Cauliflower and Chick Pea

Foodie Friday

One of the great things about being Canadian is getting to know the many people and cultures that make up this great country.  I am getting to know a wonderful woman at work who brings with her the food culture of Indian and a dish she made a few weeks ago has inspired today's recipe from our table to yours.

Ingredients:

• 3 teaspoons Cumin
• 2 teaspoons Coriander Seed
• 1 teaspoon  Anise Seed
• a few fennel seeds
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ginger chopped fine
• 2 tablespoons garlic chopped fine
• 1 small onion coarsely chopped
• 2 medium potatoes
• 1 small head cauliflower
• 2 1/2 teaspoons turmeric
• 3 cups chickpeas
• 1/4 cup water

Directions:

1. Place oil in a deep frying pan or dutch oven
2. Once oil is hot add the cumin, coriander, anise, fennel ginger and garlic fry until the spices release their aroma
3. Add onion and cook until clear
4. Add the cauliflower, potatoes and chickpeas and water cook covered for 10 minutes
5. reduce the heat and remove the cover cooking until the vegetables are cooked
6. Salt and Pepper to taste.

Serve on Nan Bread or over Swiss Chard or Kale.

From our kitchen to yours

Grandma Snyder

© 2013-2014 twosnydergirls

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Wordless Wednesday

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2014 twosnydergirls

A Child's Writing

The Word Picture Outside My Window

I sit in the bedroom I share with my sister at the new white desk my parents have given me.  The task before me is to write a one page descriptive story for Mrs. Matsuei my grade two teacher.

The snow falling gently outside my bedroom window is back-lit by the streetlight, I put pencil to paper and begin to describe this magical moment.  I describe the silent fall of snowflakes against the black velvet of the night sky.  How each snow flake in this silent ballet willingly offers up its individuality to become part of the larger snow drift outside on the road.

I remember setting my pencil down, the sound of the furnace starting, the whoosh of warm air and the voices of my family downstairs breaking into my moment of creation.  

I look once more from my paper to the window and the snow falling outside my window.  I know that I created something good, something special, I am proud of my writing and I want to hand it in to Mrs. Matsuei 

Now fast forward a few days and I am sitting at my desk in school.  Mrs. Matsuei is standing at the front of the class holding our writing assignment.  I know this because mine is on top. 

I am charged with excitement of anticipation acknowledgment anticipating pride and approval from Mrs. Matsuei.  She tears the pile of papers with mine on top in half.

“I will not tolerate being ignored most of you did not hand in your writing assignment!  All of you will stay in today and miss your afternoon recess and you will stay until you complete the writing assignment.”

I have no idea what I wrote that afternoon.  The joy of creating word pictures, explaining my view of the world through words left me that day and did not return until many years later. 

"Not to be able to write is a learned disability" (Schneider, 2003, p. xxii)

What is your earliest memory of writing?

How are you encouraging your (grand) children to experience the joy of creating word pictures?

Encouraging them to provide you with a glimpse into their unique view out their window on life?

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2014 twosnydergirls

Reference 

Schneider, P. (2003). Writing Alone and with Others. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sisters in Spirit 2014 Vigil

Aboriginal women in 2005 came together creating the “Sisters in Spirit” initiative to draw attention to a criminal an epidemic, the alarming and increasing number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada.  And so on October 4^th each year women, men, boys and girls gather together for the Sisters in Spirit Vigil.

The Owen Sound Ontario CA vigil open with traditional drumming.

Chief Vernon Roote of the Saugeen First Nation spoke to us of his granddaughter Maisy Odjick and the pain he has lived with since September 2008 when Maisy went missing.  

Maaisy Odjick is one of over 1,181 Indigenous women and girls missing or murdered between 1980-2012, this number has increased of the intervening two years.  Chief Roote asked a courageous and socially challenging question.  

Where are the grandmother circles, parenting circles, where have community circles of support gone?  How are we as families, communities and a nation protecting our children from predators, when our children have become prey?  How are we helping our children make it through the difficult years of adolescence where they struggle to understand who they are and what they will be come?  

“We live in a country that should be reasonably safe?”  

Gladys Radek passed out pictures of missing and murdered women and girls.  We then stood one by one and called out the name on our card.  

Gladys then from the front of the room told us the woman’s story and too often it ended with “she remains missing” or “her murder remains unsolved”.  

Gladys’s spoke of Tamara Chipman her beloved niece who went missing in 2005 of highway 16 in northern British Columbia, a stretch of highway that has been named The Highway of Tears because of the number of Aboriginal women and girls that have been murdered or gone missing on it.

An epidemic of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and children

Genocide where Indigenous people have become prey.  

Take the time to visit these links, become informed and then decide what you will do next.

1. Native Women's Association of Canada
2. Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Overview
3. Highway of Tears

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2014 twosnydergirls