with disabilities with those wanting recreational activities. Interesting.

I guess we should give the benefit of the doubt to whoever penned that sentence. I am sure they didn’t really mean to imply that disabled people do not themselves seek and deserve recreational opportunities.

Seriously though, the disability community has long experience of the lack of priority given to their needs when they are subsumed under a strategy for the able-bodied.

Given the rise in the numbers of people with impairments, and those using mobility scooters, surely they deserve their own strategy and funding? A letter has been sent to the council to this effect. We await their response.

– Contributed

FORMER Kawerau man Jono Smith has been propelled into the international media spotlight after footage of a frightening incident involving a grizzly bear appeared on social media.

Twenty-one-year-old Jono, who currently works as a safety kayaker for a white-water rafting company in Canada, was kayaking ahead of a raft on British Columbia’s Elaho River, when a grizzly bear “charged” off the bank towards him.

Capturing the event on a go-pro, a client aboard the raft later uploaded it on social media, causing a frenzy of media interest that has Jono amused.

The story has aired on television channels and newspapers throughout Canada and the United States, as well as in parts of Europe, and in New Zealand.

“Some of them managed to track me down,” Jono says, “and some worked out which rafting company I worked for and contacted them. It’s incredible,” he says, laughing off his new-found celebrity.

Known locally as an avid and competitive kayaker, the former Tarawera High School student left Kawerau two years ago, studying outdoor education and working as a kayaking instructor in Murchison.

“But it’s winter in New Zealand,” he says, “and the off season, so I’m working the Canadian summer season”.

In his role of safety-kayaker for the Canadian white-water rafting company, Jono says his job is to paddle ahead of the rafters to “choose good lines for them” and keep an eye out for hazards.

Grizzly bears, he says, are not typically expected to be among those hazards. “There’s plenty of black bears in this part of Canada so it’s not uncommon to see them and they’re not typically aggressive”. But he says sightings of grizzly bears in the region are extremely uncommon.

“It just doesn’t happen,” he says. But on this occasion, it did.

Footage of the event that took place on the Elaho River late last month shows a grizzly bear swiftly swimming towards an unsuspecting Jono. Those aboard the raft are heard yelling and calling, but Jono says he didn’t hear them.

“We were in a wide-open valley and it was also windy. I was kind of hearing something, but it didn’t register until I heard a whistle blow.” It’s a sound he says everyone in the rafting industry is “highly tuned to”. It’s a sign of imminent danger.

Jono says he looked up to see a grizzly bear heading straight for him. “It doesn’t look like it in the video, but it was only three or four metres away. It was staring straight at my eyes and it looked like it was coming to eat me.”

Known for their highly territorial and aggressive behaviour, Jono says he had no doubt of the danger he was in. “I paddled as fast as I could, and once I got further away, it just stopped chasing me.”

He says conversations since with his fellow workers have focused largely on “all the what ifs. What if I hadn’t paddled away fast enough?”

But while the grizzly was clearly aggressive, Jono says it was probably a case of “getting me out of its territory”.

He says an elk carcass on the bank of the river had most likely drawn the bear to the river.

“We’d seen turkey vultures fly off from the carcass as we got close.” But Jono says after he had passed the spot in his kayak, clients in the raft behind had seen two ears pop up from behind a log. “It obviously didn’t want me in its territory.”

Or, as his colleagues now joke, the grizzly “just wanted a taste of kiwi”.

While the experience has been one the young Kawerau man hopes he will never repeat, his enthusiasm for his role in the rafting world remains. “It’s an awesome job,” he says.

The Elaho river is a 70-kilometre river running through the Squamish Valley between Whistler and Pemberton in British Columbia. Well known for both white-water rafting and kayaking, the river flows through a spectacular and popular gauntlet known as Elaho Canyon.

“It’s similar to some rivers in New Zealand, only much bigger, and much colder,” Jono says. And, of course, there are bears.

Footage of the incident can be viewed online by entering grizzly charges kiwi kayaker.

By Lorraine Wilson

A STUDENT’S science fair project gives vegans a few more food options while also being good for the environment.

Trident High School year 10 student Matthew Reihana-Asquith scooped second overall at the recent Bay of Plenty Science Fair in Rotorua, as well a special food prize and first in Junior Science, for his project.

“I wanted to find out if aquafaba, which is the brine that chick peas and other legume seed beans are kept in, works as an egg substitute, Matthew says. “I tested it with a range of different products … I made cakes, ice-creams, an omelette, a custard, meringues and lots of different things.

“I wanted to test it for structure and taste, and the qualities were just as good and the aquafaba did work reasonably well as an egg substitute.”

His aim was to see if aquafaba could mimic the properties egg has as an emulsifier, binder, raising agent, thickener and glazing agent.

“It only failed when used to make a custard, to be used as a thickening agent, and it didn’t work to make an omelette when it was the sole ingredient,” he says.

“For the others it worked. The cakes were just a bit crumbly and the egg [recipes] were more structurally integral compared to the ones made with aquafaba.”

Aquafaba came up trumps for taste. “When I did sensory tests, people preferred the taste of the aquafaba ice-cream to the egg ice-cream.”

Matthew says with concerns raised over farming practices, aquafaba was a good alternative to eggs. “We have this precious liquid being poured down the drain; we could be using it instead of eggs.”

“It can be used for pretty much everything – all baking products, apart from products where it is the sole ingredient.”

Aquafaba can be refrigerated for seven

No-egg pikelet recipe

Aquafaba Pikelets
(Adapted from Edmonds’ Cookery Book pikelet recipe)

This pikelet recipe uses three tablespoons of aquafaba, obtained by draining the brine from a can of chickpeas. This quantity is equivalent to one egg.

1 cup flour
1tsp baking powder
¼tsp salt
3Tbsp aquafaba
¼ cup sugar
¾ cup milk

Sift dry ingredients together. In another bowl mix the brine and sugar with a beater.
Add the brine mixture and milk to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
Heat a non-stick frying pan and drop tablespoons of mixture into pan. When bubbles start to burst on surface of pikelets, turn over and cook until golden.

kathy.forsyth@whakatanebeacon.co.nz

HOLIDAYING aboard a container ship might not be for everyone. The lavish food and entertainment of a typical cruise will be absent. Sunhats will likely be replaced with hardhats for strolling the behemoth vessel’s lengthy decks. And deckchairs? You should probably take your own.

But for 72-year-old Ohope man, Trevor Gregory, none of these things mattered during his recent container ship holiday experience. Not the lack of company – he says the vessel’s five officers and 15 crew was plenty. Not the nightly displays and singing and dancing showgirls – he says karaoke in the crew recreation room was fun. And not even the special security drills he needed to take part in to ensure readiness for potential pirate attacks.

For Trevor, his recent 18-day voyage from Singapore to Malta onboard 131,000 tonne freighter, CMACGM Musca, was near perfect. “Brilliant,” he says, “I’ll do it again”.
Long-time sailor, Trevor, is at home on the sea, his life having largely been lived around yachts, working and living in the South Pacific. But finally parting with his yacht two years ago now, he says the sea was starting to beckon.

“I’d drive past those big freighters at the port at Tauranga, and think, one day I’m going to sail on one of those.” And that day came earlier than expected.

Planning the latest of his many worldwide adventures earlier this year, Trevor figured he could fit that container ship voyage in perfectly with the rest of his plans, and he started investigating.

Contacting a company who specialise in container ship travel, Trevor booked passage on a ship that would sail from Singapore, passing under the bottom of India and across the tip of Somalia, before making its way to Malta.

“It was the Suez Canal that clinched it,” he says. Long on his bucket list of experiences, CMACGM Musca would be sailing up the Suez Canal, and would provide Trevor with the long wished-for experience.

“I really didn’t know what to expect, whether everything would go to plan, or not.” he says of his arrival at the port in Singapore. But after working his way through a series of documentation, he was then transported to the wharf and taken the “considerable distance” to CMACGM Musca.

“I couldn’t believe how big the ship was. It was huge,” he says. Arriving on board, the size continued to surprise him. He says accommodation was in an eight-storey “house” sitting atop the deck, providing cabins for the ship’s five Eastern European officers, 15 Philippine crew, and, on this occasion, Trevor. “My cabin was bigger than my whole living room at home,” he says. “It was very comfortable.”

While the ship can accommodate 10 paying passengers, on Trevor’s sailing, he was the only one. “I’m not sure if it would suit people who like to have a lot of people around them all the time. You did have to look after yourself most of the time and just keep yourself happy, but I don’t need a lot of people so that wasn’t a problem for me”.

The next two-and-half weeks were “marvellous”. Reading five books during the voyage and spending time outside “watching the sea go by”, Trevor says a lot of time was also spent with the crew.

“Being the only passenger, I pretty much had free rein to go anywhere, so long as I told them where I was going, and I wore a hardhat and hi-vis,” he says. “I’d walk right around the ship a couple of times a day, one-and-a-half kilometres, but it was a working ship, 347 metres long and carrying 11,000 20-foot containers – you had to be a bit careful.”

With his interest in boats, Trevor says he also spent part of each day on the ship’s bridge or in the engine room, and just chatting with the crew.

“We really got to know each other quite well,” he says.

And night time wasn’t just for sleeping either. “The Philippine crew members love karaoke, so there was karaoke in their recreation room most nights. And there was always someone’s birthday or a barbecue on deck or some other occasion and they always invited me. We had a lot of fun.”

Contrary to the expectations of some, Trevor says travelling by container ship is not generally cheaper than flying. “The cost depends of the number of days of the voyage, and each day is a holiday, so it’s not expensive if you look at it like that.”

“You can fly anywhere in the world in 24 hours,” he says. “But you fly over so many interesting places. I like to see and experience them.”

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By Lorraine Wilson

The Wife

• Drama; Cert M, contains offensive language and sexual references; 1hr 40mins
• Starring: Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Annie Starke, Max Irons, Elizabeth McGovern, Harry Lloyd
• Director: Björn Runge

WHAT is not to love about Glenn Close?

She has mastered the art of showing, not telling, and in this film, she shows off that skill to perfection.

After almost 40 years of marriage, Close’s character, Joan Castleman, has become a master of taking care of her husband’s needs. She thinks of everything, long before he even realises that he has the need – where his glasses are, when it is time to take his pills and what he should be eating.

In fact, she thinks about her husband Joe, played by Jonathan Pryce, and his needs before she tends to any of her own.

And while it makes for an unhealthy dynamic, it has kept their marriage going through two kids, a grandchild, bouts of infidelity, her husband’s stellar career as a great American novelist and up to the pinnacle of his career, winning the Nobel prize.

But, what should have been a celebration and an opportunity for them to look on what they have built together with pride, instead, becomes a chance for Joan to confront some uncomfortable, deeply-suppressed truths.

The Wife interweaves the story of the couple’s youthful passion and ambition with a portrait of an almost 40-year marriage and its trauma of compromises, secrets and betrayals.

8/10

karla.akuhata@whakatanebeacon.co.nz

KO tenei te wiki o te reo Maori – or this is Maori language week. The theme is “Kia kaha te reo Maori, which follows on from last year’s theme, “Kia ora te reo Maori. “Kia kaha” is well known in New Zealand English with its correct Maori meaning of “be strong”. Therefore the phrase […]

EASTERN Bay motorcycle dealers, ACC, police and Bay of Plenty Regional Council are getting behind motorcycle awareness month, offering free bike safety checks and upskilling classes. “September is important because we know it’s when 50 percent of motorcyclists get their bikes back out again after winter,” said ACC senior injury prevention specialist Jessica Davis. Ms […]

Christopher Robin

• Comedy-drama; Cert G; 1hr 44mins
• Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Jim Cummings, Peter Capaldi, Mark Gatiss, Brad Garrett and Sophie Okonedo
• Director: Mark Forster

HOT on the heels of last year’s Goodbye Christopher Robin, this film is destined to be forever confused with the former one.

While that was a drama about the real Christopher Robin Milne, who bore the brunt of being the namesake of the fictional character, this is a fantasy about the fictional character, now grown up.

The plot is embarassingly similar to Robin William’s 1991 film, Hook, in which Peter Pan has grown into a joyless workaholic father and must reconnect with his own childhood to learn how to be a good parent.

Ewan McGregor plays the title character, who, after years of boarding school, a world war and a demanding job, is in danger of becoming detatched from what is important in life – his wife Evelyn (Hayley Atwell) and daughter Madeline (Bronte Carmichael).

His childhood friend, the simple, gentle and honey-obsessed Winnie the Pooh – must stumble out of the 100 Acre Wood, where he was abandoned 30 years earlier to save him.
Jim Cummings, who has voiced Pooh in many a Disney animated movie, is brilliant as the bear.

Children, and anyone who has ever enjoyed Winnie the Pooh characters, will love the animated characters of Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Kanga, Roo and Owl who the film depicts perfectly and are incredibly cute.

They might find the main live action story a bit dull though.

Mark Gatiss livens things up a bit in a comic turn as Christopher’s dreadful boss, but otherwise I just found myself marking time until the next fun, animated character appeared.

It wasn’t a long wait, fortunately.

8/10

diane.mccarthy@whakatanebeacon.co.nz

BACK in the day, a mere five decades ago, I was a perennially broke student with hippie tendencies. True to type, along with other peculiar habits, I grew beansprouts. This harmless and possibly even beneficial practice has just reappeared in my life once more.

I am the proud owner of healthy and tasty sprouts which I add to salads, sandwiches and soups. It’s the ultimate easy winter gardening. I don’t even have to go out in the rain to tend my crop.

However I have just heard that this fetish may not be enough to keep my muscles from wasting away. Apparently older people need even more protein than teenagers if our bodies are to repair and replace our ageing tissue.

And we must keep our weight up as a low body weight gives an increased risk of osteoporosis. That means, if we fall over, we are more likely to break a few bones.

The font of my new knowledge is the New Zealand Nutrition Foundation whose sights are on older people.

As a non-profit national organisation, I am confident they wouldn’t promulgate information designed to promote any one product. They assure me that they only disseminate the findings of scientifically proved studies. This is not fake news.

Maintaining muscle mass is essential to my continued independence so, with my ears tuned to these messages, I absorbed some other worrying information.

The foundation’s nutritionist, Anna Mrkusic, told me that older people can no longer rely on their bodies to let them know when they need food or drink.

The signals that tell us we are thirsty or hungry drop away as we age. Luckily mine are still intact. If anything I love food a bit too much, but I will stay alert to this issue over the coming decade.

I also skimmed the Government’s 179-page background paper on these issues, and found the less than startling information, that older people have lower levels of activity and eat less. This is another reason why a nutrient rich diet is important.

I also learnt, from a neighbour, of a trick to make this easy and palatable: apparently mixing milk powder into fresh milk adds nutrients without changing the taste.

Most studies show that we both enjoy our food more, and eat more, when we share our meals with others. So ensuring older people have company at mealtimes will not only add to the quality of their life, but also support their nutrition.

Many people have been catapulted into learning about the importance of nutrition through facing health challenges. Some, like new Whakatane resident, Chinglin Lee, extol the virtues of “superfoods” such as micro-greens.

The Nutrition Foundation, however, focuses on the old fashioned and cheaper vegetables such as carrots, cabbage and broccoli, saying these will suffice, as long as we have our five plus a day.

Mind you, some now say seven is the magic number. That’s a bit of a worry. If the magic number gets even higher I won’t have room for cakes.

Clearly there is work to be done to keep us healthy and independent as we age. The foundation initiated workshops in Auckland for older people who come together with a facilitator to talk about nutrition, cook and eat together.

They now plan to bring this programme here, in partnership with Eastern Bay Villages so we can take advantage of their training and resources.

We are now seeking people (of any age) who love cooking and care about nutrition, willing to volunteer as facilitators. If that sounds like you, or someone you know, then do get in touch.

In the Eastern Bay we already have similar workshops for people with diabetes that are proving effective.

Caroline Davies, a registered nurse at the Primary Health Alliance, facilitates these. She says some participants are inspirational, making significant changes to their nutrition and activity levels, gaining control of their diabetes and lowering their blood pressure. There may be hope for us yet.

All this research has heightened my awareness of healthy eating, and I hope readers might like to consider their own food habits and those of older people in their lives. I will continue to grow beansprouts but with more protein rich meals, and certainly won’t stop indulging in doughnuts.

When it comes to those, I endorse the 1915 music hall lyrics sung by Marie Lloyd: A little bit of what you fancy does you good’.

By Ruth Gerzon

-Contributed

IN seven days, Eastern Bay police have attended eight car crashes. “It’s worrying as this shows a trend for a gradual increase from week to week for some time,” said Eastern Bay road policing manager Ray Wylie. “We’re not only seeing an increase in crashes but an increase in alcohol-related crashes. We have a poor […]