Bible Study, Color Theory and Cooking Baskets- July 11, 2012

  A couple of the women Luan disciples joined another missionary, Pat, and the women she disciples in a day of Bible lesson, color theory and cooking basket teaching. Pat calls her group “The Tabithas” and her organization is known as “Proverbs 31”. She teaches beading, sewing, health, and so much more. Pat also has a college student staying with her this summer, Katie is from North Carolina and is studying Studio Art. Pat taught a lesson on ‘Justification by Faith” from Genesis 12-15. Katie then taught color theory to the women and her focus was showing them how the color wheel works.

  After lunch, Luan, Lillian, and I showed the women how to make cooking baskets.

   These are made with a sturdy basket (depending on the size of pot you want to use), building plastic, yarn, material, and some sort of packing (banana leaves, grass, etc.) and a pillow—made also from grass and material. The point of this basket is to allow the women to prepare meals ahead of time and to save them money for firewood. Usually, most Ugandans eat around 10pm and all their meals take a long time to prepare. While dried beans usually take 1-2 hours over the fire to be done, with the cooking basket, you heat the beans for 15 minutes and then place in the basket. In 2 hours or more, the beans are done! So instead of paying for firewood for 1-2 hours, they only have to use 15 minutes worth and when the pot is removed from the basket, it has to be done with cooking mits as the pot is too hot to touch.

 Lillian, pictured here, is a school teacher. She was very skeptical of the cooking basket when Luan first introduced it to her. But she now loves it and uses it all the time. She prepares beans, potatoes, rice, matooke, etc in the morning and when she comes home for lunch, she has a hot meal for her and her kids. Often she makes porridge for her kids’ breakfast and so she makes it before going to bed and in the morning, it is still hot. Super cool and handy!

  The heat from the pot is kept inside the basket because it is packed and acts like a thermos. Luan’s discipleship group is collecting their supplies to make their own baskets, and we look forward to hearing how they like them once they begin using them!