Given that it’s Father’s Day, today I’m posting a recipe that I know Dad would approve of. Check out the details below…

Fried Okra with Shrimp

Ingredients:

• 1-2 lb okra (fresh)
• ¼ - ½ lb shrimp (optional)
• 1 medium tomato
• 1 small - medium onion (chopped)
• 1 blade of eschallot (chopped)
• 1 small - medium hot pepper
• Salt to taste
• 3 tbs oil

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Melanie Fiona was featured on Billboard.com doing a cover of the classic Sam Cooke song “Cupid”.

Pure silliness, but I thought I should share.

I’ve been holding back on posting this recipe for a while. If you look at the ingredients in this one, I think the reason will become obvious. Nevertheless, this was one of my favorite foods growing up and is one of the most popular foods in Guyana.

Check out the details below…

Black Pudding & Sour

Ingredients:

For Black Pudding

• 4 yards runners (Cleaned pig or cow intestines)
• 2 pts rice
• 1 coconut, grated
• 4 oz salt meat
• Eschallot (Scallion)
• Celery
• Thyme, broad and fine leaf
• Married Man Pork (Guyanese basil, more potent than what’s found in the US)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• Salt
• Sugar
• 1 pint blood of cow
• Limes or lime juice

For Sour

• About 2 doz bilimbis
• Salt
• Onion
• Red pepper, chopped
• ½ pt oil

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This is Melanie’s latest video Ay Yo.

Walter Rodney’s had a huge influence on my life. Besides the fact that I’m named after him (My full name is Omar Walter Ellis…), he’s one of the main reasons that Burden Clothing even exists.

That all said, when I heard about this documentary on the man by Clairmont Chung, I had to let folks know. Check out the trailer below…

This film covers the life of world renowned, historian, author, and activist, Dr. Walter Rodney who was assassinated on Friday, June 13, 1980, at age 38, in his native Guyana. It’s a story of a man who dedicated his life, and ultimately, gave his life in the struggle for equal rights and justice. He did so through his considerable intellectual gifts and actual grassroots involvement everywhere he went. He went everywhere. The people who knew him weave a tale of how they related to him and him them. In the process we see the growth of their friend, his ideology and how that changed over the years from his coming of age in racially divided Guyana through the cold war, the Black Power Movement, Pan-Africanism, Caribbean independence, and the idea of self emancipation. It’s about the influence of places on him and him on places as evidenced by the riots in Kingston, Jamaica, his role in Southern Africa’s struggle for independence and finally civil rebellion in Guyana where his life ended just a block from his birth-home. It’s a film about us: all of us.

For more info on the film and to find out upcoming screenings, click here: Roots And Culture Media - The Official Site for the new documentary W.A.R. STORIES, A film about Walter Anthony Rodney.

Shouts to Tammy for passing this onto me.

I’ve been meaning to give some love to my peoples Anjulie on this blog for a minute, especially since I’ve already done so on my other one not once, but twice. That all said, check out the video for her latest video for her new single “Addicted2Me” off of her debut album below….

…via.

Back to the Guyanese (or Trinidadian, depending on who you ask…) cuisine, for at least one weekend. Check out the details below…

Currant Rolls

Ingredients:

Flaky Pastry

• 1 lb flour - sifted
• 12 oz shortening at room temperature
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
• 9 oz water
• Juice from ½ lime

Filling

• 12 oz currants
• 3 to 4 oz granulated sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla

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I got this story off of First-Magazine’s blog. This is a nice piece of history that relates to the men from the Caribbean who served in the British Royal Air Force. Cy Grant was a former airman who died at the age of 90 on February 13, 2010. Before he passed away, he was able to put a website together that commemorates the contributions of Caribbean airman who have been forgotten by history.

Volunteering as navigator for a Royal Air Force bomber, Grant spent two years in a German POW prison after he was shot down in the Netherlands; became ‘Britain’s best-known black person’ as a famous Calypsonian and then actor…and all before finishing up as a cultural activist.

“Of course, I was aware of the racism in British society – witness what happened to me, an ex-RAF officer and a prisoner of war. After qualifying as a barrister – no job opportunities,” he told the Islington Tribune. “I was forced to confront myself, to stand up and be counted, so to speak.”

- First Magazine

The NY Times had a travel article about Guyana, explaining how it has risen as a tourist attraction in recent years for naturalists and eco-tourists. It talks about the rich wild life and stunning landscape as well as how to plan your own trip there.

… Guyana is truly off the tourist path — a place, as Evelyn Waugh wrote in “92 Days,” his 1932 travel memoir of what was then British Guiana, “of conflicting cultures and states of development where ideas, uprooted from their traditions, become oddly changed in transplantation.”

Nestled between Venezuela, Brazil and Suriname, Guyana — South America’s only English-speaking country — is a place that rarely registers as a vacation spot. In recent years, however, the country has started pushing to capitalize on its often stunning scenery, abundant wildlife and rich Amerindian heritage, repackaging itself as a haven for adventurers, naturalists and eco-tourists.

… Once in the interior, you can forget any ideas of rambling off on your own, thanks to a lack of roads and often limited accommodations and food supplies in the rural villages. (And don’t even think about visiting the rain forests without a local guide, unless you are fully prepped in the niceties of dealing with caiman, black widow spiders and armadillo wasps.)

This isolation, though, has resulted in the emergence of eco-lodges across the country, built with the help of both foreign aid and Amerindian knowledge — meaning that visitors get in-depth, personal, insider perspectives. In Surama, where we stayed, a tiny Macushi village of about 300 inhabitants set in a five-square-mile patch of open savannah in the northern Rupununi, two four-bed eco-lodges have drawn a steady stream of visitors. (Built in 2004 as part of a sustainable tourism initiative between Guyana and the United States, the lodges are now managed and operated by the local Macushi tribe.)

Follow the rest of the article here.