This item was written by Mariza Almeida from the state of Paraná in Brazil and Marjan Trajković from Macedonia

Pinhão

A young girl goes to her aunt’s yard and sees her picking carrots. Being a “post modern” girl, she says: “Aunty, why do you bury your carrots?” (True story from Brazil)

Should we be surprised by this story? Cultural roots are frequently and popularly a topic of investigation - here we will show you how to prepare some routes into these roots for the classroom - (and maybe even use them for our own culture!)

Food and festivals always seem to go together and many people feel they powerfully represent their cultural roots. Have a look at these two examples - the first a celebration with family and friends and the second a festival for the whole town.

• Brazil
• Macedonia
• UK corner

If you were to meet someone from either of these two countries - how would you introduce one of your festivals to them? Imagine you have received one of their descriptions in a letter - write another in reply inviting that person to your festival - describing the festival, its food and what your visitor should expect to do.

For other examples - see our recipes for pancakes from Britain (Shrove Tuesday) and doughnuts from Poland (Tłusty Czwartek) in Festival food. Try the exercises that you will find there and then write your own festival food recipe. We also have a recipe for hot cross buns which are eaten warmed, cut in half and spread with butter on Good Friday.

In addition we have some teacher and trainer background material Routes to the roots of food and festivals to give some ideas on how to build your own activities.

Teacher’s note: appropriate for intermediate level school students