Culinary life skills combined with cultural awareness as grade ones at Mother Teresa had a picnic in Bud Miller Park and a lesson in bannock making.
Six-year old Jackson Flynn shared on the preparation technique.
“You get some dough and then you twist it on the fire, and then when it’s hard its good. And it tasted really good.”
About 40 kids enjoyed the outdoor classroom with help from their teachers and Aboriginal Program Coordinator Cynthia Young who has been with LCSD for some 20 years. She says bannock came from across the seas.
“The settlers were the ones who taught us to make bannock. It was new to us because we did not have the ingredients that the settlers did. The way they taught us to make wheat and stuff like that and we were able to get flour. They taught us their knowledge. And then we took the recipe and ran with it and use it now, and it has become one of our main staples in our culture.”
Young says her bannock making skills are in high demand during the week. She noted that bannock can be baked in the oven, then crunched up and used in soups, but the fried bannock is really popular as that’s the one she says that makes everyone’s taste buds explode.
Young said the bannock lesson instilled pride in the Indigenous kids as they shared their heritage and as well kids who never tasted bannock gained that appreciation.
“Not everybody has bannock in their diet. A lot of students learned that too. We had one little girl, she did not think she would like it, but when she ate it, she really enjoyed it. It’s just informing them and now she will go away saying that bannock wasn’t bad.”
Young is reminding the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation Federal Holiday is coming up September 30 and for residents to remember to wear their orange shirt.