Christmas, because it is rather a sentimental time you tend to look for the familiar and go back into what you remember in your childhood.' In the process of preparing family favourites or trying exciting new foods at Christmas, older New Zealand women construct self and family identities. This paper presents the New Zealand findings from an interpretive, multi-site research project exploring older women's experiences of food occupations at Christmas in Auckland, New Zealand, and Kentucky, USA and Songkran (the tradition Thai New Year) in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Narrative data were collected through focus group interviews with 16 New Zealand women, aged 65 years or over. Talk about recipes and kitchen things used, and how the foods are prepared and served revealed layers of identity work. While recipes from, and stories about, mothers' and grandmothers' homemade cooking are kept alive through doing the food work at Christmas, being a women in contemporary New Zealand allowed new identities to emerge. Identity as a family unit is formed and reformed over time by blending cultural and family traditions and remaking new ones through Christmas foods and family rituals. Significantly, the women's skilled preparation and customising of recipes for Christmas foods creates a rich opportunity for self-affirmation and public recognition. For these older women, the gift of Christmas food was like giving something of themselves.Older New Zealand women doing the work of Christmas Older New Zealand women doing the work of Christmas

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It is deep within our hearts that we have to do this." Such words reflect the potency of subjective and social meaning of food occupations for older Thai women at Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year. This paper presents the Thai findings from a multi-site research project exploring older women's experiences of food occupations at Songkran in Chiang Mai, Thailand; and Christmas in Auckland, New Zealand, and Kentucky, USA. Narrative data for this study were collected through focus group interviews with 33 Thai women aged 60 years or over as the women talked about planning, preparing, and offering food at Songkran. The women's stories reveal the centrality of carrying on ritualistic food traditions in Chiang Mai society. They must know and follow the ancient ways and recipes taught by mothers and grandmothers as they prepare themselves and the foods for going to the temple where they offer food to the monks and their deceased ancestors. Happiness comes from earning merit, doing the jobs themselves and knowing they contribute to a good and generous Thai society. Their ways are the traditional ways. Doing and passing on food occupations to their daughters and granddaughters will "serve the good traditions forever." The findings from this study contribute to the occupational science literature through documenting food occupations and their meanings for older women within one cultural group. The multi-site nature of the project contributes to understandings of occupation that transcend cultural boundaries.

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In order to look across three cultures at the meanings of celebratory food preparation for older women, researchers in Thailand, America and New Zealand collaboratively designed a derived etic method that respected each culture while allowing cultural comparison of food-related occupations. Anticipating differences in practices at each site, the inquiry broadly addressed who was involved, the tasks of preparing, sharing and offering food, and the physical and social contexts in which the tasks were performed. A seven-step process emerged with alternating collaborative action to design the study and advance analysis, undertake site-specific data collection and analysis of emic and later, conduct etic interpretation. Strategies to support collaboration, address issues relating to translation of data and analysis, and minimize domination of the western researchers are reported, along with critical examination of the method as enacted. Challenges and benefits of working as an international collaboration are identified.