As Culture Night gets underway this evening, one of the highlights promises to be ‘Life on a Camp’, a glimpse behind the scenes at Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre on Charles Street Great, Dublin 1.
As part of the outdoor event, Travellers will demonstrate some of the traditional skills needed for camp life including cooking using recipes from Pavee Peck, a cookbook compiled late last year based on the stories of local Traveller women.
The idea for the book evolved as a group of seventeen Traveller women from St. Margaret’s Traveller Community Association, TravAct and Pavee Point began to meet in TravAct Coolock, and chat about their shared memories of recipes, traditions, stories and cures.
As they talked, cooked, and ate together, the food brought back memories, which helped form the basis of the cookbook in their own Cant language.
Recipes include Potato Bread, Rabbit Stew, Coddle and Colcannon, alongside traditional cures and personal histories of the women involved.
The book can be read online here.
Culture Night takes place across the city on Friday September 20th 2024.
Word: Martina Murray
