Sunday, Bloody Sunday…or Monday As It Were.

I bet I can name 7  people you have never heard of, but who changed history…

1. Padraic Pearse
2. James Connolly
3. Eamonn Ceannt
4. Thomas MacDonagh
5. Joseph Plunket
6. Thomas Clark
7. Sean MacDiarmada

…unless you are Irish.

97 years ago yesterday (yes, I know, I am a day late getting this post out), the above seven men led a small force of men in rebellion against the British.  This rebellion was small and quite ineffective, but it did lay a foundation for the revolution and civil war just a few years later which would finally lead to Ireland’s independence from Great Britain.

I first should say that this post comes from months of research I did as a graduate student to write a paper on the legacy of the leaders of the Easter Uprising.  Being the anniversary of the rising, well, it gives me a chance to dust off the old paper and share some of my favorite research with you all.  Among the laughter and good times of Easter, this is why I send up a little thought to a small group of men who gave their lives for a cause they believed in that much.

All Things Irish Week…Shepard’s Pie

My go to dinner for St. Patrick’s day has always been and remains Shepard’s Pie.  Technically, this has British roots, but today it is definitely associated with Ireland and if you use lamb and/or Guinness to make it…well I think it counts.  I don’t have any pictures to go with this but I will after Saturday and I will update them.  This isn’t the most traditional recipe out there probably…I use a lot of veggies, but it has always gotten rave reviews from friends and family.  I just wanted to put the recipe out there for anyone looking for something yummy to make for St. Patrick’s Day.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. of ground hamburger or ground lamb or a combination
• half of a yellow onion finely diced
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 cup of flour
• 1 large can of beef stock (you may want one or two small cans as back-up just in case)
• 1 bottle of Guinness Extra Stout Beer
• Worcestershire sauce
• 2-3 large carrots cut into bite size pieces
• 2-3 parsnips cut into bite size pieces
• 1/2 – 1 cup of fresh or frozen green beans cut into bite size pieces
• 1/2 – 1 cup of small mushrooms
• 2-3 celery stalks cut into small pieces
• 1 cup of frozen peas
• 4-6 potatoes (as many as it will take you to make enough mashed potatoes to cover the top of your beef and veggie mix)
• Butter
• Milk
• Salt and Pepper
• Irish Cheddar

I know this seems like a long list, but it really isn’t too complicated of a recipe I promise.  Also, as I said, I use more veggies than probably some other recipes call for so feel free to pick and choose which ones you use and how much of them you use.  I don’t actually use the mushrooms myself, but I know that they are common in some recipes so I added them there as an option.

1. Peel and cut the potatoes and then put them in a pot to cook.  Add just enough cold water to cover the potatoes and then put on to boil while you make the meat and veggie mixture.
2. The first thing to do is brown your hamburger and/or lamb in a large pot.  Add to this salt and pepper to taste (I also use some Montreal steak seasoning for extra flavor).  I start with a big pot so I don’t get so many dishes dirty.  When the hamburger is almost done, add the onion and garlic and continue cooking until the onion starts getting tender and translucent.
3. When the meat and onion are finished cooking, add the flour to the meat and let it cook it out for a couple of minutes.  Next add the beer and start adding the stock a little at a time.  You are sort of making a gravy at this point so you want to make sure that A.) you keep stirring so it doesn’t get lumpy or burn and B.) that you don’t thin it out too much with the stock.  It should be relatively thick.
4. Now it is time to add all of your veggies except the peas.  Sometimes I pre-boil the carrots and parsnips a little just to make sure they don’t stay too crunchy.  Let your mixture cook on low while you mash your potatoes.
5. By this point, your potatoes should be tender and ready to mash.  Drain off the water, add some butter and salt and pepper, and then start mashing.  Consistency all depends on what you like.  You can go a little chunky or really creamy.  Whatever sounds good to you.  Once your potatoes are done, get them ready to pipe onto your casserole.  You can use a piping bag with a really big tip or you can just put them into a gallon baggie and cut off one of the corners.  You don’t have to pipe the potatoes, but it does make it easier.  Trying to spread potatoes on top of a liquid mixture without sinking them can be very frustrating.  I took me like 2 years of making this to figure that out.
6. Add the peas to your beef mixture and then pour everything into an over safe casserole dish.  Make sure not to over fill…no more than 3/4  of the way full.  You still have to add the potatoes and have a little room for bubbling in the oven.  It usually takes me a large and a small corningware dish.
7. Pipe the mashed potatoes on top of the beef and veggie mixture.  You can be as fancy or not as you like.
8. Bake uncovered in a 350 degree oven for about half an hour.  It is good to put a cookie sheet under the casserole dish because more often than not there is some bubbling over.  After the first half hour, sprinkle on as much grated Irish cheddar as you like and let cook another 10-15 minutes until the cheese is melted.  I like to turn the oven to broil for the last 5 minutes or so just to get a nice brown and slightly crunchy top.
9. Pour yourself a nice Guinness and enjoy the fruits of your labor.  Slainte!

My Finally Finished St. Patrick’s Day Table Decorations!

I have shown bits and pieces of my table centerpiece as I have been making it, but now everything has come together and it is finally done!

So here is how it went.  I used some brown burlap to make a table runner.  It was a yard long and then I just cut it to the width that looked best on my dining room table.  Burlap is nice because I didn’t have to sew anything.  I actually pulled strings around the edges to give it a frayed rustic look.  Then I took some wide green ribbon just a hair shorter than the burlap and glued it right down the middle of the burlap.  That was my easy runner.

In the center of the runner, I put my Shamrock Bouquet, my Leprechaun Spirits, some chocolate gold coins, and some potatoes.  And then I was done.

Happy Crafting and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!

Worth Reading: Galway Bay by Mary Pat Kelly

So after reading The Hunger Games, I thought I would move on to some lighter reading…how about the Irish Potato Famine.  I know, right?  I am really more of a happy book kind of girl so my current streak of heavy and often sad books is a little out of character for me.  That being said, I really did like Galway Bay by Mary Pat Kelly and would recommend it to anyone interested in the potato famine, Ireland, and Irish emigration to the United States.  In her acknowledgement section, Kelly says that this book is her family’s story and while this is literally true, it is also the family story for millions of Americans.  For those of you don’t what the Irish Potato Famine/The Great Hunger is, I can recommend some great books on the topic…as a historian I cannot emphasize this enough…please stay away from Wikipedia!  Sorry, huge pet peeve of mine.

A quick basic history to start.  The Irish potato famine was the total failure or partial failure of the potato crop in Ireland between 1845 to 1850.  An airborne blight which originated in North America spread to Europe and destroyed the potato crops in not only Ireland, but many countries in Europe as well.  The difference being A.) England’s feudal land system which was made worse in Ireland by mostly absentee English landlords and B.) Other countries cared about the well-being of their citizens and when the blight hit, shut down ports and kept what food what being grown in the country rather than continuing to ship out grains and livestock as England did.  Basically, Ireland’s complete reliance on the potato crop as the staple of their diet coupled with England’s extreme dislike for the Irish, their Lassiez-Faire economic policy and belief in the Malthusian population theory set Ireland on course for the worst disaster in its history.

Ok, sorry…now on to the book review.  This book begins in Galway, Ireland about 5 years before the first loss of the potato crop.  Just for reference, Galway is on the west coast of Ireland almost directly across from Dublin on the east coast.  In the beginning, Honora Keely, who is supposed to be entering a convent in three months meets Michael Kelly and they fall in love and get married.  All goes well and the couple have 3 children and are quite content farming their plot of land until the famine strikes. Then there is a lot of what you would expect, death, anger and struggling to survive.  Ultimately, the family makes the journey to America — Chicago.  Here they struggle, but eventually find their place and help shape American history.  You know there are other little twists in there but, I won’t give them away.  I will tell you to watch Honora’s sister Maire who while having her own tragic story, also add a bit of levity when it seems most terrible.

While there was a great deal of crying, I really did enjoy this book a lot.  If you are looking for a feel good book, I would suggest you look elsewhere though.  There are definitely those moments when you cheer and laugh with the family, but they are punctuated with a great deal of pain, suffering, and heartbreak.  This is the first book I have read by Mary Pat Kelly though, I am anxious to see what else she has out there.  She has a very nice website and if you do get a chance to read the book, go to her blog section and check out the “Celebrating Honora” post.  It shows all of Honora’s descendants coming together to place a headstone on her unmarked grave in Chicago.  Somehow it seems even more poignant knowing that while fictional, the story is based in reality and on a real person who survived it all.

Happy Reading!

St. Patrick’s Day Table Decoration: Leprechaun Spirits

A while back I had seen a blog post where the person took min liquor bottles, relabeled them, and handed them out during a party.  I thought this was a cool idea, but decided to see if I could turn it into more of a decoration…and here is what I came up with.

Materials:

• small glass bottles with corks
• scrapbook paper
• food coloring
• glitter
• water

This is a pretty easy project that only took me about half an hour to do.  First, I found 3 small glass bottles from my local craft store.  Note: two of these had flat sides, while one was rounded and while I liked the look of the rounded one a lot, it was a pain trying to glue the label on it.  you may want to stay away from the rounded ones.

Next, I printed the names for the labels of my bottles.  I had three bottles and came up with Essence of Emerald Isle, Elixir O’ Luck, and Leprechaun Spirits.  I just used my word program and kept the writing pretty small.  It took me a couple tries to get it the right size.  I also picked out some little clip art pictures to add to my labels.  Once I had every thing the size I wanted, I took some scrapbook paper and just helped make the labels more decorative.  After this, I glued the labels on the bottles and added a little ribbon just to give them another dimension.

Finally I added food coloring to water until I got the shades that I wanted and then poured these into the bottles.  Note:  I would definitely mix the water in a separate container because if you try to do it in the bottle there is a good chance water could be sloshed around and then ruin the labels you just made.  After I poured the water in the bottles, I add a little bit of glitter to a couple of them just for something extra.

I was pretty happy with how they turned out and once I finish the shamrock bouquet I am working on, that and these bottles will make a cute centerpiece.  Will add another picture when the centerpiece is finished.

Happy Crafting!

My Passion (some would say obsession) for All Things Irish

I have a whole slew of St. Patrick’s Day/Irish posts in the works for the next few weeks so I thought I would take a quick minute to tell you where my passion for all things Irish came from.  Of course, as soon as I wrote the sentence, I knew I couldn’t answer the question…it is one I have been pondering for more than ten years. You may think that it would come from family history and legacy which would be a like scenario…sadly, I do not have one drop of Irish in my genealogy (English, Welsh, German, Russian for me).  All I can tell you is that my senior year of high school (eleven years ago) for some reason I picked the potato famine as my topic for my senior research project and haven’t looked back since.

The Irish speaking region of Ireland. Mainly the west and the Aran Islands.

Celtic Cross from a cemetery on the Aran Islands

During my undergraduate years, I used every available opportunity to tie in Irish history when doing research and writing papers.  As a history major, this was fairly frequently.  My senior thesis paper (for my other major, International Studies) looked at Irish Tinkers (gypsies) and the effect that modernization has had on their culture.  This was way before any Big Fat Gypsy Weddings on TLC by the way.  But the best experience was when I got to do a semester abroad in Galway Ireland at National University Ireland, Galway.  That was an amazing 5 months and I got to see and experience some amazing parts of Ireland.

After college, I left West Virginia and headed back to Colorado where graduate school was on the agenda.  I was enrolled to get a Master’s degree in history and since I was going to a school with a smaller Master’s program, it was a general history major with no specialization.  We just had to write 3 thesis papers with topics based in the classes that were being taught.  My papers focused on Irish women who came to be domestic servants in America (American History class), The writings of the leaders of the Easter Uprising of 1916 and how these inspired future Irish revolutionaries (Modern Europe class), and finally a comparison of British policy during the Irish famine and an Indian Famine (Indian history class).

A "famine house" never torn down....a memorial to those who were lost.

I was fairly proud of myself that I was able to connect Ireland to all three papers…I thought for sure I was out of luck for my Indian history class.

Kylemore Abbey...a beautiful estate near Galway that a man built for his wife as a marriage gift in the 1800's. Now an all girls boarding school.

So, I may not have Irish roots, but over the years I have studied their history and culture and have a very deep love and connection with the Irish.  That is my story and why I have dedicated March to posts celebrating all things Irish!

I LOVE Old Books!!

Old books have become sort of a passion/obsession for me (one I don’t think my husband is too excited about).  I am not racking up credit card debt or anything like that, but I do find that I spend probably a bit too much time on ebay perusing the listings while sighing and dreaming about winning the lottery so I could fill my house with old books (and new for that matter).  About a month ago, I came across a biography of 4 prominent (perhaps some would say infamous) Irishmen published in 1871 and for $10, well how could I pass that up. I decided I could add it to my small collection ( I think that I now have four 100+ year old books).  Well it finally arrived yesterday (there were some missteps on the sellers end so it took awhile) and I am thrilled!!

quite unassuming

I know I sound like a bit of a freak but there is some strange fascination old books like this hold for me.  Just think, this book is 141 years old!

It isn’t the content that attracts me so much (though I will pick up anything Irish, but that is a whole other post) as the history of the book.  I haven’t read it yet, but just thinking about its historical context and the time in which it was written is what really gets me excited.  This particular book was published in London, which in and of it itself is intriguing considering Irish/English relations at this time.  Why would an English publisher publish a book with biographies of men at least two of whom would have been at best considered Irish agitators.  Probably even all four could fall under that category (Sorry, have I mentioned that I have a Master’s degree in History and this is probably why I love this sort of thing so much).

Once I get done mulling over the time period in which the book was first published, then I start thinking over the past 140 years, who has owned this book?  Books were still a precious commodity in 1870 owned mostly by the wealthy.  How did it make its way over to the United States?  Did it spend some time in Ireland where it probably would have been more appreciated?  I got it from a man in Illinois, but how did he come to own it?  I know that I will never know the answers to these questions, but it is still fun to ponder them.

Anyways, now I own this amazing book and in a world turning increasingly to electronic books, this little piece of history will be well loved and well taken care of in our home.  And one day, I will be able to hand it down to my children and grandchildren who will hopefully be able to appreciate the fact that it will be 200 years old by then.