Winter Solstice

We had a lovely evening with my parents at our house to celebrate the winter solstice and the returning of a stronger sun and longer days.

The menu kind of took on a life of its own and just "happened".

I had decided already to do a regular roast chicken meal with roasted veges and greens. However, it felt a little lacking and this is where I wanted to bring in a bit more of the Maori traditional food to honour Matariki.

So I got googling on cooking a Boil Up - otherwise known as Pork and Puha - and Doughboys - otherwise known as pumpkin dumplings. Not sure why they don't have more attractive names, but there ya go.

After googling some recipes, Simon was in charge of making the pumpkin dumplings while I got onto the boil up (although didn't have any puha in my garden so substituted in some spinach). That was the starter. Tasted good too! I did add flavouring/chicken stock though which wasn't in the recipe..and our one didn't have the tomatoes.

The main was the roast chicken meal with a dessert that Grampie made.

Some of the decorations the kids made to welcome the sun (and somewhere in my parenting I haven't told Danielle to not glue things on the walls and windows lol ;))