Eritrea Unit

Our study of Eritrea was not a happy one. I know, this is a strange way to start off the post, but sometimes geography lessons make me sad when I learn about the country. Our Eritrea Unit made me sad because there are so many things that could be going great with the country, but there are also so many things going wrong right now. I wish it weren’t so.

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Eritrea Unit resources

I really wanted to find more information, because it drives me nuts when I only have a geography now video, but even with my many facts sites, I didn’t find much to expand on the study:

• 10 Interesting Eritrea Facts
• Eritrea facts
• Country Report: Eritrea

These all give a much more positive outlook of Eritrea than I got from watching the two videos below:

Oh, I just realized they also have a Flag Friday for Eritrea, which explains why it had nothing about the flag in the video.

Barb really does have a very expressive face. Looking at the flag, I wonder if I flipped the blue and green triangles if they would be the same size…

And can you guess what the red stands for? Come on, you’ll never guess.

Yes, the blood of those who fought for the freedom of the country.

As we were studying Eritrea, Jazby came out with a video on the country, and it was interesting to read some comments from Eritrean diasporans.

Eritrea recipe: Zigni

Finding a new variation on beef stew is always fun, only this isn’t really a stew, this is more of a stewed beef, maybe? Well, let’s see how the Zigni recipe turns out.

Zigni Ingredients

• oil
• 2 pounds of stew meat
• 1 1/2 tablespoon cumin
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 1 6-ounce can of tomato paste
• 1 small red onion finely diced
• 14 can petite diced tomatoes
• 2 teaspoons Berbere (or substitute cayenne pepper)
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 stick butter

Let’s make some Zigni!

1. Add oil to the pot and heat it.
2. Then add the stew meat, cumin, turmeric, and 1/4 of the tomato paste.
3. Add the diced onion, can of tomatoes, stir and cover.
4. Cook on medium for 2 hours. Check occasionally and add more water if it’s starting to lose the liquid.
5. After 2 hours add the berbere spice, garlic, and butter. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes.

We served it with pita bread to make it sandwich like, because it’s a very thick stew with basically no broth, but I also made some egg noodles to serve it over which was a bit more popular with my family. It reminded me a bit of the Hungarian beef stew (I’m fairly sure it was Hungarian, I need to double-check).

Zigni Beef Stew

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Try this traditional beef stew from Eritrea as you cook around the world

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 2 hours

Total Time 2 hours 20 minutes

Ingredients

• oil
• 2 pounds of stew meat
• 1 1/2 tablespoon cumin
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 1 6-ounce can of tomato paste
• 1 small red onion finely diced
• 1 small red onion finely diced
• 14 can petite diced tomatoes
• 14 can petite diced tomatoes
• 2 teaspoons Berbere (or substitute cayenne pepper)
• 2 teaspoons Berbere (or substitute cayenne pepper)
• 3 cloves garlic
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 stick butter
• 1/2 stick butter

Instructions

1. Add oil to the pot and heat it. Then add the stew meat, cumin, turmeric, and 1/4 of the tomato paste.
2. Add the diced onion, can of tomatoes, stir and cover. Cook on medium for 2 hours. Check occasionally and add more water if it’s starting to lose the liquid.
3. After 2 hours add the berbere spice, garlic, and butter. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes.

Eritrea Notebooking pages

We pulled out our Africa notebooking pages and got started filling them out.

• so many islands!
• their national animal is a camel!
• every year anyone over 15 must help with terracing to help keep from the land eroding
• they’ve doubled their population since the 1990s
• everyone has to join the military (this is super controversial because it’s for an unspecified amount of time, see the Jazby video up above)

More great learning fun

• Psalms Prayer Walk
• Victory in Europe, World War II
• 50 State Study
• Using Notebooking pages in your nature study
• Holes book club

“Eritrea – Government building, Asmara” by CharlesFred is marked with CC BY-SA 2.0.