God’s Cuisine for Balance: In English and Samoan

By G. T. To’omata, L. R. Hicks Va’a and T. Sagaga Simanu

"God's Cuisine for Balance " is a book sharing the importance of a balanced life style and how it can be achieved by eating great healthy food for the body, getting essential good knowledge and education for the brain, and having safe loving enculturation in life. It aims to reach all young people struggling to get a good job for life everywhere.It is based on the fact that a person is made of the body, mind and spirit, and great healthy nutrition for those faculties is what makes a balance needed for quality citizens for our world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris NZ
• Release date: Feb 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781543496857

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Copyright © 2021 by To’omata, Hicks Va’a, Sagaga Simanu. 815983

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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www.xlibris.co.nz

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020917581

Rev. date: 09/28/2020

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

1. G. T. To’omata

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G. T. To’omata is a retired teacher with a career that has spanned over forty years teaching teachers in Samoa. A master of education graduate from Macquarrie University, she has five children and eleven grandchildren and still counting. Her greatest joy is in her grandchildren. She and her husband are both matai, or leaders of their respective families and villages, and currently enjoying retirement, tending to duties for these in the villages of Lalomalava and Samataitai in Savai’i, Samoa.

2. L. R. Hicks Va’a

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L. R. Hicks Va’a is a Samoan but sees herself as a regional having worked at the University of the South Pacific (USP) for thirty-five years. A master of philosophy graduate (science and Education) at USP and now retired, she had been a science teacher and distance educator programme leader who taught in Samoa, Fiji, and other USP countries. As well, her special interest in gender equity saw her engaged in the Graduate Women’s Network in the Pacific (PGWNet). She and her husband, Amituana’I Nemaia Va’a, have a nuclear family of five children and ten grandchildren, and they are both matai serving their extended families from a distance: she holds the matai title Leatuaolevao of her family in Sala’ilua Savai’I, and her husband Amituana’I is from Lalomanu, Aleipata, Upolu, Samoa.

3. T. Sagaga Simanu

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A retired Samoan Presbyterian Minister’s wife, T. Sagaga Simanu is a Master of Arts in Education graduate from the University of Auckland. She is the author of eleven Christian books.

Dedicated to all the young people of Samoa throughout the world who have achieved well after struggling in education and are able to have a good job for life. May the peace of God go with you as you venture into the world, and may the future be fruitful and safe in your expeditions.

PREFACE

In aspiring this work at over seventy years old, our initial thought was to end our years of motherhood by leaving a small contribution to the lives of all young readers and anyone who is learning about Samoan cuisine, the tastiest choices in our lifetime. As well, after enjoying some success in our work and most of God’s challenging world, conquering all problematic encounters, and eating this kind of nutrition for the body, mind, and soul, at church, school, university, travel, and family, we concluded we had achieved some form of peace and some form of balance in our lives, viz. a utopia which is worth sharing. Enjoy.

Sailau, Tili, Ruby

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

With humility in our hearts, we wish to express sincere gratitude to our parents and families who brought us up, took us to school and achieved scholarships for better education, and encultured us to loving relationships and culture. Their tireless work and prayerful loving nurture made way for our successful and balanced lifestyles.

Also in preparing for this project, we wish to thank our immediate families for their loving ongoing support in providing the expertise in technology to write it. Your prayers and care for our health at old age were most important. Our retired ageing status taught us a lesson: we should have done this work when we were younger.

Our sincere gratitude as well goes to Xlibris NZ for publishing this work with a 40 per cent discount. Very much appreciated.

Thank you, Gatoloai Tili To’omata and Leatuaolevao Ruby Hicks Vaa, for your wonderful chapters of lovely cuisine. I could not have done it without your support and input. Fa’afetai tele I lua Afioga. Fa’amanuia le Atua.

To BNZ Manukau and friends who helped fund this project, our grateful thanks. To all who will help to distribute this work, may you have peace and balance in your lives as you enjoy living in this very challenging world.

CONTENTS

About the Authors

Preface

Acknowledgement

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Mind, The Body, And The Spirit

Chapter 2 Nutrition For Physical Strength, And Knowledge For The Brain

Chapter 3 Spiritual Kai Is Essential

Chapter 4 Samoan Unique Delicacies / Simply Pacific

Chapter 5 Around-the-World Tastes by G. T. Toomata

Chapter 6 The Best From A Palagi Kitchen In New Zealand

Chapter 7 Personal Growth and Development

Chapter 8 The Use Of Chemicals In The Body

Chapter 9 A Utopia—A True Balance

Chapter 10 An Appreciation

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

We believe that God, through nature, prepared the kind of nutrition all people consume to sustain the body, the mind, and the spirit. A balance from what food we eat for physical strength, what knowledge we educate and fill our brains with, and what relationships and culture we nurture for our spiritual lives can produce great healthy, quality citizens for our world.

The purpose of this work is to educate and remind our young readers about the importance of a balanced style of life. That kind of achievement is attained not only from the healthiest food we eat, viz. God’s cuisine, but also from a good slice of psychological nutrition and spiritual enculturation and guidance. Great quality citizens acquiring healthy, intelligent, and loving courteous lifestyles are ideal for the future of every society.

When we achieve a good balance in our lives from the blessings we receive every day from the world around us, we should experience the highest form of peace that passes all understanding (Jesus), a lagimalie (TTTamasese), a nirvana (Brahman), or a utopia (Plato/Socrates), a balanced lifestyle for living this life. We have enjoyed the goodness of God by witnessing the beautiful and amazing universe created for everyone.

Like Descartes have mused in his many philosophies on duality, there are two sides in everything, the good and bad. We don’t envisage anything adverse in this compilation, just a passion to share what is beneficial for our children and, of course, the world.

Without the properly using of mental resources (our thinking and our telepathic abilities), consuming quality healthy foods for the body, and respecting the Creator from whom we acquire the breath of life and all that we witness therein, so freely granted to us all, we cannot completely enjoy God-given blessings.

A sound education in all the knowledge of the world feeds the mind, the body, and the spiritual faculties of every person. Eating good, healthy food brings happiness, contentment, love, and sustenance.

The book aims to reach the poorest individual who consumes sausages, pigs’ heads, or cheap foods most days but who earns a living instead of living on a benefit at a young age.

These authors have well served the country and world in various ways for many years, especially in education, Christianity, and their families, and they believe in the beauty of God’s universe that can be preserved well if all human beings can initiate goodness over and above the greed for power.

O UPU TOMUA

Ua saunia e le Atua e ala ile Natura o mea, mea taumafa e fafagaina ai le tino, mafaufau ma le agaga o tagata uma.