Tag Archives: sparky’s blog challenge

#justsaying, Food, South Africa

Wonderful Wonderbag!

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Some time ago I bought a Wonderbag and what a wonder bag it’s turned out to be!

Last night, during Earth Hour, Ché (Husband) and I ate Kitchri cooked in the Wonderbag. I cooked the lentils, spinach and rice for 15 minutes on the stove top at about noon. It immediately went into the Wonderbag, nice and snug, and at 5pm I opened it to reveal perfectly cooked and delicious Kitchri!

The Wonderbag is the invention of South African Sarah Collins (Top 10 Finalist, Most Powerful Women Entrepeneurs, Fortune Magazine 2013). It’s a slow cooker minus the electricity.

When rolling blackouts started in 2008 she remembered how her grandmother used to put cushions around her pots to keep the food cooking after it had been removed from the fuel source. So she came up with the Wonderbag.

The wonder of the Wonderbag is that it’s extremely useful for communities in Africa and other continents who battle against odds to cook food using wood and kerosene stoves. Apart from the danger of using these fuel sources in small huts and shacks, they also add to  environmental pollution. You can read about the Wonderbag story on her website.

Anything you’d cook in a slow cooker or crock pot is ideal for cooking in the Wonderbag.

The impact of the Wonderbag is wide. She has some interesting infographics on the site. Here are some of the impacts of wide-spread cooking with the Wonderbag:

  • Saving of energy, water and time, simply by making cooking more efficient
  • In developing countries, the basic need to feed a family has huge challenges:  Staple diets require long cooking times, yet there is little access to energy and water
  • Lack of clean fuel means using charcoal or tree-wood for cooking
  • Cutting down trees results in deforestation as communities quickly use the tree wood around them, digging up the roots when desperate
  • Deforestation leads to foraging  further afield, which is done by women and also girls, often taken out of school
  • Foraging as far as 5-10 km per day leaves women open to violence
  • Poverty will not end if girls don’t have time for school, women spend 4-6 hours of their day cooking, and the environment is ravaged

The above points are taken from the Wonderbag website – go on over to the site to see the full list of environmental, social and economic impacts and challenges, especially in the developing world, that the proliferation of the Wonderbag hopes to address.

Click here for recipes on Pinterest.

The Wonderbag is available from the Wonderbag site and Amazon.com.

Note: I wrote this post because I believe in the Wonderbag. I have used the Wonderbag, been astounded at the results, and am a fan. I was not paid to write this post.
#justsaying, Mozambique, Portuguese

I have 6 + 1 names

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I have 6 official names. It is customary in Portuguese tradition to give a child a first and a second name. Then the maternal grandmother’s name and the maternal grandfather’s name. Followed by the paternal grandmother’s name, finished off with the paternal grandfather’s name which is also the father’s name. So no one is forgotten.

Modern Portuguese parents are dispensing with all of this and I agree. The “old” way  makes it lengthy, and the poor child (and later adult) has to explain time and time again why they have so many names.  And official forms, for example, never have enough space for all of them.

My first and second names are the same as my Mom’s friend who is also my Godmother. I was named after her.  For many years I didn’t like my first name – Regina. It was too serious and grown up. It wasn’t a little girl’s name. I much preferred to be called by my nickname – Gigi.

When I was born, my uncle, who was a well-known writer, was a fan of the movie Gigi with Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier, and decided that would be a good name for the first grandchild of the family.  He also wrote a song of the same name and dedicated it to me, which was sung by a famous songstress of the time in Mozambique, Natercia Barreto. I don’t have a copy of this song, it was probably lost when our family fled from Mozambique. I’ve searched YouTube and even though there are songs by Natercia Barreto, Gigi is not there. I have doubted its existence, although some relatives do say it exists. When I find a copy I will most certainly blog about it :-)!

So the name Gigi stuck and I’m only known as Regina academically and professionally.

The name Gigi has also been the source of many jokes – “Ha ha, my dog’s name is also Gigi!”

When I got married the feminist in me decided not to take my husband’s name – I would then have 7 names! I had to write a letter to the government asking that the population register be changed to my unmarried surname, because in South Africa (at the time) it was assumed that a wife would take her husband’s name,  without the common courtesy of asking or confirming! You can imagine how this went down well with me!

When I registered my marriage in Portugal (many Portuguese people are registered in the country of domicile and the country of ancestry), the government there asked me how I wanted to be known – so no assumptions were made! I was most pleasantly surprised that my individuality and dignity was considered.

Regina is Latin for “queen”. It is pronounced “ruh-JEE-nuh” NOT “ruh-JY-nuh”. My high school principal used to call me “ruh-JY-nuh”.  No matter how many times I told her the correct pronunciation, she continued pronouncing it incorrectly – leaving me feeling mortifyingly embarrassed time and time again.

I have been called many variants of my name – Reg, Reggy, Reginald (I went to an all girls school and we all had male versions of our names) – and have grown to love the uniqueness of my name…Regina.

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