Ok, so now I should just have the attention of people who are really curious about this fistula thing. Right then: sometimes in extremely poor countries women (girls, really) become pregnant when they are severely malnourished or far, far too young - their bodies aren't developed enough. As you can imagine, there can be major complications when they give birth. Apart from the fact that the babies often die in these scenarios, it can cause the woman's bladder or bowel to tear and run freely into the vagina. These fistulas - holes where holes should not exist - are also often caused by sexual violence, for example in areas where rape is used as a tool of war. Because of the smell that this fistula causes, husbands may turn their fistula'd wife back to their families. In turn, the families will not want this divorced, smelly creature in their home - so they build a special hut for her. She lives out the rest of her life in stench, shame, and isolation.
And guess what: it costs less than a flat-screen TV to give this girl an operation to "cure" her fistula. So many - so, so many - are in this horrible situation, and it is so so easy for us to help.
Did you know that lower income earners generally give a higher percentage of their income to charities than high income earners?
Peter Singer, in his book, "The Life You Can Save" puts forward a highly moral but unsettling argument that we are "doing wrong" if we spend money increasing the material pleasures in our own lives, when that money could be spent on saving a life. We "should" (he says) give everything we can until the point at which what we are giving is more important than what we are saving - so we shouldn't starve our own children to feed the hungry in Africa, but we could live with the social shame of not owning a flat screen TV in order to save a girl from the lifelong degradation and loneliness of living with fistula.
However, he accepts (and explains many of the reasons why) vanishingly few people are going to give away the amount of time or money they "should". He even suggests that people who give away "more than average", as a percentage of their income, should be praised for doing so. After all, we can feel turned off if we feel like we are doing "more than our fair share" while others donate nothing; or for that matter overwhelmed by the implications of "giving until we can give no more".
Singer gives a lot of facts and figures about how much people would need to give to halve, or even eliminate, poverty. It's uplifting to see how little it would actually take, per person - however, it is also deeply depressing, because these figures are based on the assumption that everyone who "Can", will. Which, as we all know, just isn't the case.
5% of your total income, if you are "comfortably off", is what Singer suggests as a compromise for Americans (and more if you are one of the top 10% richest people in the country). From www.thelifeyoucansave.com I learnt that I fall into the lower end of earners, and according to the sliding scale he adopts would not be asked to donate anywhere near this much. However, I agree with Singer that I could be giving more - I own a flat-screen TV, and I just hired $10 worth of DVDs (two of them were terrible movies I didn't even finish watching).
So, today, I have done what Mr Singer suggests, and pledged "to do significantly more" than I was previously doing - I increased my donations to international charities to approximately 3% of my income. Why am I telling you this? Because research shows that people are more likely to donate if they know that others are. And my personal donation becomes more meaningful the more people contribute. As the website says, it might just be a drop in the bucket; but what if that drop were your daughter?
Go to www.thelifeyoucansave.com to learn more, and then make this absolutely delicious Nilgiri Korma, the recipe for which I created by mooshing together about 8 different recipes I found scattered about the web.
Nilgiri Korma
(free from all animal products and fistulas; guaranteed to cost less to make than a flat-screen TV)
There is a restaurant not far from us that used to do the most delicious, satisfying version of this curry. They must have changed chefs, however, because lately they've been serving watery, tasteless goop. This recipe is my attempt to recreate the original curry: it should be flavoursome and creamy, with lots of plump perfectly cooked vegetables.
Ingredients/Method
Rice - cook according to whichever philosophy works for you. Adding fried shredded coconut, cloves & saffron will make it just that little more special.
Add these food-stuffs to a wok in the order shown, pausing between each group to cook (gently!) a bit:
onion
ginger (fresh, grated or chopped finely)
chilli (to taste)
Vegetables (for example, carrots, broccoli, whatever you have left over from market day)
coconut milk (half now, half after cooking for a bit)
garam masala
cumin
poppy seeds
fennel
cinnamon stick
cashew paste (just blend together raw unsalted cashews with hot water)
coriander, fresh
Quantities
- I use a whole can of coconut milk (one of the good sized ones, not the pissy tiny ones); I then estimate the quantity of vegetables needed to make the curry look good and full while still being very "saucy". I'd say about two cups of vegetables probably goes into mine, which makes enough for four meals (dinner for girlfriend and I, plus our lunches the next day).
- I try to get a 1:1 ratio of coconut milk and cashew paste as the cashews create an amazing texture and flavour. I used some of the coconut milk to ground up the cashews rather than water, because I don't like to "Water down" the flavour.
- As for spices, this is something your tongue will know better than I would. I use heaps of spices because I like a nice strong flavour. Sometimes I even add a teaspoon or two of commercial curry powder, just to crank it a notch.
- I use dried herbs and spices apart from the coriander and ginger - these two just don't work for me in dried varieties.
- The longer this cooks, the better it will taste. I therefore make the whole curry before I even start cooking the rice - it forces me to leave it brewing happily away for longer than I would otherwise. One of my many faults as a chef is that I'm impatient; if the food looks edible and smells delicious I just sort of face-plant with a snorkel instead of adhering to cooking times. Or cutlery.
Serve with Naan:
you will need about an hour and a half to prepare this; plus a few minutes cooking. It's best served immediately after cooking, so work out your timing well in advance. I just barely got this together on time!
Ingredients
1 Cup Flour
1 egg
½ packet yeast (dried active)
warm water (small amount, add tblspn at a time)
yoghurt (optional - obviously use less water if using yoghurt!)
herbs (I used shredded coconut and coriander)
Mix together all ingredients. Using a wooden spoon for this makes me feel Authentic. Some advise "proofing" the yeast first by adding it to some hot water and leaving it for a bit. Others advise that this is a waste of time as it is so unlikely for the yeast to be off. You may need to add more liquid or flour to your dough depending on the consistency of your mix. At this stage it should be coming off the sides of the bowl into a ball, but it won't be smooth and doughy yet - sticky but not impossibly so is good.
Turn onto a floured or oiled surface and knead. It will probably take about five or six minutes; possibly as long as ten, so put on a good CD. to begin with the dough probably feels rough, too floury in some places, far too sticky in others. The more you knead - adding flour/water as neccessary - the easier it gets. Believe it or not, that horrid lump of yeasty smelling crap becomes smooth, elastic, not sticky, but not dry. You know the yeast is off to a good working start when it feels like you are making the dough fart every time you punch it (mind you, too much farting probably means you have too much yeast all together).
Enough of that obscenity - put your fart ball into a bowl covered with a damp tea towel, and leave for about an hour in a warm place. It should double in size (powered by fart). If it rises faster than this, you don't live in Canberra, and also you won't have to wait for the full hour.
Now it is second kneading time - this time just give it a short pummel just to remind it who is boss. Reward your fart loaf with handfuls of your chosen herb, pummelling them lovingly into its body. Break your fart ball into lots of littler fart balls; just below the approximate size you want your naan to be. Leave the fart naans to rise a bit longer; perhaps half an hour this time.
When they look like they've had enough of that (they should have risen a little bit more) use your palm or a rolling pin to make them flattish - about the thickness of a pizza base worked for me.
Grill your naans for a few minutes on each side. You can drench them in butter for this process, as Girlfriend did, or be righteously healthy as I did. Hers tasted better. You can also fry them rather than grilling, but I was using our one working hotplate to boil rice, and we don't have enough power points, or bench, for another electric frying pan. Our grill works great, though!
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