A new day for the National Day Calender?

Okay, how many of you know when National College Football Day is? How about National Hunting and Fishing Day? 

You don't? 

I think National Days of this or that are fun and I want to add a new one to the calender. Well, My calender at least, and maybe yours. More about that in a minute. But first, to get you in the mood, I'd like to mention that...

Since our household has a scientific background, we like

• National Pi Day...............March 14th at 1:59 am and 1:59 pm.  (3.14159....) **
• National Pi Approximation Day ...July 22 or better, the 22nd of July ( 22/7 )
• National Mole Day .........Between 6:02 am and 6:02 pm on Oct. 23rd. (6.02 10/23) ^^ 

And everybody seems to like

• National Talk Like a Pirate Day......September 19th   Ahhrrrrrrr.  And on that day we can say Arram's name like a pirate.  Ahhrrrrrram!

Then, there is 

• National Blueberry Cheesecake Day.................................................May 26
• National Happiness Happens Day......................................................Aug. 8
• National Chocolate Day.....................................................................Oct. 28

You can do your own research for any special days that you're interested in at http://nationaldaycalendar.com/calendar-at-a-glance/

Today, I announce, using this post, that I have nominated a new day to the calender of national days, at the website above. I want to declare that I have nominated January 17th as the official date for the 'National Eat Like a Kiwi Day.' Take note here. I did not say 'Eat a Kiwi' Day. Big difference. (I did send in the appropriate 'paperwork' to the website above. Whether it gets accepted and is added to the calender of National Days I just don't know, but wouldn't it be fun if it was?) 

This day will be celebrated from now on as the day each year when non-Kiwis everywhere can eat as though they were lucky enough to be residents of New Zealand.

Now, you probably don't know what Kiwis eat. As an aid to assist you therefore in planning a set of meals for the day, I have prepared a menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner, (don't call is supper, whatever you do) and for the two 'teas' of the day.  My menu will obviously not list things such as Weet-bix, the most popular breakfast cereal in New Zealand, because you don't have any. My menus will be things you can find on your shelves or in your local store.  

Breakfast (brekki): about 7:30 am

Baked beans on toast.  Any brand of baked beans will do.  Warm them in the microwave and pour some on pieces of buttered toast.  

Amiri and Arram love this and have had asked for it the last two days in a row. 

Morning Tea: about 10:30 am

A flat white coffee and a muffin of some sort. 

A flat white can be approximated. It's made here by adding frothed milk to expresso.

(a flat white is quite a strong cup of coffee)

Make some very strong coffee. Here is an easy way.  
Mix about a cup and a half of of cold water and a heaping scoop of ground coffee. Let is stand overnight. Filter the grounds. Fill a coffee cup about half full of this for your flat white. 

Put some milk in a sauce pan and heat it to hot, but NOT boiling.  
Whip it hard with a whisk until you have a foamy layer with tiny bubbles. Pour gently over the coffee. Add sugar to taste. It'll be close enough.

If you're a kid, morning tea might be an instant breakfast type of milk drink and fairy bread. (white bread, no crusts, buttered and sprinkled with 'sprinkles'.)

Lunch: about 12:30 pm

A toastie and salad

Toastie ingredients:  a hard-fried egg

                                 ham

                                 slices of tomato 

                                 cheese 

                                 slices of avocado 

                                 slices of canned boiled                                  beets (not pickled)

Assemble the ingredients you like between slices of any bread, buttered on the outside, and use your panini press, sandwich press, or George Foreman Grill, etc. to cook it. Jeanne uses our waffle maker to make great toasties. You could use a frying pan, but the toastie needs to be pressed down firmly.

My strong recommendation is for you to be brave and select beets as one of your choices and the egg as another.  They're not in every Kiwi toastie it's true, but they seem to be at the core of Kiwi sandwich culinary culture.  

Salad ingredients:  a mixture of salad greens found in any market

                               pieces of tomato

                               a bit of oil/vinegar dressing

Afternoon Tea: about 3:30 pm

Tea and another baked something or

Fresh fruit like a kiwi or a
Granola bar  

If you're a kid, a juice box, and/or maybe a cheese/jam fold-over

(Cheese/jam fold-over...spread a piece of bread with jam, put cheese on one half of it and fold over the other side.)

Dinner: about 6-6:30 pm

Fish and chips

Either bread your choice of fish fillets or make a batter to dip them; either pan fry or deep fry the fish. Bake an oven tray of frozen french fries.  Tartar sauce and ketchup. 

Oh, one last thing. Eat Like a Kiwi Day also means that you have to eat using the continental style of table manners. That's right, you've got to keep your fork in your left hand and your knife in your right....here, this might help...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyuC950XCTI  (it's only about a minute long)

There you have it.  A typical Kiwi menu for the day, eaten like a Kiwi. Not too exotic, was it? You've just celebrated National Eat Like a Kiwi Day.  Good on Ya.  

..................................................................................................................................................

Explanations of symbols **and ^^  (warning: boring, nerdy part of the post)

....small voice in head.................Geez Doug, what if they think ALL of it is boring?
....another voice, also in head......I know, but I'm 63, I ought to be able to write whatever I want in my own post.
....svih........Ya but, come on. This next math stuff is dumb. Nobody cares about it.
....av,aih.....Ah, but the thing is, I'm writing this post as much for myself as for anybody else..and if I like it,...
            ......And besides, Amiri was telling Arram at breakfast this morning how big a trillion is...THEY get it..
            ......THEY think it's cool...That's good enough for me...So, quiet down and let me finish this thing.....
....svih........Ya know, back in Wakefield, in the '60's, you could get beat up for liking math....
....av,aih...............yeah, I know. ...............................
....svih........So why do you talk about it now?.........
....av,aih.....Because Henderson in '15 is not Wakefield in the '60's. 
             .....Did you know some parents have criticised Summerland Primary for too much play-time at school?
             .....Many of the immigrant families here value education above all else.
             .... That NZ is ranked 4th or 7th in education IN THE WORLD (depending on which report you read)
             .....And the U.S. is 22nd or 27th, in the same reports?
....svih........Okay, write what you want, but it's little wonder your readership isn't increasing....
....av,aih.....Hhmmph...

**  National Pi Day (Pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it's diameter)

Pi Day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (3/14 in the month/day date format) since 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant digits of π.^[2] In 2009, the United States House of Representatives supported the designation of Pi Day.^[3]

Pi Approximation Day is observed on July 22 (22/7 in the day/month date format), since the fraction ²²⁄₇ is a common approximation of π, which is accurate to two decimal places and dates from Archimedes.^[4]

The earliest known official or large-scale celebration of Pi Day was organised by Larry Shaw in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium,^[5] where Shaw worked as a physicist,^[6] with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, then consuming fruit pies.^[7] The Exploratorium continues to hold Pi Day celebrations.^[8]

In the year 2015, Pi Day had special significance on 3/14/15 (mm/dd/yy date format) at 9:26:53 a.m. and also at p.m., with the date and time representing the first 10 digits of π.^[13] That same second also contained a precise instant corresponding to all of the digits of π.^{[14]  (think about that! -djf)}

We also like Pi Day because Bhai (pronounced Pie) is Arram's nick-name for Amiri.  It means 'older brother' in Urdu.  

The boys, especially Amiri like knowing about Pi because he likes math and has been learning about decimals. You may recall that for Pi, the decimals after the whole number 3, continue infinitely without repetition or pattern. Pi has been computed to over a TRILLION decimal places.  

^^ National Mole Day  (A mole is a basic measuring unit in Chemistry)

Mole Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated among chemists, chemistry students and chemistry enthusiasts on October 23, between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM,^[1][2][3] making the date 6:02 10/23 in the American style of writing dates. The time and date are derived from Avogadro's number, which is approximately 6.02×10²³, defining the number of particles (atoms or molecules) in one mole of substance.

Mole Day originated in an article in The Science Teacher in the early 1980s.^[4] Inspired by this article, Maurice Oehler, now a retired high school chemistry teacher from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, founded the National Mole Day Foundation (NMDF) on May 15, 1991.^[4]

Many high schools around the United States, South Africa, Australia and in Canada celebrate Mole Day as a way to get their students interested in chemistry, with various activities often related to chemistry or moles. (abbreviated mol )

This little jar of sea salt from Muriwai Beach contains as close as I could measure, using our kitchen scale, set to grams, to 1 mole of NaCl units. I can't call them molecules, because Na and Cl form an ionic compound, not a molecule. In this jar, there are about 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd power of salt units.  

602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 units is a lot of salt.

I have to admit that as a chemistry student at NMU, I was never enthusiastic about moles. A three hour long chem lab each week, especially when I took organic chemistry, was not my favorite way to spend an afternoon. This was before calculators were invented and all computations for how much of this to add to how much of that, had to be done with paper and pencil or on my slide rule.  

Now  that I am separated by a life time from those days, I can safely appreciate moles.  

Oh, and I'll let you know if they accept my nomination for National Eat Like a Kiwi Day. -djf

Update, moments before publishing this.  I learned after sending in the appropriate information, that if my day is accepted, I can purchase one of three packages. The cost ranges from $1,500.00 to $4,000.00. I still hope that my day is accepted, but no longer expect it to become an "official" day.  Oh well.  For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.

John Greenleaf Whittier