I like food. You like food. Everyone likes food. Now that we’ve taken care of that, let’s focus on the different types of food. In my life, the main types of food are American and Sierra Leonean. Even though I am American, I come from a purely Sierra Leonean family. Because of this, my nutritional life is filled with a mixture of American dishes and Sierra Leonean dishes. I’m going to talk about Sierra Leonean dishes. Here are some of my favorite Sierra Leonean in my life.

Common Characteristics of Sierra Leonean food:

• The food is popular in the West African culture. Though I am specifically calling the foods Sierra Leonean, they are really West African because many bordering countries have similar foods (e.g. the foods in this post are also popular in Liberia and Nigeria). I’m just saying Sierra Leone because it applies specifically to me.
• At the same time, it has its Sierra Leonean twist. I can assure you that the Sierra Leonean okra soup is different from the Nigerian one (personally I like the Sierra Leonean one the best).
• It is hot hot HOT. There is no such thing as an African dish that is not spicy. Tell me if you think of one, but there aren’t a lot.

With that being said, let us begin to dive into the foods (and drinks) of Sierra Leone!

Roasted Fish

A common meal Sierra Leoneans like to make is roasted fish (a.k.a grilled fish).  One major reason is because Sierra Leone is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, which makes it easier to catch them quickly and get a daily stock. How do you make it? It seems simple; it’s literally in the title. You roast the fish. Don’t be fooled though, it’s much more complicated than it looks. There are many things that have to be done before the fish touches the grill. For example, you have to make cuts into fish to season it (see the picture). Afterwards, there are other things to do such as marinating it for at least thirty minutes and making everything that goes with the fish, like pepper, onions, peanut sauce and lime.

Now it’s time to make the actual fish. It’s much better to grill the fish over a charcoal grill than an electric or gas grill because it keeps the flavor of the fish. Finally, when grilling the fish there should not be too much charcoal. This will cause the fish to cook slower and as a result, the fish will be well cooked.

 

Ginger Beer (Homemade)

Don’t let the name scare you. Ginger beer is like root beer; it’s not alcoholic. What’s really funny about this drink is that it didn’t originate in Africa; it actually originated in Britain and was exported around the world. Like the roasted fish, the process for making it is not as simple as squeezing the juice out of the ginger and drinking it raw. You start by washing the ginger very well. Afterwards, to get the juice out of the ginger, you pound or blend it. After extracting the juice, water and lime needs to be added to it. Next, put the mixture on a sifter to clean out the residue. After this, add as much sugar as you think you need into the final mix. This is a drink best served cool.

There are two things you have to remember about adding water to the ginger: it’s not optional and you have to be careful how much water is mixed with it. You have to add water because drinking ginger without water is like drinking a hot pepper. At the same time, you don’t want to add too much water because you won’t be able to taste the ginger. In other words, add water to dilute the ginger but make sure to balance the amounts.

I’m very glad that I got to share these foods that Sierra Leoneans really like to eat and drink. There are so many other foods that I could talk about, but that’s something I will leave for another post.

 

Bye everyone!

I got all of this information from my parents. Thanks guys :).

Images:

Powell, Celia. Homemade Ginger Beer. Photograph. Flickr. Flickr. 8 Dec. 2012. 9 Nov. 2015.

Smith, Peter. Roast Gilthead Sea Bream With Rosemary Butter. Photograph. Flickr. Flickr. 1 Apr. 2010. 9 Nov. 2015.

As a girl that has lived in multiple countries, I have friends from all over the world. Naturally, when I leave I also stay in contact with them. Yet every time we talk, we are never sure what time it is in each of our respective countries. Because of this, I’m almost always getting messages at three in the morning. Assuming I’m not the only one who has that problem, I added something to my blog to easily answer that recurring question. For my widget, I chose to add an international clock showing the different times of one state/ country from each continent. I added this because while browsing the list of student participating in the blogging challenge, I noticed that even though many students were all from the same place, there were still other countries thrown into the mix, which is exactly how I would describe my experiences with kids from different countries. Eventually I decided to choose a country from each continent because no continent should be forgotten (especially since they are all too big to forget). Besides, I’m a third culture kid; I’ve spent most of my life living in different time zones. The only sad thing about my widget is that I can’t see the time of EVERY single country that has kids participating in the challenge because that would take up the whole blog. At least I have an idea of what time it could be wherever you are (in other words, now I can message my friends at a time when they aren’t sleeping). Au revoir everyone!

This year, I did a project that was different from the rest. In this project, I was free to choose to research about anything I wanted and spend class time working on it. Was I interested in this type of project? Obviously! I was never bored as I read through all the different websites (though that’s partially because I like reading…). This project is called Genius Hour. For my Genius Hour, I researched the art of criminal profiling. I chose this because over the summer I became obsessed with THE greatest criminal TV show ever. It’s called Criminal Minds and it combines psychology and criminal investigation (two of my favorite subjects) into a beautiful result called criminal profiling. During my research, I learned about the process of making a criminal profile. You can see what I’m talking about  if you check  out my presentation at the end of the post :).

Based on my effort and learning, I would give myself a B+ or an A- because I spent most of my research translating my information into a format that I could easily present to my class. I also took a lot of time trying to understand the information and personally created all the examples I used in my presentation, which I am very proud of.

This presentation mostly helped myself and anyone else in my class that liked Criminal Minds (there were at least two people!) or was interested in the topic. For those who were interested in psychology, I think my presentation helped everyone think differently of the field since I focused on its relationship with criminal investigation. I think most people don’t automatically link psychology and criminal investigation together and I was happy to shine a light on the that. For those who just like Criminal Minds, I think my presentation helped them better understand what the profilers were doing.

For my next Genius Hour subject, I have one rule: I will not do a continuation of the subject criminal profiling. There’s a chance that I’ll do something related to either psychology or criminal justice, but right now I don’t feel like continuing that topic. In terms of how I presented the project, next time I will try to have less words on the slide or I will present with a different format. Finally, there’s one last question: what are three possible topics I could research for my next Genius Hour? Well, I may like to compare Android vs. Apple, research a specific animal, or delve into another subcategory of psychology. I can’t wait to see which topic I choose. Bye!
My Super Awesome Genius Hour Presentation Link:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15xg8z9n_J7Q70Vdte-jFKA3GR5QvnkUNoSaivbjnuCI/edit?safe=active