All posts by Dona

Irish memories

Memories,

A couple of days late for St. Patrick’s Day, but heck, time flies when you’re drinking Guinness.

Winter 1979 I hitchhiked through Ireland with a couple of friends. We stayed in youth hostels and visited Dublin, Bray, Wicklow, Waterford and Blarney. While walking through one of the villages an old woman, standing outside her cottage asked us if we were Americans. When replied in the affirmative, she insisted we come inside for tea.

It seemed strange that she invited us for tea but had us make the tea and cut the bread. But she was pretty old…

Anyway the bread was delicious and we asked if she’d tell us how to make it. I wrote it down, and then found a very similar recipe in a book I had, so this is a combination of the two recipes.

4 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 cup raisins
½ cup currants
2 eggs
½ cup butter
1 cup milk

Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together. Sprinkle a little over the currants and raisins. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter (I use a food processor), then add beaten eggs and the milk. Mix in currants and raisins.

Turn onto floured board and mold into round loaf. Place in greased spider (black iron skillet) and bake 1 hour in oven at 350°.

Please note – this is a sweet bread, not a traditional soda bread, but it is more authentic than the soda breads I’ve purchased.

We pretty much lived on bread, eggs and Orange Squash during our week in Ireland. None of us had much money – in fact I returned to London with only a few dollars left. I returned to the states with less than a dollar to my name.

24. Garage Band

Song Blog

My dad was an appliance repairman, but before that he was a car mechanic – “the best damned speedometer repairman in Elgin” I heard people say (or perhaps it was just him saying it).

He kept us afloat by taking side jobs – cars or appliances and worked in the two car garage he’d built for that purpose. The only cars that went in that garage were other people’s cars being fixed, and there were times that the entire space was empty, except for a refrigerator or air conditioner. Those times I would sneak out to the garage.

I’d set up my violin stand, remove the top part that holds sheet music, and start singing into my “microphone”. It was better than a shower because your voice had farther to go, but nothing to cushion it.

My favorite two songs to sing were from Mary Poppins.

I’d first sing the Nanny Song.

…If you don’t scold and dominate us
We will never give you cause to hate us…
We won’t hide your spectacles so you can’t see.
Put toads in your bed or pepper in your tea..

Hurry Nanny!
Many thanks sincerely,
Jane and Michael Banks.

Then I’d sing Sister Suffragette:

We’re clearly soldiers in petticoats
And dauntless crusader for women’s votes
Though we adore men individually
We agree that as a group they’re rather stupid

Cast of the shackles of yesterday
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray
Our daughter’s daughters will adore us
And they’ll sing in grateful chorus
“Well done, sister suffragette”

(wow! Elsa Lancaster was in that movie — the things I learn on YouTube)

I also used to bellow out poems in that garage. If anyone saw me, they would have fallen over laughing so hard, I’m sure. I was serious. But I also had/have a tin ear. So, while the the words may have been sung with feeling, the tune would not have been recognizable.