Traditions...

The task of learning something (a new skill or gaining knowledge) from an elder. The first thing that popped into my head was 'What am I going to do?'. I thought about it and the only person I would love to learn a new skill from or gain knowledge from is my gran(or Gogs as we call her) as she has so much knowledge to share.

This task we have been given makes one realise how we should embrace our grandparents or any elders as they have such a vast amount of experience, knowledge and some great old stories to share with us, we just need to take the time to listen to them...

As I sat and actually listened this time to the many stories my 'Gogs' tells about our family and how much fun we all have when we're together, I remembered the traditional celebratory drinks our family has on special occasions. These are her legendary liqueurs. The famous orange liqueur, fig-leaf liqueur and litchi liqueur were the ones I could remember from the big family functions. No one else in the family makes these liqueurs, so I thought it would be a great idea to pass on the family tradition.


As we spoke about these liqeuers my gran also mentioned they used to make their own 'home-brew' of beer. This too is a legendary practice as I have often heard my dad and his siblings talking about the 'old brewing days'. There are many great stories that my gran shared with me around the 'beer brewing' topic, yet it lead to some information and the gaining of new knowledge that her brother and uncle were alcoholics... This came as a suprise to me yet it is a pressing matter/issue in our family (as I recently learnt).

During this process of our 'living theory' task I would like to learn how to make our family's traditional home-made liqueurs as well as gaining insight into the background of our family and how something like making and having fun with liqueurs can also be a problem in our family and lead to alcoholism.


Chanel