You Grow Girl™

About two months before our Caribbean trip, I posted here on You Grow Girl reaching out to anyone who could help connect me with other gardeners living on the islands I would be visiting. This is how I met Celia. We exchanged emails before the trip and then met up in Dominica. It was all very serendipitous since Davin and I just happened to be reading an incredible guide to Dominica by Celia’s husband Paul at the time!

Celia and her husband Paul were incredibly generous — we would not have had a 10th of the trip we did without them! They introduced us to people I could talk to about my family history, took us on road trips, safely lead us to and from the Boiling Lake (Paul has done the hike countless times), and acted as a sounding board for our many confused questions and frustrations. Celia has also helped me to liaison with House of Hope for the fundraising drive. I am incredibly grateful, fortunate, and very glad that I met her.

- Gayla

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Guest Post by Celia Sorhaindo

My earliest memories of Christmas in the Caribbean island of Dominica, have always been dominated by three things; sorrel, ginger beer and Midnight Mass and this is still true today. For many Dominicans there is also a long list of mandatory traditional dishes, required to make Christmas the special celebration that it is here; but for me, my Mum’s home-made sorrel and strong ginger beer are top priority.

Ginger is widely known and used all over the world but the fragrant sorrel is often a new taste for visitors. The name can sometimes cause confusion as there is a perennial spinach type herb called sorrel in various other countries.

The sorrel we grow here, also known as red sorrel, florida cranberry or roselle, is actually a type of hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa) and the calyces, the sepals of a flower, are used to make the beverage. Sorrel is seasonal and can usually be found growing in the drier west coast areas. Ginger, however, is available all year round in Dominica and can grow pretty much anywhere. Both drinks are commonly made by following handed down family recipes.

Not only are sorrel and ginger beer delicious Christmas beverages but they are good for you too. Sorrel is said to ease colds, reduce fever, lower cholesterol and high blood pressure and contains a variety of vitamins and minerals including vitamin C, calcium, niacin, riboflavin and antioxidant flavonoids. Ginger is used to treat nausea, motion sickness, heart burn, cold, flu and migraine and is known to have more than twelve types of antioxidants. It also contains iron, vitamin C and folic acid.

So if you can get hold of fresh or dried sorrel and fresh ginger, I recommend adding these drinks to your holiday season menu. For the past few weeks, the beautiful rich red and spiky roselle sepals have made a welcome reappearance on the huckster stalls and vegetable markets here in Dominica, colourfully heralding the start of festivities.

I would love to share my family recipe but I’m afraid I have no idea how my Mum makes her sorrel beverage or ginger beer. She never seems to follow a recipe or measure anything she prepares, which is my convenient and worn out excuse for never learning to cook properly.

Here’s a link to Gayla’s recipe which I am sure will be just as delicious.

Joyeux Nwèl!!

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Born on the Nature Island of Dominica, Celia Sorhaindo lived many years in the UK and returned home in 2005. She is co-compiler of Home Again – Stories of Migration and Return, published by Papillote Press and former editor of the annual Dominica Food and Drink Guide magazine. In her spare time she likes nothing better than to rediscover the island of her birth by hiking and to share her view of Dominica through photography and writing.

UPDATE (December 4): Wow!!! We’ve exceeded the goal in just a few days. The original goal was an arbitrary number and does not reflect House of Hope’s actual need. I simply chose a number that I felt was reachable. Turns out I underestimated you!

While we’ve exceeded the initial target number, the drive will continue as planned until December 18, 2010. Donations are still accepted and I will continue to give out raffle tickets until then.

THANKS SO MUCH!

Hello Friends,

Over the years the community here has participated in Holiday Drives. This year I wanted to do something not close to home but close to my heart. As you may know, I travelled to the West Indies last year to visit the places my family is from. The place I felt the closest connection to was (and still is) Dominica, my grandmother’s birthplace.

The Commonwealth of Dominica is a little island in the Lesser Antilles that few people have heard of. I’ve written fairly extensive about Dominica over the last year and if you’d like to get a glimpse of the island, please begin here. What I haven’t mentioned is the need that is there. Because it is a small place that few people have heard of, they don’t draw much international support. I won’t go into every way in which there is need, but in 1979 Hurricane David ravaged the island, I mean tore it to shreds, wiping everything in its path. In many ways, the island is still recovering from that loss as well as the loss of the more recent loss of the Banana Industry, which provided a reasonable living to a lot of people.

While need is great, especially during the Holidays, I decided to focus on one organization that I am really impressed by.

The House of Hope in Delices, Dominica, is a home that provides loving, 24 hour care to persons with severe physical and mental disabilities. It was started by a small group of women in the village of Delices when 2 severely disabled women in their community lost their elderly mother. Without her to provide care they were stranded without anyone to help them, or any kind of facility to take them in. Since then, the House of Hope have raised the funds to build a larger facility with a garden and they now have six female residents including the original two women. They are ages: 6, 8, 14, 38, 40 and 52 years old. The facility gets some money from the government, but the rest comes from donations. They are in constant need of supplies.

I think what struck me about this endevor was that it was started by a group of women who wanted to help other women in their community who were in desperate, life or death need. This sort of effort speaks to the generosity of community spirit that still thrives in the smaller villages. Self-sufficiency is a way of life, but it is backed by the understanding that you can’t make it without the help of your neighbor.

You can read more about the House of Hope on their site, or see several photos of the home and the reconstruction on the Flickr site.

Anyone who donates $5 to this drive will be entered into a raffle to win a prize pack that I have put together. If you donate $10 you will be given 2 entries; $20 = 4 entries, and so on…. You can expect an email containing your “ticket/s” within a day of making a donation. I will draw a winner on December 18, 2010.

Every $5 = 1 ticket.

THE PRIZE: 1 signed copy of each of my books: You Grow Girl and Grow Great Grub + 1 tshirt of your choosing (sorry they’re not re-listed yet but you choose from 4 styles) + one of every single style of our garden buttons (there are several) + seeds, magnets and whatever miscellany I throw in.

UPDATE: I’ve noticed that new donations are slow to show on the widget but I assure you that the email updates are reaching me. If you don’t receive a response within 24 hours, please email me with your notification.