The Birthday Cake

Scene 1 - The Kitchen

The concept was simple - make a Barbie cake for Nina’s 4th birthday.

Nothing was simple.

The cake did not turn out nearly as nicely as I’d expected or wanted it to. I needed to bake two cakes to get the right size and shape and the first recipe was not great, so I had to find a new recipe for the second cake. The shaped cake stuck to the pan - despite greasing AND flouring it, so I had to redo that. Then, when I inserted Barbie, it turned out that the hole I’d cut for her was just too narrow for her wide hips (she really needs to do something about those wide hips!) and she split my jolly cake. I patched it together with blueberry jam.

I was managing fine and dealing with all the hurdles, but why wasn’t it easy? Why weren’t all the steps falling perfectly into place? Why was it all a struggle? I get so irritated with myself. Another minor detail to frustrate me - because of the bright bright yellow of the “butter” I used, the pink crumb coat I made was an odd orangey colour. Not what I wanted. I know the recipe said white butter, but we just don’t get that here.

Come time to decorate the cake, the rolling was easy, but transferring the delicate icing over the cake... aaagh. Again I’m irritated and this time I’m snapping at Nick and the kids. Bear in mind, though, my actual experience of using this icing was limited to what Google searches revealed. Oh, and video demonstrations I found on You Tube. In the end I did it. Not to my standard of perfection, not so that I was pleased and proud of my effort, but its done.

But then the icing didn’t harden. It’s supposed to take 20 hours to completely dry out and harden, but even after a few hours I could tell it was not going to harden. Thanks Oh Humid Hot Thai Weather, thanks very much. I directed a fan on it so it could dry out overnight. Nick thoughtfully switched it off before going to bed and the next morning the icing was just as soft. Deep down in my heart I knew that it looked absolutely fine - but even deeper down I was convinced that it was not as it was meant to be.

And then....Emily looked at the cake. She tilted her head this way and that, examining it and considering what could be better, how she could help, how could she improve her little sister’s cake. She saw the heart themed decorations and “bingo” she knew just what to do. She fetched her heart shaped erasers from her store of precious goodies and stuck them into the cake. Unfortunately they didn’t stay stuck, they all fell out, so she stuck them in deeper and with more force. Again and again and again. Mmm, not working all that well she decided, and gave up.

Well, I don’t know for sure that this all went through her mind, you see I was in a prayer meeting. What I do know is that a cake that was - to my mind - less than perfect was now wa-ay less than perfect.

No matter how many prayers I’d prayed just minutes before, when I saw that cake, my reaction was decidedly un-saintly. Enough said.

After a bit of soul searching and debriefing and trauma counselling, I recognized that the cake was for Nina, and that Nina would love it despite all it defects, and that it would make Nina’s party special. That was my intention and that was what I’d achieved, so all is now well with my soul.

Scene 2 - The Home School Room

Jonty is trying to do his Maths. We’re doing a new concept. He’s managing fine and dealing with all the hurdles, but he’s not finding it easy. Its a strain and a struggle. He writes an answer down and sees its wrong - he groans, he sighs, he bangs things around, he rubs it out and corrects it with a great performance. He hits his head, he tries to shake his brain to get it to work. He struggles and strains some more. He’s frustrated and disappointed. I tell him he’s doing well, he’s making excellent progress. He tells me that its not perfect. I tell him that he’s learning. He feels he should be able to do it all already. I tell him other kids his age also struggle with this - he tells me that he’s just not good enough, he should get it right first time.

Frankly, I don’t know where he gets this attitude from.

Buns and Eggs

What do you get when you pour boiling water down a rabbit hole?

Hot cross bunnies!

It was Good Friday yesterday - we ate hot cross buns. And on Easter Sunday we’ll have Easter eggs. As we were preparing for our children’s Easter meeting last week, I thought it would be nice to talk about the symbolism of these Easter traditions. A nice little story, I thought, about the meaning of the eggs (new life in Christ) and the hot cross buns (representing the cross of Jesus).

I got to wondering how these particular traditions came to be, so I did what I always do: I googled it. I was interested, but - come to think of it - not all that surprised to discover that the origins of both the beloved Easter eggs and those delicious spicy, sticky hot cross buns are ... pagan! The Easter Bunny and Easter eggs had to do with fertility rites... I mean it makes sense: what else do bunnies and eggs have in common?

As for the hot cross buns - the cross probably represented the changing of the seasons, to do with the solstice. People believed that hot cross buns protected them from evil spirits and could cure them. In ancient times people would hang them in the kitchen.

The Easter traditions we have pre-date Christianity.

In fact, not just the traditions, but Easter itself. It is possible that Easter actually gets its name from Eostre who is the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. About 1800 years ago, the first missionaries arrived in Europe eager to tell others about Christ. As people converted to Christianity they took the existing spring festivities which already celebrated life over death, and were about the same time as the Jewish passover when Jesus was crucified, and made it a Christian festival.

Beautiful!

Today we celebrate Easter, eating our hot cross buns, remembering the cross that Jesus died on - we remember the sacrifice he made for us. And we eat the Easter eggs, grateful for new and eternal life that we have in Christ.

So now, the next person who questions us for re-investing some of the Thai festivals with Christian meaning will be asked if they’ve ever eaten an Easter egg. Hah!

Now all that remains is for me to share my recipe for hot cross buns - its not the most traditional recipe, but at least all the ingredients are available in Lampang!

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup warm water
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon instant powdered milk
1/4 cup white sugar
A pinch of salt
1 egg
1 egg white
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
3/4 cup dried raisins
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons water
1/2 cup icing sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons milk

DIRECTIONS:
1. Put warm water, butter, skim milk powder, 1/4 cup sugar, salt, egg, egg white, flour, and yeast in bread maker and start on dough program. At the beep add currants and cinnamon. (or after the kneading is done).
2. Punch down on floured surface, cover, and let rest 10 minutes.
3. Shape into 12 balls and place in a greased 9 x 12 inch pan. Cover and let rise in a warm place till double, about 35-40 minutes.
4. Mix egg yolk and 2 tablespoons water. Brush on balls.

• Bake at 190 degrees C for 20 minutes. Remove from pan immediately and cool on wire rack.
• To make crosses: mix together confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and milk. Pipe a cross on each cooled bun.

A Good Tradition

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I’m sorry to say that when I returned from South Africa after my Granny’s 100th birthday party and showed my dear children the photos of this momentous occasion, the children shrieked and ran away, and had bad dreams for several nights afterwards.

Apparently Great-Granny is scary. In fact, old people are scary. Old people are defined as people with white hair and lots of wrinkles and not too many teeth. The kids recently watched “Tangled” and the scariest part of the whole movie was... the old lady, not because of anything evil that she did, but what she looked like.

In many ways my children have adopted Thai ways as their own, but clearly not in the area of respecting the elderly.

Thai people respect older folk - to them it doesn’t matter what old people look like, how many wrinkles they have, or whether or not they are losing their marbles (or their teeth). They value old people because they have lived their lives, they are experienced. The elderly are to be learned from - they can teach the younger generation how to live good, happy and meaningful lives... they know more about the meaning of life than the younger generations. Naturally one gives them credit and gives them a place of importance in society. They are listened to. They are not argued with. They are not interrupted. They are valuable.

One of my favourite Thai traditions takes place over the Thai New Year (Songkran) when special honour is shown to the elderly. Family, friends and neighbours will visit the elderly in their homes, bring them small gifts to show respect to them, and then, in turn, the elderly will bless the younger generations. One set of family/friends will come, then move onto the next home ... the next group will arrive. And so it goes, all day. There is plenty of food, and a bit of alcohol, but mostly a feeling of warmth and good-will.

I think of my own grandmother - 100 and going strong - and her complaints that she gets “ignored” at family gatherings. I wonder how she, and my own parents, would enjoy this custom. I was telling some of the people about my Granny - the craziest thing to my Thai friends was not that she’s 100, but that she’s is in an old age home, living in her own room.

I’m not in ANY position to judge decisions that have been made about the care of my Granny, so I’m not doing that. But I do think it would be nice - one day, when old people no longer scare my children - to grow really old in a family home. In our culture we think of that as unfair, and placing a burden on the younger generation, but somehow in Thailand its not seen like that - its a privilege and an honour.

I think we can learn from that.

But perhaps I only think that because I’m fairly confident Great-Granny won’t make a move to Thailand any time soon to move in with us.

Meeting her Quota

Today I scrapbooked our holiday. I asked Emily and Jonty (individually) what they will always remember about the holiday... what were their highlights?

Jonty, after much prodding and prompting and after lots of sighs and lolling about and umming and aaahing in between, comes up with this list:

• the TV
• Plumsi
• the cabanas
• the trampoline
• swimming pool and the sea
• the fish I caught
• snorkeling.

That took about 30 minutes. It was like drawing blood out of a stone.

Onto Emily. Bouncing up and down, full of sunshine, she begins - “the friendly doggy, the nice beach with the pink shells, Room Number 6 - that was our room, the braids that I got on the beach, ice-creams, snorkeling, the nice doggy, the nice cold pool, the stones and rocks and walking on them and watching Jonty and Daddy fish from them; when Jonty caught a fish and Daddy caught two fish; the nice fishing rods, the breakfast pancakes and sausages, seeing coral under water (its so nice), the red stuff, the nice cave, it was so lovely, Evie, Abigail and Erin, Jonty’s grown-up friend that he snorkeled with, the trampoline, and swing on the rope - taking turns with Evie on the swing rope, games, the nice chocolate cake - but I didn’t actually like it so much but it looked nice; the Tooth Mouse and losing 2 teeth in one day, the market, Jatujak Market with the stones that I found and the nice soaps that I bought and the cute bunnies, oh and also the cute bunnies we saw when we went snorkeling....”

I’d been listening and scribbling notes for 5 minutes, but I had to stop her as I only have so much space available on the scrapbooking page.

There go her 20 000 words for the day. Jonty has some way to go to reach his quota of 10 000.