The right to choose how to feed your child

I was cooking dinner for my daughter when I started to write this post. Nothing particularly strange or exciting there, I cook dinner for her – and my husband and myself – most days. I like cooking, I like trying out new recipes and new ingredients. If I’d ever given the subject any thought I would have assumed that most parents of young children cook dinner for them every day. But that’s not the case in Ireland. I have very recently finished studying for a Certificate in Community Work from NUI Maynooth. The last year of study has been an amazing experience, I’ve met some great people and I now number them amongst my friends. The course was focused on Co. Meath and all the students were involved in the community and voluntary sector in Meath. I’ve learnt so much over the last year but one thing I learnt shocked and upset me greatly. And that brings me back to cooking dinner this evening. Some of my fellow students live in Mosney. They are asylum seekers. They all have young children. They cannot choose what to cook for their children for dinner or when to eat dinner. Why? Because they live in direct provision. I am ashamed to say that I knew nothing about direct provision before I met them. Oh sure, I’d heard the term and I knew asylum seekers were living in Mosney but I never gave any thought to how they lived. Mosney is in Co. Meath, its probably about an hour’s drive from where I live. But in every other sense its a world away. I didn’t grow up in Ireland (I grew up in England) so I don’t have the childhood memory that many Irish-born of my age do, of holidays at Mosney.

I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of people in Ireland have no idea what direct provision really means. It means not having real privacy. It means the management can enter your house at any time without any prior notice. It means you don’t get to teach your children how to cook. It means you don’t have any choice in what your children eat or in when they eat. It means you don’t really have much of a family life. In an Irish Times article Dr Geoffrey Shannon, Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, was quoted as saying that living in direct provision can have a “detrimental effect on children. If we look at the conditions in the centres, by any standard it could not be said to equate to normal family living. These families live in very restricted accommodation, and this can have a profound impact on the mental health of adults and children.” Yet this is how families are living in Ireland, in my county today. To go back to the subject of dinner, some of you may be thinking that surely it doesn’t really matter once the children are being fed? I would disagree. There have been concerns raised over the quality of food provided, but it has also been argued that not being able to cook and eat your traditional food is demeaning and cruel. We eat a range of food in our house at dinnertime, pizza (homemade), various Italian, Chinese and Lebanese dishes as well as more traditional Irish and English dishes, but we get to choose, that’s the important difference.

A few facts you may not know about the realities of direct provision:

1. Adult asylum seekers receive €19.10 weekly as an allowance. Children receive €9.60. This allowance has not changed since 2000.
2. It was originally envisaged that no one would spend more than six months in direct provision. Some people have been living in direct provision for five, six and seven years. Just imagine living under those conditions for that long.
3. Asylum seekers in Ireland are prohibited from working. Yet many of them are highly educated, highly trained people with so much to offer.

I am ashamed this is happening, I am ashamed I didn’t know. But now I do, and so do you. So what can you do? You can contact your elected representatives and ask what they are doing to raise the issue of direct provision with the government. You can support the campaign to end direct provision and read more about that here and here. And you can tell someone. The more people that know about the reality of direct provision, the more pressure will hopefully be brought upon the government to end this abhorrent system. Ireland has for too long turned a blind eye to the incarceration of people who did not fit the ‘norm’ – whatever the norm means. The Madgalene laundries, the mother and baby homes, the industrial schools….. please help end that list now. End direct provision.

Written in stone? Who decides what’s tradition?

As someone who is passionately interested in history, myth, folklore and ritual, I sometimes find myself musing on tradition. (I’m referring to what the OED calls its mass noun usage) Its a much used and abused word, it can be used to justify a certain behaviour or practice “well its traditional” or in an attempt to prevent sometimes much-needed change. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it thus: “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way”

So in the way that I’m thinking about it here, a tradition is a custom or belief. Some customs/beliefs/behaviours do not survive terribly long in the whole of human history. Others persist and some that are generally perceived as being old and traditional are often a lot more recent than is widely thought. For example, roast turkey is widely considered to be the traditional Christmas dinner in England and Ireland (they are the only countries I’ve spent Christmas in so I don’t feel qualified to comment on others) but my readings tell me that it didn’t become commonplace until the eighteenth century, with goose or beef being the previously traditional dish.

The reasons why some traditions survive while others don’t are as varied as the traditions themselves but I feel that each generation should feel able to pick and choose from the assortment of traditions they have grown up with. Traditions can change and develop too and some elements of any given custom or practice may alter from how it was originally carried out. I’m thinking particularly this evening of an Irish tradition of Nollaig na mBan or Women’s Christmas. Debates pop up each year around this time on various social media as to whether or not it was practiced throughout Ireland, and as to what form it took. Needless to say there is never agreement! My understanding of Nollaig na mBan is that it was a day when the men took over all the household chores to give women a rest after all they had done to make the Christmas festivities happen. Nollaig na mBan, for those who don’t know, is celebrated on January 6th – the feast of the Epiphany, Twelfth Night. In more recent times, the celebration has consisted of groups of women coming together to have a meal – usually in a restaurant from what I can make out – and have some of what we would now call downtime. I’ve read reminiscences of women talking about their mothers greatly looking forward to this one night in the year when they got to dress up and go out with other women. (These mostly date from the 1960’s and 1970’s).

In my community, a group of us are keeping this tradition alive. A very dear friend of mine throws her house open for Nollaig na mBan, invites loads of women friends with the proviso that we all bring something from our Christmas leftovers to eat and drink. Often things are made especially too. Its always a great night, good food, lots of music and plenty of laughs. Yes we have altered that tradition somewhat but it works for us and we’ll pass it on to the next generation. And they can make of it what they will, if its not for them, so be it. Traditions should be living things, not something preserved in aspic. If a tradition isn’t right for any given person or group of people then they shouldn’t feel compelled to maintain it. I like traditions, learning about them and in some instances trying to live them, but I like even more that they reflect the community who developed them. If they can’t be adapted or even discarded if need be, then what does that say about society? That we never want anything to change? Perish the thought.

I’m off now to get ready for tonight’s Nollaig na mBan party. Yes its Jan 4th not the 6th, but hey, traditions can change, right? Nollaig na mBan faoi mhaise dhaoibh!

When life gives you lemons – make lemon curd!!!

 

Sometimes I get a little carried away in the kitchen.  Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and while I was thinking about the meal I was going to cook for my husband and I (sound like the Queen there!!) I sussed that I had a load of lemons in the kitchen and some cranberries left over from Christmas in the darkest recesses of my fridge.  So – cos I had nothing else to do! – I made cranberry curd and lemon curd.  I had made both of them before but I tried a different lemon curd recipe this time (Darina Allen’s actually and it is by far the nicest ever).  So as well as a meal of crab cakes, T-bone steak with chips, mushrooms and onions followed by lemon meringue pie, I also made these……. I don’t think they will last terribly long!!!

Actually just writing that has made me see how easily I am sucked in by descriptions on restaurant menus.  I cooked T-bone steak and chips – but I could have equally described it as “pan-seared prime Irish T-bone steak (in fact very local – raised and slaughtered less than 5 miles from my kitchen) served with handcut potato chips, sprinkled with sea salt and served with slivers of mushroom and onion sauteed in a delicate garlic butter.”  See what I mean??

Anyway, it all tasted bloody good!!!!

 

Experiments and discoveries

I love food.  I love eating it, reading about it, shopping for it…. you get the general idea 🙂  I like to think of myself as a foodie although I would be the first to admit I am not hugely knowledgeable about the subject.  I read cookbooks for the sheer pleasure of imagining myself in a beautiful big kitchen with all the utensils and equipment I could want and lots of space to prepare the food described in them.  And a big pantry where I could store all the preserves, pickles, jams, chutneys, dried beans etc etc etc from my own garden …… well that’s the fantasy anyway.

Well a couple of years ago I joined a Food Club on one of my favourite websites (www.magicmum.com).  The idea was that different posters would post a recipe each week and the rest of the club would try it out, and report back (with pictures of the result if they wanted to).  I liked the idea of trying new dishes so I signed up.  The food club is now in its 3rd year and I can truthfully say I have cooked  – and eaten – dishes I would never have tried if I had seen them in a cookbook.  Not all of them have been a huge success, some we just didn’t like, others tasted good but my presentation left a lot to be desired.  Favourites that stand out for us and that I have made over and again: crab cakes, Jambalaya (heavenly!!), sausage and rasher pasta (sounds odd but is divine), beetroot and feta salad (and that was only a starter), pork loin in fig sauce….. getting hungry now??

It has enabled – or cajoled! – me to attempt things I always thought were beyond my capabilities – gnocchi stands out here, also cannelloni, guacamole (I thought I hated avocado), and it has introduced me to food from various parts of the world that I hadn’t considered previously.  I fell seriouly behind for a few months so I’m playing catch up.  Among the recipes I have still to make are Ecuadorian Pork Leg, Caribbean Platter, and a 4th of July feast 🙂

So a huge thanks to everyone who has taken part in the MMFC – my palate is vastly enriched because of you.