I ended up helping to peel green bananas, scrape a coconut (as pictured), cut and cook taro leaves, squeeze coconut milk out of the coconut scrapings and then eat together with my classmates after all was prepared.
The neat thing was taking along my youngest and she enjoyed helping me to prepare the various dishes and also had a go at scraping the inside white of a coconut which does need a bit of getting used to doing it.
All the preparation was quite easy for me as I had been brought up scraping coconuts before tinned coconut milk was available. I had learned to peel green bananas for the many times my parents wanted them peeled for family or other functions.
And I'd helped my dad cook his luau out of taro leaves when I was young also he produced the recipe and I just had to follow his direction. Needless to say that it didn't last long on the table as it was a delicacy that we all liked and especially if it's cooked in a umu (earth oven) in Samoa.
It was really neat to have this cooking activity this year as I realised how much I took for granted the many things that my indigenous Samoan parents taught me growing up. I could see the difference between my youngest and how we had brought her up compared to my learnings those many years ago.
Suffice to say that we learned the importance of helping out when our parents were cooking and to follow their instructions closely without trying to get out of chores etc. now I can cook and many treats as well. Now taking a deep sigh at the end of this Samoan language week and enjoying what I'm learning together with my youngest...
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