Cooking local

Learning how to utilise indigenous foods in different ways has been among the lessons learnt by campers of the Kiwanis Club of Barbados South Nutrition Easter Camp.  

 

The Camp, which will conclude today, is being held at the Hilda Skeene Primary School. Coordinator, David Rawlins told the Barbados Advocate that this is the second year for the Camp which caters to 17 eager campers, some of whom are members of the school’s K-Kids Club.

 

He added that Camp’s objective “is to get them to utilise our local foods in varying ways. We find that lots of our young ones would say, ‘yuck’ and just object to a particular food without even trying it because the traditional way that is being presented to them is not always acceptable but I am sure if you had to watch long enough here you would see where they come to use the breadfruit fishcakes they will demolish it.”

 

Rawlins said that outside of the food demonstrations, some of the other activities that campers have been exposed to over during the Easter camp have included talks on personal hygiene and dental health, talks on dengue fever and Zika as well as those on fire prevention. There was also a supermarket tour where the Class 2s were taught how to “read labels as a means of them understanding the nutrition information and to make wise choices on what they will buy.”

 

From being involved in the Camp, he hopes that the campers would start by implementing making wise snack choices as well as share the knowledge learnt with their schoolmates and relatives.

 

Rawlins added, “I plan to go into the classrooms. Ask the headmaster and ask the teacher to have a session with them so I would have a continuation. So it is not just [this and then] full stop. It is this and a continuation as a means of helping them in that regard and I think that maybe eventually what I am going to have as well is that these little ones parents or the parents of the Class 2s have them for one or two sessions as a means of exposing them to what these would have done so that the two together complimenting each other should make some kind of change.”