The Māori KETO-nic

My parents both had deprived backgrounds.  My dad more so than my mum for the most part as she was separated from her family when she was young, but they both spent many formative years in places where food was hard to come by.  They spent a lot of time starving - literally.
So food was a big thing in our house.  The cupboards were always full.  The meals we had were amazing.  
We lived in Wainuiomata surrounded by both Mum and Dad's whanau and we were all very close.  Most weekends we would be at someones house or they would be at ours.
We did everything together as a big whanau including all the DIY at each others houses.  I remember when everyone came over to lay our driveway.  That was just the way everything was done in those days.  And as always there would be a massive kai afterwards, beers for the men and a ladylike tipple for the ladies (this is the sixties folks) and us kids used to drink the dregs out of the glasses the next morning.  Did everyone do that or was it just us.

Homedale Dairy

I can't remember how old I was when my parents bought a shop in Moores Valley Road, Wainuiomata, there are some things that are clear as crystal from that time and there are others that are just the mists of Avalon.  
I know I wasn't a teenager yet when they got it, as my brothers were really young, I remember my brother Johnny serving people while standing on a Coca Cola crate.  I think he was 6 when he started working in the shop.  So was James, but he'd usually be out the back stacking crates in the shed.  (He actually witnessed someone breaking into the Bottle Store a couple of doors down once.)
I spent a lot of time in that shop.  I served people, I stocked shelves, cleaned, tidied and looked after it when my parents weren't there. We had a small takeaway space with a cabinet and a pie-warmer.  The council guys would come into the shop early in the morning to get their smoko and again for their lunch.  
I made sandwiches, filled rolls, and our specialty the big Dagwood sandwich.  I split cooked sausages and filled them with mashed potato and cheese and onion then grilled them. I made frankfurters in buns.  I made bacon and egg pies,( I remember the first one, I think I was about 12, it was for one of the Council workers, this big Maori guy who was going to eat the whole pie himself.) 
I worked in the shop before school and after school through intermediate and college, (Mr Pohe, my Maori Teacher at College used to let me sleep in his class because I was so knackered which explains my abysmal 22% for Maori School Cert)  During the week I usually worked with my dad.  We opened around 7 and did all the food prep, then I'd go to school half past eight, then get home from school at 3.30pm and work till 9.OOpm.  
As I got older I worked by myself a lot or with my mates Marie, Pauline or Donna, or  my cousins.  I did a lot of weekends by myself.  I worked a lot.
I truely hated that shop.  I still have nightmares about it.  You can't put a kid on a diet and then make them work in a Lolly Shop.  I don't know where my parents thought I was going to dredge up the willpower to not eat when surrounded by Whittikers peanut slabs, Big Ben pies and Pinapple lumps.  Grown men and woman can't do it.  
As I said, I hated that shop.  
To give a bit of context here, all kids I knew worked in the sixties and seventies.  They had chores and a lot had actual jobs.  The world was a different place.  Back then you got a crack if you didn't move fast enough and when you finished your chores you were told to get out of the house and don't come back until dinner.  Or you worked.  I worked a lot but so my brothers and sister, actually so did most of the kids I knew.