It's been a typical busy weekend

With lots of food for thought.

I've been working on developing the skeleton site structure which has been a bit of a learning curve on Dreamweaver. In the meantime I've been thinking about the kinds of content to start with.

This weekend, perhaps because I was set on the path during the week, I was thinking about kitchen wise. I was smiling at all the retro kinds of kitchenware hitting the shops for Christmas and remembering the things we used to laugh about in the 80's from the 60's books that were still stashed away in our mothers piles of cookbooks. But even in the 80's we still had some rites of passage, 21st parties and weddings that were our key "setting up house time". We might have flatted before then but there was usually some event of significance in our early 20's that established our future home.

I was wondering how much that really happens today? I was doing some first steps in Christmas shopping and as I walked through Farmers had a vivid memory of my 21 year old daughter checking out the cookbooks for a new cake recipe. She is planning on going flatting next year and it occurred to me that maybe we could get her a decent cake mixer for Christmas. (Piece of woman wise trivia - check out the power rating when you buy a mixer - if you use it for anything heavy like biscuits, you can strip the gears of the cheaper ones) She was a bit surprised when I suggested to her - it's one of those things she just takes for granted in the kitchen, and hadn't really thought about missing.

Those 60's lists we laughed about in the 80's included the lists of what you needed to set up a kitchen. I'm not sure that is such a bad idea having discovered just how much that takes just recently. I think that could be quite a cool section for our new site - the basics of what you need to set up a kitchen and choosing quality kitchen ware.

This one is for Kate....

A couple of days ago I was just about to leave work when I got chatting with Kate - cant quite recall what started the conversation but somehow it got onto my web plans. Anyway as she was listing the things she thought would be useful she told me the story of how only just recently she had learned the importance of ICE COLD water for making good pastry. One of the wise women in her family had showed her.

I told her that story reminded me of my colleague Hilary a couple of years back, who shared with us over morning tea, that she had discovered the tip that you should stir baking powder before you use it. Kate had never heard this before - and I was bit bemused because this useful bit of information can be found (along with many others) along the bottom of the pages of that great New Zealand institution - the Edmonds Cookbook.

Later than evening I was telling my daughters about my discussion with Kate and they too expressed surprise and a certain level of indignation that such useful pieces of information were being denied their generation (although Ana did feel quite virtuous about the fact that she usually shakes the baking powder before she uses it)

Tonight I was looking for a recipe and ended up tidying the bookshelf. I happened upon my old Edmonds cookbook and would you believe - at the bottom of the page it was open to - was that important little snippet of knowledge so many of my Gen Y and millennial friends felt deprived of. I must have a look (and will update you) to see if it is still in the new editions. I remember feeling quite upset when I discovered that, rather than remaining a sacrosanct institution, the recipes are actually changed on a regular basis in the Edmonds book. Mine is still old enough to contain such classics as Spanish Cream and Marshmallow Shortcake!

So here, from a well-used and smudged 1978 Deluxe Edition, is the famous baking powder tip...

To begin at the beginning....

First there was the chatting with my daughter and her friends about "nana crafts", cupcakes, and sewing. Then there was the dream of a shop where all those things could be bought together and shared.

There was the dinner conversation ... a conversation that touched on many things but included some one-on-one between me and our hostess on the topics of childbirth and breastfeeding. I had just that day taken a risk on a presentation on a parent perspective on ICT and education which I had ended with a historic clip from 1965 with a voice over interview of my son interviewing his grandad. And an earlier presentation on websites had experienced a minor sidetrack as we discussed beautiful children's books.
Then I went out to visit my sister - who runs a great local store and cafe almost but not quite in the middle of nowhere. There is handmade soap, local art, groceries and ...lattes!

And I wondered - where have all the wise woman gone? Where does this generation go to learn the skills that were once the domain of frugal, crafty older women? Where do mothers who may only have one or two babies get supported and comforted with the pragmatics of experience? Where do they hear the wider story which once were de-cried as old wives tales.

When I write and edit, when I structure information I draw on the experiences of my own family and the hundreds of families I have worked with in voluntary and employed capacities. And I am constantly testing it against "is this real?" "will it be meaningful?". Without meaning to I have become one of the "wise women"

And because my skills lie in web and information I decided today to create a space - a wise woman space - for women to share and learn from each other.

Sonja