In an Irish Home

It’s official…In An Irish Home exists.  Yippee!! I’m probably not supposed to “seem” this excited but the truth of it is I am completely and honestly “tickled pink”.  A very thoughtful friend said she found In An Irish Home yesterday around 3.00pm.  She tried to leave a comment (God bless her – my first comment!) but, alas, it did not appear.  She will try again tonight and you can be sure I’ll be checking tomorrow morning to see if she was successful.  Checking and writing your own blog is addictive…once you get the darned thing going.

Speaking of which, a big THANK YOU goes to the WordPress.com Forums Support site.  When I was worried that somehow I’d made a hames (Irish for “making a mess”) of setting up this blog, I was happy to learn from the WordPress experts that it can take days or weeks before Google finds a new blog. (Wish WordPress had mentioned that in the “Getting Started” section of their website.)  It wasn’t vanity that made me anxious these past two weeks.  If I’d known from the beginning that when you post a blog it doesn’t instantly appear, I’d have been more patient.

A big THANK YOU also goes to Sams Teach Yourself WordPress 3 in 10 Minutes.  It’s a helpful resource for someone who hasn’t a clue what they’re doing (someone like me).  I recommend it to anyone who feels the need to push out into the world wide web and leave their thoughts in a WordPress blog.

So, now that In An Irish Home really exists, I suppose it’s time to get writing/blogging (which is it?). Thankfully there’s always something happening around here.  Drop me a comment when you have a moment.  I’d love to hear from you!

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One of the first visual memories I have from Ireland is of my mother-in-law making Brown Soda Bread at her kitchen table.  Her thin fingers worked the flours, salt and bicarbonate of soda together, sifting them by touch and breaking any lumps that might spoil the finished bread.  Then she’d pour in the buttermilk and mix until a loose dough was formed.  After a few minutes of kneading, it was made into circle shape, a cross was cut into the top and it went into the oven to bake.  An hour later a golden brown loaf would be relieved from the oven and left to cool on a wire rack. The smell was only gorgeous.

My mother-in-law raised twelve children on soda bread.  Stories are still told by my husband and his brothers of the times they went out to cut turf with their father and how they often had cheese sambos (Irish slang for “sandwiches”) on brown bread and a flask of tea for their lunch.  If you’ve ever spent time in the Irish countryside you know there could be no better meal…there’s just something so wholesome, so delicious about it.

Today I make brown soda bread for our family.  Experimenting with recipes, ingredients and loaf shapes is becoming an obsession of mine.  If we’re in America the recipe is always different than when we are in Ireland because the flour differs from country to country. Overall, however, I stick with the traditionalist view of using only five simple ingredients: brown and white flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and buttermilk.* We’ve yet to go out turf cutting (someday….) but when we go hill walking, cheese sambos and tea are what we take along.  In the future I hope our girls will have fond Brown Soda Bread Memories too.

* I promise to post Brown Soda Bread recipes for baking in America and Ireland later this summer!

** Brown Soda Bread recipe for those of you using “grams and ounces” here.

*** Brown Soda Bread recipe for those of you using “cups” measures here.

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It’s been about two weeks since I started this project and little has progressed.  I’m trying to console myself with the “I’m a busy mom, ferrying the kids around to various summer camps and friends’ houses and doing the usual jobs of cooking, cleaning, gardening, entertaining, blah, blah, blah” line but it’s not really working.  Truth is, I thought setting up a blog would be easier and more glamorous…something similar to how it was in the movie Julie & Julia (you know, sitting at a cozy table, handsome husband in the background, typing breezily and then, with the touch of a button, it’s all done).

The fact is you have to know what you’re doing and be patient.  From reading the book Teach Yourself WordPress 3 in 10 Minutes (are they joking?!) and reviewing the forums on WordPress I have learned you can’t expect to instantly show up on the world wide web just because you create an account and write your first blog.  The WordPress forum says it can take anywhere from six hours to several weeks AND you need to have more than one entry.

Have patience and write more than one entry…hhhmmm…I can do both.  Have you got the patience to stay with me?

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Okay, so…I’m doing this.  I’ve checked out other sites and, so far, haven’t found anything like what I’m hoping to do here.  That’s the first box ticked.  Now for the writing…let’s see…what to say…what to say.  Hold on a minute.  I’ve just taken out a second computer and looked up In An Irish Home (through Google and WordPress.com) and been told nothing exists. How’s that possible?  I’m on one computer typing away and looking at another computer only to find nothing is showing up anywhere.  This may be a wee bit more difficult than I thought.  Thankfully I bought the book Teach Yourself WordPress 3 from Easons in Dun Laoghaire the other day. On the cover it says “Teach Yourself WordPress 3 in 10 Minutes”.  Whatcha think?  Will it work?  I’m off to find out…stay tuned.

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