It’s hard to believe, but here we are at the start of the holiday shopping season. Oh, and Thanksgiving, too. As we surround ourselves with delicious food, friends and family, it’s too easy to stay caught up in our own little world. Of course, this is also the season for giving, and opportunities to do so are plentiful.
This year, I’ve tried to select methods that will resonate with my five-year-old son and help him begin to understand gratitude. Yesterday we dropped off our shoebox for Operation Christmas Child, a small selection of toys, school supplies, superhero toothbrushes and warm socks that will travel to a 5-9-year-old boy in a yet-to-be-determined country. We’ll be able to check our tracking number to see where it winds up, but naturally Africa came up as I explained to my son why there were kids who needed our kindness in order to celebrate the holiday.
It seems most people of my generation were raised with the stern admonition at the dinner table that “there are starving children in Africa who would love to eat your meal.” I remember cutting and pasting pictures of Ethiopian children from National Geographic for an elementary-school report about the famine. It’s almost incomprehensible that that saying, which we treat as a cliché, is every bit as true today.
A representative of the ONE Campaign (you know, Bono’s anti-hunger nonprofit) recently asked me to share this virtual recipe card with a Somali recipe for Date-Filled Sambusas, adapted by Sarah Commerford of What’s Cooking in Your World. The recipe is meant to help raise awareness of global hunger and the escalating famine in the Horn of Africa. You can view the recipe below, or download a PDF copy here. And click here to learn more about the situation in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and how we can help.
I’m not sure if we’ll get to it for Thanksgiving, but I look forward to making these with my kids soon. And I hope you’ll consider working it into your holiday baking plans this season as well. It can be hard to imagine that the food that connects us is so scarce for so many — but hopefully by sharing recipes like these we can spread awareness and band together to help others, at home and abroad.
Happy Thanksgiving to you & yours!
Colleen & the Foodie Tots
1 response so far ↓
1 Jenn // Nov 23, 2011 at 11:51 am
I always like to make some treat with dates in the fall! I’ve made one similar to this but I used cinammon as well, thanks!