MEALS AND MELONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 35, 11 February 1935, Page 6

MEALS AND MELONS.

MAORI HOSPITALITY,

(By F.C.J.) Though in many ways the coming of civilisation has changed the Maori people, their ways and their thought, in at least one way they have remained the same. In former times they were renowned for their hospitality, lavish almost to the point of foolishness. And if the Prime Minister, Mr. Forbes, who visited the area recently as Native Minister, recalls some of the meals he was called upon to cat during his inspection of Maori land development schemes in the Bay of Plenty, he will have memories of his feats as a trencherman and the kindliness of his hosts. The scene ie any one of the many pas at which hospitality was partaken en route. A typical native welcome has been given, and the Prime Minister and his party with him have entered the large dining hall. He might have stopped there in the middle of the morning, the middle of the day.or the middle of the afternoon—even at evening. To call a Maori meal by any other name—morning tea, afternoon tea, any tea—would never make it anything but a feast. Let ns say the stop was in the middle of the, morning. "Morning Tea." After a hot and dusty drive his party thought that a cup of tea and a scone or two would not come amiss. This is ,tho city version of morning tea* Shades of the meagre city plate of buttered scones and silver teapot! Could this be morning tea? On the table, double-tiered, and long enough to seat perhaps SO, there was literally not an available square inch on which to put another small plate of food. If this table did not groan it should have. To begin with, there was practically a whole cold roast fowl apiece. But besides there was cold roast pork, or, if you preferred it, hot roast mutton, or perhaps a little ham, or -perhaps dried eel, or still again a whole crayfish. Nor could this be eaten alone. You simply had to have at least a little of the some half a dozen different salads there prepared. And, if you wanted more, the pretty Maori girls who were hovering at your back would smilingly fill any corner of the table that had dared to become bare. The Task of Choosing. It was a task to choose. Perhaps you had made' up your mind to have a fowl's leg, a portion of* pork, about four loin chops, half a dozen potatoes, and eight kumaras. Then there was the matter of salads. On your immediate right was lobster mayonnaise, tho dressing made with real thick cream. Right in front of you was a huge plattev of beetroot. On your other side was tomato salad. Wedged somewhere between all three was a dish of lettuce—there was also lettuce salad, lest it be forgotten—and a mountain of huge tomatoes. In desperation you took tho nearest, some beetroot, some mayonnaise and a little tomato salad. You tried to get that on to your plate. They wore only ordinary dinner plates—surely ,sotno mistake" in judgment somewhere. A kumara slipped off on to the floor. "So sorry," you said to your neighbour, as you tried desperately to pick it up and to prevent the rest of your mountain of food from following it. Then you found that lie had almost done the same thing. You glanced covertly up to the head of the table, and there Mr. Forbes was manfully facing the same problem as you in the matter of choice. The Second Course. Eventually the first course came to an end. Yes, there was a second, practically as larjro. There were fruit salads and jellies, and trifle, and boiled pudding if you wanted it. There were water melons—the best you ever tasted. There were bucket-jugs of cream. There was fresh fruit—peaches, nectarines and apples, with plums and oranges at intervals. You had some fruit salad and trifle, and took about a pint of'cream. It was not the slightest use telling yourself it was piggish. Everyone was doing it! and when in Rome . . . "Will you have tea, or a soft drink?" whispered a soft voice at your elbow. And then you noticed for the first time that there were about two bottles each of the latter, with odd jugs of lemon and orange drink already prepared. But these were .only the ordinary items on the menu. Should you want to sample a few of the exotics, all you had to do was to ask for gloriously browned trout pink as salmon, caught but a short lialf-hour before in Lake Taupo. You saw what looked like kippered herrings. No, that was tuna, and very nice, too. Very nice? H-m, .well, it should be tried, anyhow. Someone asked for what looked something like lumpy tomato sauce. But you were wrong. It was a dish of kina, or compote of sea eggs. Next appeared little lobsters that had forgotten to grow. They were the famous fresh water crayfish from Lake Rotoiti. Everything Spotlessly Clean. At one pa an aged Maori-made mention of the fact that his people appreciated the fact that the pakeha did not mind eating food that had been cooked by Maoris. Not even a follower of the immortal Epicurus could have done that. The potatoes and the kumara cooked in the haangi were the best ever, while everything in every dining room was spotlessly clean. And so the day wore on. At mid-day there was another such meal. Along the road, in between times, there were water melons, pink, juicy, seductive. Meal or no meal, repletion or no repletion, guilty conscience or no guilty conscience, a piece—half a whole would be nearer correct—of melon was irresistible. A trip of many memories, the most salient will be two —meals and melons.