This morning as I walked to the garden I was greeted with excited voices-“master mine are four”; “eh mine are ten” and so on. The true journey for the youngsters had started and learning was taking place. Many questions were being asked and answers sought. How come i have only four beetroot seedlings and yet you have ten? I give my plot more water than you. Do you remember when you missed and we helped you! Meaning that even when you are helped someone may not pay much attention to your plot as you would have done. Teaching responsibility, care, planning, time management, teamwork, community service may not be an easy job but this project is slowly rolling out the right citizen with all these virtues. Then started the struggle for water for their plots since our water tank was running low and we had to go back to the borehole. We pray for some rains.
Later on at 11:00a.m we launched our course entitled “From garden to table”. We embarked on teaching and learning how to prepare traditional dishes starting with the common one in central Uganda- The Matoke and Luwombo. Matoke are green bananas cooked in banana leaves and Luwombo is any source cooked in banana leaves and we cooked groundnut source mixed with mushroom and meat. The photos below show you a near to complete process of preparing this traditional food. In future we will provide a video explaining the steps followed. We noted that the children complained about the length of time it takes to prepare and this clearly shows how our youth today are too much in a hurry to complete anything without paying attention to quality. The process teaches patience, care and time management among others. Of course we cannot say that all meals should be of this type but at least on a public holiday your family can taste the nutritious food to supplement the junk food that is the order of the day in most families.
STEP 1: Peeling the Matoke and preparing it for the cooking process.
STEP 2: Preparing the Luwombo.
The meat is roasted first and then place in the banana leaves that have been heated at a certain temperature to enhance their strength.
STEP 3: Preparing the mashed matoke- this is halfway the cooking process.
STEP 4: The local Dinning table.
This to us was Christmas and we added a bottle of soda to congratulate ourselves for having joined the camp and wished each other Merry Christmas and a Happy new year. We have hope that the new year is the reason we came to the camp and we are preparing well for it looking after our gardens to increase on food security and livelihoods of our communities.
More:
http://seattlequest.wordpress.com/2006/02/16/how-to-cook-matooke
http://walleigh.com/success/uganda-successes-matooke-banana-farm-co-operatives
http://www.whats4eats.com/soups/matoke-recipe
i am really impressed and will provide the guidence and advise were i can as an agriculturalist who is interested in youth in development
Hilary