Dolina Wehipeihana and Jarod Rawiri
eatballs are an often requested dinner in our house. This baked version is revolutionary as there is no browning required on the stovetop. Simply mix, roll and bake. Serve these alongside my flash-in-the-pan broccoli, which is my go-to way to cook the cruciferous veg’.
1 head of broccoli, about 400g 1 tablespoon olive oil
1⁄4 cup boiling water Generous pinch of salt Pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
Chop the broccoli into similar sized florets. Peel the stem and slice into chunks.
Drizzle the olive oil into the base of a heavy-based frying pan. Add the broccoli, pour over the water, and add a flick of salt and chilli flakes.
Put a lid on the pan and place over a high heat. Flash cook for 8-10 minutes until the water has mostly evaporated and the broccoli is a vibrant green. Remove the lid and stir the broccoli.
Continue to cook, uncovered, for another 4-5 minutes until all the water has evaporated and the broccoli is tender and slightly seared around the edges.
Serve immediately. It is also quite delicious drizzled with tahini sauce.
If you planned ahead and dried herbs last summer, now is the time to use them to ward off the symptoms of winter ailments. Chop dried herbs so they’re a similar size to the smallest leaf in the mix so they steep evenly. Explore your garden for fresh herbs too – rosemary, oregano, thyme and more can be picked throughout winter.
Strictly speaking, all herbal teas are tisanes – that is, fresh or dried herbs (or bark, roots, berries, seeds or spices) steeped in boiling water and used as a beverage often for medicinal effect. Unlike tea, tisanes don’t contain caffeine.
For a winter boost infuse the mixtures below in 2 cups of boiling water for 3-5 minutes before drinking. Optional: add 2 teaspoons of dried echinacea to the fresh or dried herbs in either recipe.
This simple winter tea helps the blood flow and boosts the immune system.
Fresh herbs: 1 sprig rosemary, 2 sprigs lemon verbena, 3 sprigs thyme, 1-2 kawakawa leaves Dried herbs: 1 tablespoon each of lemon verbena, thyme and kawakawa, plus 1 teaspoon rosemary.
Store dahlias in a cool, dry place for spring planting.
Pick-me-up tea
helps clear the chest and reduces postnasal drip.
Fresh herbs: 2 sprigs peppermint, 3-4 sprigs lemon balm, 1 liquorice root teabag (Make sure the bought tea contains liquorice root and isn’t just ‘‘liquorice flavoured’’.)
Dried herbs: 1 tablespoon of each of the above ingredients.
How to look after dahlias over winter really depends on where you live, how old the tubers are and what else you want to do with the garden space.
If your soil freezes or gets sodden over winter, it’s recommended to lift the tubers so that they don’t rot. Otherwise, you can actually leave them where they are for a couple of years. If you want to move them or grow something else in the space, you can lift them when the foliage dies down.
To do this, gently dig them out of the ground with a strong garden fork, brush off the soil and let them dry off. Trim off the stems and any fine roots. Place in shallow trays of dry potting mix or sand that covers the tubers, but leaves the crown exposed. Label well with the colour, height and variety name. Store in a cool, dry place and replant in spring.
Avoid compacting garden soil. Don’t dig when the soil is wet and stand on a plank to spread your weight over a larger area.
Great soil is what’s called friable, or nice and crumbly if you rub it between your fingers. Friable soil contains air (enough to allow water to pass through, but not so much that organic matter is washed straight away).
However, walking on, or digging over, wet soil squeezes the air out and causes soil compaction that can take years to recover from.
If you need to walk across your vege beds in order to harvest, lay down planks to walk on to minimise potential compaction.
Of the many astonishing moments in Sinead O’Connor’s Rememberings, from being beaten up by her mother when she was a child to becoming America’s public enemy No 1 in 1992 after ripping up a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live, one sticks out in particular. In 1990, nine months after the release of her peerless cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U, she was staying in Los Angeles when the telephone rang. A voice asked if that was ‘‘Shine-head O Khan-er’’. It was Prince. He was sending a car to take her to his mansion in the Hollywood Hills.
After O’Connor is dropped off by a silent limousine driver, the door is opened by an Igor-like figure who leads her through a darkened house, its windows covered with aluminium foil. She’s led to the kitchen, where Prince appears, ‘‘wearing all the make-up that was ever in history applied to the face of Boy George’’. After offering to get her a drink, he inexplicably loses his temper and slams a glass down on the table.
Things get increasingly sinister from there. Prince says he doesn’t like the language that O’Connor uses in interviews. She tells him to f... off. After losing his temper again Prince suggests they patch things up by having a pillow fight, only to attack her with something hard stuffed inside the pillow.
He blocks her from leaving the house. He drags her towards his car. She escapes and runs down the road, and Prince catches up with her in his car. She dashes up to a random house and rings the doorbell, at which point this towering figure (metaphorically speaking) of American music, perhaps realising how this would look to a stranger, disappears into the night, never to be seen by O’Connor again.
‘‘Firstly, Prince didn’t like people covering his songs,’’ says O’Connor, who speaks in a low, rapid monotone with a heavy County Dublin brogue.
O’Connor is speaking from her cottage outside Dublin where she lives alone, having had four children and been married four times. She is in the hijab she has worn since embracing Islam in 2018. But with her shaven head, ever-present cigarette and heavily tattooed arms, at 54 she doesn’t seem much changed from the Irishwoman whose angelic voice, uncompromising attitude and willingness to go up against some very big forces turned her into a household name in the 1980s and 1990s.
The overriding theme of O’Connor’s memoir is of people recognising this incredible talent in her, then wanting to control it against her wishes. ‘‘And I was too young to realise what was going on,’’ she says. ‘‘When you’re successful in the music industry, you pay with your life. If you’re a pop star, you spend 1 per cent of your time making music. The rest of it is spent having your picture taken.’’
Most of all, O’Connor says, she found being famous embarrassing. ‘‘I didn’t like sitting in a hotel in Amsterdam like a hooker, spilling my soul to 10 journalists in a row. Then somebody, somewhere, is annoyed at something you said – friends, family, strangers. That was a bit weird.
‘‘And the whole being crazy thing was a bit weird too. In America it felt like they were trying to silence me by making out that I was crazy before I ever really was crazy. They did the same with rappers like NWA and Public Enemy, who they tried to silence by saying they were angry black people. Actually [we] had the same message: people should be themselves.’’
The accusations of craziness ramped up after the Saturday Night Live incident. That was because, O’Connor suggests, nobody could accept that the sexual abuse within the Irish Catholic Church she was protesting against was really happening.
‘‘It gave people in my private life, or in the music industry, licence to treat me like I was crazy,’’ she says. ‘‘But actually it impacted my life for the better because people felt tearing up a picture of the Pope derailed my career when actually having a No 1 record derailed my career. That wasn’t meant to happen, so I was tearing up my life as a pop star. That allowed me to do the thing I was born for, which was live performance.’’
O’Connor was vindicated when the widescale cover-up of abuse, such as the case of Belfast priest Brendan Smyth, was found to be so staggering it contributed to the downfall of the Irish government in 1994.
‘‘Ultimately, the only figure vindicated here is God,’’ O’Connor says when I suggest this. ‘‘People who claimed to serve God were perpetuating the abuse, not just by keeping it secret but by passing priests on to other countries when they knew what they were up to. All I did was throw a little conversation bomb – and then run.’’
The truly shocking incidents in Rememberings come in the early chapters. The third of five children, O’Connor grew up in material comfort, the daughter of a structural engineer father, but under terrible physical and emotional abuse from her mother after her parents divorced in 1975. O’Connor’s mother would encourage her daughter to steal, resulting in her being sent to a former Magdalene asylum when she was 15. You have to wonder what drove that kind of behaviour in the first place. ‘‘In a million years I’ll never know,’’ O’Connor says after a long pause. ‘‘Until recently I would tell you she was possessed but someone asked me if my mother was a psychopath and I think he hit the nail on the head. That’s the thing about my mother: she would smile as she would be cruel.’’
O’Connor survived all of this – alongside being bashed in the head by the door of a train that was travelling at full speed when she was 11, leaving her with a slipped disc and a permanent hunch – to find salvation in music. Bob Dylan was the first artist whose music really touched her. What she heard in him, she says, was a father figure.
‘‘If a marriage broke up in Ireland in the 1970s, men had no rights to their children at all,’’ she says. ‘‘I didn’t see my father from the ages of 11 to 13, and people underestimate how much young girls need a male role model.’’
These days O’Connor’s output has slowed down, although she says she does want to get out there again. ‘‘I still love performing, but at my age I find living out of a suitcase destabilising. And singers are like football players: they have a certain lifespan and I’m getting too old to be dragging my sorry arse around the world.’’
Before it is time to leave, I ask O’Connor which is the personal favourite of her albums. It’s 2007’s Theology, a relatively obscure collection of religiously inspired songs that touched on her love of Rastafarianism and her brief, surprising stint as a priest in the Apostolic Church.
‘‘I’ve studied theology since I was seven, but I left Islam until last because I was prejudiced. I believed the b ....... we’ve been fed,’’ she says. ‘‘Then I read the Quran and it felt like I had been a Muslim my whole life and I didn’t even know it... Our culture would teach you that Islam is all about treating women like s... Nothing is further from the truth.’’
Yet O’Connor is doing Islam – like she does everything else – in her own way. ‘‘Now me and a bunch of my friends are going to get s...-faced to celebrate the book coming out,’’ she tells me. Then, with a quick thanks, she’s gone.
5 7 9 10 11 13 15 17 18
Almost tipsy, with a few being obsequious (7) Unusually sore about one willow (5)
Furnace left in the family (4)
Decrepit and unhappy after the fall (10)
Raced around the back section when short of funds (8) Pub in a scorching part of Australia (6)
An examination on ocean racing, at least initially (4) Van Dyke perhaps recklessly braved losing five (5) A major or minor constellation starts to upset really serious academics (4)
Swung with a type of leather reportedly (6) Steals bits of songs (8)
Pullover behind an interminable athlete (4,6) Country of the French sailor (4)
Jack is in the church I hear (5)
The song could quieten a heartless boy (7)
19 20 23 26 27 28
1
Unable to see the friend framing the Egyptian leader, there’s only one way out of it! (5,5)
Could be a tame side (4)
Court the apprentice she’d found on the farm (8) The discovery was penalised aloud (4)
Slight pretence by the sound of it (5)
The revamped panto is available (2,3)
Almost embarrassed over the minors’ prizes (7) Sketches the grass that comes up (5)
A type of worker, down on the neckband (4-6) Argue over the rugby position attached to the boat (7) Smeared gold within twin beds (8)
The month the pair unfortunately left (5)
Upset by one wood (5)
Got around a buck perhaps (4)
The cloth on the coffin could lose its attraction (4)
2 3 4 5 6 8 12 14 16 17 21 22 24 25
A $50 gift card goes to the first correct entry opened for Barbara Brown’s Weekend Prize Crossword. Send it in an envelope with your name and address to Your Weekend Prize Crossword, Stuff, PO Box 6341, Wellesley St, Auckland 1141 or email answers to cryptic@stuff.co.nz. The competition closes at noon on Friday and the solution will be published next week. Winner of the $50 voucher for crossword 662 on May 29 is Kathy Clarke from Lincoln. Congratulations, Kathy.
1.
Who was the protagonist in a series of fictional diaries by British author Sue Townsend?
What New Zealand conscientious objector wrote an account of his wartime experiences entitled We Will Not Cease?
Which New Zealand prime minister’s daily life was chronicled by his private secretary, Margaret Hayward?
Who was the supposed subject of a forged series of diaries that sold in 1983 for more than $5 million?
What famous New Zealand author kept a journal that was published posthumously in 1927?
2. 3. 4. 5. Across:
1 Reel off, 5 Attends, 9 Okapi,
10 At leisure, 11 Double-crosser, 12 Reefer, 15 Totally, 18 Put-up job, 20 Sniped, 24 Winkle-pickers, 26 Arraigned, 27 Ro¨sti, 28 Kidneys, 29 Shindig.
1 Reorder, 2 Erasure, 3 Oriel, 4 Franco, 5 All-sorts, 6 Tries it on, 7 Neutral, 8 Shelley, 13 Emu, 14 Expensive, 16 Lie, 17 Goslings, 18 Payback, 19 Towered, 21 Pleased, 22 Dashing, 23 Spades, 25 Corgi.
Down:
DI’d seen Jarod perform in a show and thought he was super talented, but I was with the father of my oldest child at the time so wasn’t looking for a partner. By the time we met, I’d been separated a year and wasn’t interested in a relationship because I was focusing on my daughter, my dance career and being a working mum. I was super nervous to meet Jarod because I’d just seen him on stage, but he’s got such a big heart and was really friendly so we had an instant connection.
It did take me a while to let Jarod in though, because I had a young daughter and any decision I made also affected her.
But Jarod brought so much joy to my life. Going on previous relationships, I’d thought love had to be full of drama. But with Jarod it was so easy and natural – had I mistaken drama for love? Quite possibly. That’s when I realised this was what love was supposed to be like.
We work so well because we have the same values and the same interests. Jarod has a great sense of humour and is a fantastic dad – it’s that big heart of his. His only negative is he can never remember where he put his wallet and keys. Every day we deal with the same issue. But it’s a small thing, and it makes me laugh.
I proposed to Jarod because I had a thing about getting married before I turned 40. We had a big wedding up north on family land with glamping tents. Lots of our friends are entertainers, so we had performances from people like the Modern Ma¯ ori Quartet.
I had such a drama with my dress, though. I couldn’t find the fabric I wanted anywhere, but a friend found it in London. She went on Facebook to see if anyone was flying back to New Zealand and some random stranger brought it back just before Christmas. Costume designer Elizabeth Whiting had two weeks to make the dress.
Having two performers under the same roof isn’t an issue. Jarod is so laid-back it’s easy to give him feedback. I’m his biggest critic.
Being away from each other is tough and before the pandemic I used to do a lot of international travel. I always get a bit sad just before I have to leave. But we understand the mahi is part of our whole selves. It can get a bit tricky when we’re both working out of town at the same time, but we have great family support, and we support each other to do what we need to do.
JI was 23 and fresh out of a relationship when I met Dolina. I’m Auckland born and bred, but was in Wellington at drama school when we met. I saw Dolina dance in a performance and she was amazing. My flatmate at the time, Waimihi, did a bit of matchmaking and orchestrated it so Dolina came to see me in a play at Te Papa.
Waimihi made sure the two of us were sitting together at drinks afterwards. We got on really well that night, but Dolina had to be up early for a dress rehearsal, so I walked her back to her flat and caught the bus home.
She asked me out on a date – to a sushi bar – and I was too nervous to tell her I’m allergic to fish. I kept trying to find the non-fish items because I didn’t want to be like Will Smith in that movie Hitch where his face swells up. Afterwards I was starving, so we ended up going to a cafe for waffles.
We spent that whole week together before Dolina had to go back to Auckland. The thing that appealed is that she’s so easy to talk to. I knew I was punching above my weight, because Dolina is so beautiful and a 10, whereas I was probably a six. But that just made me fearless because I thought, let’s give it a go and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
Clearly it worked because we’ve been together almost 20 years. Dolina proposed to me in 2012. It was February 29, and a leap year; I was acting in Wellington, so she called me after the show. I was in McDonald’s so couldn’t talk, but she called back about 11.30pm and asked me to marry her.
I’d almost proposed twice before – once in Hawaii where Dolina was working, but she so was stressed about the show it wasn’t appropriate, and once at a friend’s wedding at Dunedin’s Larnach Castle where the bride threw the bouquet and it got caught in the wind and almost in slow motion, ended up in Dolina’s hands. I thought, I’ve got to propose now, but everyone started making jokes and the moment was gone. Dolina is really organised and practical – we balance each other out. We also have the same values when it comes to family and our communities, especially Ma¯ ori and the arts community.
Even though we’re in the same industry, there’s no jealousy or competition. We support each other fully and make it work when the other person has to be out of town. It’s hard, but this way we both get to do what we love. Jarod Rawiri (Nga¯ti Whanaunga, Nga¯ti Tu¯wharetoa, Te Uri o Hau, Nga¯ti Hine) is a 42-year-old actor who’s appeared in Shortland Street and The Brokenwood
Mysteries, among other popular productions. His wife Dolina Wehipeihana (Nga¯ti Tukorehe, Nga¯ti Raukawa) is 45 and a choreographer/producer/arts manager. They have four children aged between 9-23 and live in Auckland.