getting ready for St. Pat's.....

In my family, our background is, OH, a little Hungarian maybe, a little German maybe (the last name is German protestant), a lot of Welsh for sure (therefore my compact height!), a small sprinkling of English and then maybe you have some protestant Northern Irish, and the biggest dose of all, using math and applied physics, Irish Catholic--you look back, and see YES, the great-grandfather was a cop in NY city, typical, typical..... We all know that there are a) a whole lot more people of Irish ancestry in the US and Canada than there are in Ireland, and also that b) Ireland is an unusual country, from what I understand, in that there are many fewer people living there now than 100 plus years ago. They had good reason to leave alright, and I am, like so many other North Americans, a huge mixed jumble of ancestral material, but since I can pick and choose when I feel like it, I can, for example, a) hugely enjoy German beer (I used to love Irish and English beers too, until I found out they are made with FISH GUTS, which is illegal in Germany) and b) hugely enjoy English literature and c) hugely enjoy Hungarian pastry and d) hugely enjoy, ah, um, err, being compact thanks to the Welsh bits (ride a bus or plane--the compact people aren't uncomfortable--although I am 5'8" or 9", the downside to compact is needing a stool in the kitchen to reach the upper kitchen shelves)

and, of course, e) hugely enjoy Irish stuff. Americans love to pick and choose all their favorite Irish stuff! Like WHISKEY! Like THICK WOOLY SWEATERS! I also love Irish breakfast tea, my favorite, and McCann's original-takes-forever steel cut oatmeal for breakfast. I'd love to go to Ireland. I was talking to Goofy Kim Saturday and she wants to visit our mutual friend Denis in Africa, and her niece is going there this summer and she is like "I want to GO BACK to Africa myself, and see them" and

I am like "No WAY...bugs, snakes, malaria, ebola, all that crap. I wanna go to some of those snake-free places, like Ireland". I mean, you look at the green hills, and you imagine yourself in the wooly sweater wandering around amongst the cows and sheep and rain with your cup of tea....pretending you are a very handsome Aidan Quinn, Liam Neeson or Michael Fassbender...the best spoken accents on the planet? IRISH. So silky and lyrical!

Anyway, I used to make Irish soda bread all the time. It is so easy and tasty, easier to make than yeast bread. BUT, my 2 recipes call for milk and butter, and for several years I have had the dairy allergy and not made them. Until Sunday. I was like "what if I use rice milk and margerine?" Flippin' PERFECTO!

Here is the simpler of my 2 Irish soda bread recipes. The other has raisens etc in it, a good breakfast loaf, this one is just brown. I have had the recipe so long I don't know where it came from, but she explains that Irish flour is a lot more coarse than American, therefore all the wheat germ and bran she adds here.

Preheat oven to 350 and place cookie sheet in there to warm---or like me, use your iron skillet.

In an enormous mixing bowl, add 2 cups whole wheat flour, 2 cups white flour, 1.5 cups wheat bran, 1 cup wheat germ, 1.5 teaspoon baking soda and 1.5 teaspoon salt (I never add salt though)

Cut up half a stick butter (I use margerine, as I say) and mix into flour etc. with your fingertips, mixing everything together that way. Stir in 2 1/4 cup buttermilk (I used rice milk this time, as I say--next time I will add a spoonful or 2 of lemon juice for a buttermilk tang). Turn out onto counter, knead a few times into a nice round loaf, flatten a bit. Pull out heated bake sheet or skillet, lay dough in, cut a deep cross across the top and bake 30 minutes, pull out and rotate around then bake a further 30 minutes. Put onto cooling rack covered with a clean dish towel for at least an hour before slicing. Great any way you want, with cheese, butter, jam whatever!

Speaking of awesome Irish Americans, loooove Dropkick Murphys...this live clip in Bahston has all these women dancing onstage...my niece has been a student at Hahvad these last few years, and looking on stage here, you are like..."is that.....?"....but maybe not, all young women look the same anyhow.....

Had a glaze firing Sunday, this is the before and after on top...looking pretty good....