It's Anti Poverty Week and Carers Week.
Two really relevant issues for YamDaisy Cafes!
This is just a quick post to outline these issues:
ANTI POVERTY WEEK
World poverty is a huge issue and the work of wonderful organisations like the World Food Program
(on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WorldFoodProgramme ) happens a long way from thriving cities like mine. But there are lots of people struggling in my city, and like everywhere in the world, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening.
My experience with chronic illness has taught me that EVERYONE with a chronic illness gets poorer. If it is a parent the whole family becomes poorer and the cycle of poverty can set in. But any person or family is vulnerable to the cycle: illness and disability, not being able to manage employment, losing housing, and all the time everyone's health becomes compromised.
The role of YamDaisy Cafes are important here because the provision of delicious, healthy, affordable food lessens the burden of shopping, preparing, and cooking meals, and ensures that the meals available are not only delicious but nutritious in the way that helps prevent chronic illness and helps manage chronic illness, and therefore helps break the poverty cycle.
The importance of keeping YamDaisy meals affordable, without compromising the taste and nutrition is central to the model!
More about Anti Poverty Week here
CARERS WEEK
Mums have already put up their hands for YamDaisy Cafe food:
"Will there be takeaway?"
"Please have drive through!"
"O I would love to be able to pick up food for the family on the way home!"
But think of those families where chronic illness and disability, or just old age, mean that extra caring is needed. Schoolchildren who are caring for their ill mother through their teenage years, breadwinners who have to give up breadwinning for the sake of loved ones who need fulltime care.
If anyone ever needed a YamDaisy Cafe up the road, these families do!
I remember a woman who had a family crisis, and for several months her mum (have a guess, yes! she is Greek!) cooked a full meal for them that Maree could pick up on her way home to work.
YamDaisy Cafes are for all the families who don't have a wonderful Greek Grandmother Cook to help them through the crisis. And YamDaisy Cafe's can keep helping even when the crisis goes on for year after year.
More about Carers week here
I am talking to the local Council about a Pilot YamDaisy Cafe. Fingers crossed! It's needed!
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Lentil Tomato Soup with Cheese Scones
Today I made this lovely lunch, a tasty comfort meal..
LENTIL SOUP
1/2 cup of split red lentils, rinsed and drained
3 small onions and 1 big clove of garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp turmeric
pinch cayenne pepper
440g tin of diced tomatoes
1 cup of stock
S and P
chopped parsley
lemon
Heat the oil in a big saucepan and fry the onion and garlic gently until just beginning to colour.
Add the spices and fry for another minute.
Add the lentils and water to cover well. Bring to the boil and then simmer gently for 20 minutes.
Make sure the lentils are cooked before adding the acid (tomatoes) and the salt (stock)
Add the tin of tomatoes and the stock, get it back to the boil and simmer another 20 minutes until the tomatoes have that rich orange look.
Check the seasoning, adding salt and pepper.
When serving add some chopped parsley to each dish and a squeeze of lemon.
CHEESE SCONES
2 cups SR flour
pinch salt
125g finely grated cheese
buttermilk (I thin down yoghurt with water)
Sift the flour and salt, mix in the cheese
Add buttermilk to mix to a soft dough - it took about 200ml
Roll it out on a floured bench to 2cm thickness and cut out scones (I got 14 little ones).
Brush the top with milk or buttermilk and top with a little grated cheese.
Cook at 220C for 15 minutes, they should be well risen and golden brown.
Then if you are like me, you can put them on a tray and have lunch in bed with a good book!
(Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold)
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