Crispy Kale… and Angulimala!

For today’s Wednesday Workshop, I chose the famous Buddhist story of Angulimala.  Knowing the boys in my group this term, I thought they’d find a story about a fierce bandit brandishing weapons very appealing 😉  As the story is so violent, I thought I’d better create a milder version, suitable for the primary school age group.  I didn’t want to be responsible for nightmares about murderers and necklaces made of severed fingers!!!

Last night, M drew fantastic pictures of Angulimala (pre and post meeting Buddha) for the children to colour.  I loved the “embellishments” that the children made to the pictures.  A couple of boys drew lots of swirling black smoke around the head of the ‘robber’ Angulimala and then golden light around the head of Angulimala the monk.  Apparently, this was to demonstrate the state of Angulimala’s mind (black smoke = troubled/suffering; golden light = calm/positive).  I was very impressed.  These kids are only 7!

Leon Angulimala

As usual on a Wednesday, Lil’ L wanted spinach pancakes for dinner.  As I didn’t have any spinach left, I made regular pancakes and filled them with pieces of roasted sweet potato, roasted garlic and pine nuts.  To make sure he had some greens, I roasted half a bag of kale to make ‘crispy kale’.  This was meant to be shared by the whole family, but by the time I sat down for my dinner… the whole lot had been munched!

Crispy Kale

We’re all loving “crispy kale” at the moment.  When we stopped having dairy at home, I needed to make sure we increased our intake of other sources of calcium.  Kale is a true “super food”, packed with calcium and other good stuff.  I looked on the web for inspiration of tasty ways to serve kale, and kept coming across American recipes for ‘kale chips’.  I decided to have a go at roasting kale and was amazed to find how deliciously crispy it turns out!  It tastes very similar to the ‘crispy seaweed’ that we get in our Chinese takeaways.  Our kale intake has gone from one extreme to another this year… a bag of kale used to languish at the bottom of the refrigerator, used occasionally to make ‘5 veg mash’, but now we’re going through 1-2 bags a week!  Lil’ L absolutely loves it.  It’s a great way to get kids eating their greens!  The recipe can be found here.

Monkeys and Ducks

For this afternoon’s Wednesday Workshops, I chose a re-telling of the Jataka Tale ”The Monkey King’.  On You Tube, I found footage of adults and children at an NKT Festival re-enacting the tale in a very amusing way.  I thought it would be fun to show the children the NKT’s version, then we could re-enact the tale ourselves.  I quickly drafted the tale as a play suitable for the age group I’ve got this term (5-7 year olds), grabbed the laptop and mangoes and half walked / half ran to school (tight for time as usual), lugging my ridiculously heavy bag up and down the hills (this is my exercise for the day). 

The children seemed to love the play.  During play time, a few of them started to make costumes and props and they’re hoping to perform the play in front of their class.  I was very impressed with the reading skills of the children; there was one Year 1 boy in particular whose reading and acting skills blew me away!

It was swimming lesson night for Lil’ L and his friend Lil’ S.  On the way, I stopped to post a letter at Batheaston post office… and discovered 4 mallard ducks waiting to cross the High Street!  There were cars coming from both directions and a bike speeding down the hill.  I jumped in the road to try and stop the traffic and let the ducks cross safely.  The ducks weren’t paying any attention to my lollypop lady hand signals so I ended up dashing behind them and herding them across the road.  The guys outside the pub cheered and gave me a clap.  Cheeky things. 

As always on swim night, Lil’ L wanted spinach pancakes for tea with roasted butternut squash and pine nuts.  I thought I’d experiment with the filling tonight and make a white sauce.  Lil’ L took one bite, burst out crying and shouted “THIS IS RANK!!!!!”  It did make me chuckle as I’ve never heard him use this expression before… or look so disappointed with his dinner!  I think it was the mountain of wholegrain mustard in the sauce that did it for him.  Needless to say, I won’t be publishing the recipe.  I, on the other hand, loved the sauce and ate it all up 🙂