Loreena Mckennitt: Troubadours on the Rhine

This past week, I had the honor of attending a Loreena Mckennitt concert in my hometown, and I'm still on a music high from listening to her ethereal Celtic ballads. So I decided to write a short post about her music and why I love it so much. The reason I'm posting her music on this blog is that most of her songs are based on history and folklore, and some concert selections were actually Victorian poems set to music.

According to her official website, which you can find by following this link, she grew up in rural Manitoba, Canada and wanted to be a veterinarian as a child. She discovered Celtic music in the 1970s, and, as she puts it, "I found that music chose me rather than me, it." Ms. McKennitt describes herself as an introverted person who connected with Celtic music through the history of the Celts and how their story impacts the world today. "I don’t consider myself to have the strong extroverted personality best suited for a career in music, but rather one which is more comfortable on a farm, in an informal gathering of friends." In short, she's a good old-fashioned country girl with a beautiful voice who found that her passion lay in history and the beauty of days gone by.

During the concert I could see this introversion in her stage presence, because she didn't really attempt to entertain with fancy moves or energetic attempts to get the crowd involved. Instead she told stories about her travels, read poetry while playing the piano, and, of course, she performed several of her songs for her audience. The concert impressed me, because she didn't attempt to show off. All she did was be herself, and her personality was graceful, kind, humble, and very thoughtful. Compared to modern concerts, it was refreshing*, and if you haven't heard of her before I highly encourage you to click on the links below to hear some of my personal favorites.

Until next time...

The Lady of Shalott

The Stolen Child

Down by the Sally Gardens

The Bonny Swans

Skellig

Dante's Prayer

The Mummer's Dance

All Souls Night

* I'm not trying to bash all modern concerts, because I've attended a few that I thoroughly enjoyed. All I'm saying is that there was a distinct difference in presentation styles.

Irish Ham and Soda Bread

Hello, all.

Here's some more recipes I found, modified to utilize what I had in the cabinet, and served for St. Patrick's Day. There have to be a million Irish Soda bread recipes online, but judging from what research I've done this is the most "traditional." I've included it here for convenience. I also made Irish cheesy potato soup, but that is going to need some more work before it comes anywhere near this blog. Enjoy!

Irish Ham

1 medium to large ham (The one I used weighed about 6lbs and had the bone in).
1 cup sugar
2 tsp ground cloves
3 cloves garlic
3-4 bay leaves
1 large onion

1. Submerge the ham in cold water and soak for two hours prior to cooking. While it's soaking, add the rest of the ingredients to a pot of water and slowly heat until it's barely boiling.

Note: The original recipe says you're not supposed to boil the ham, but I don't feel comfortable eating the meat unless I see bubbles throughout the cooking process. Therefore, I did bring my water slightly above a simmer. I just paid attention to make sure the water never reached a rolling boil.

2. Rinse the ham under running cold water and carefully submerge in boiling water. Cook 20 minutes per pound and preheat oven to 375°F.

3. Remove ham from pot and place in baking dish with a 1/2cup - 1cup of juice. Bake for 20 minutes or until the ham is thoroughly cooked.


Soda Bread

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups buttermilk

Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and slowly add buttermilk until the dough is moldable. Lightly knead on a lightly floured surface and shape into an 8in circle.  Cut a 1/2in deep cross in the top and bake at 425°F for 45min or until top is golden brown. The crust will be hard, but the inside will be delicious.

I like to serve it sliced with a side of room-temperature butter mixed with honey.

Cinnamon Apple Scones

Sorry it took me so long to post anything new on this blog. Life got busy and priorities had to be set, but now I think I might be able to publish a couple posts per month. I decided to start with a scone recipe, because I just finished a Survey of British Literature course at college, and I'm in a Victorian mood.

Before I get started on the recipe, I should mention that I took a batch to school on Finals Day, and it received a thumbs up from my English professor. That is something I can brag about, because during college she lived in England and cooked for a posh retirement home where she made scones for the residents every week. She said my recipe was delicious, and the bowl was nearly empty by the time everyone left.

Here is a brief history of the scone if anyone is interested. To give credit where credit is due, I originally found the recipe on allrecipies.com and modified it to suit myself. Now let's get started!

Ingredients:

3 apples: peeled, cored, and diced or shredded        
sugar and cinnamon to taste
~
4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter (almost room temperature)
1 1/2 cups whipping cream or buttermilk
~
3 or 4 Tbsp of cream, buttermilk, or butter
sugar and cinnamon to taste

Special Tools (if you've never used one before, click on the link and you'll be taken to a short tutorial): pastry cutter, box grater (for shredding apples)

1. Preheat your oven to 425°F.

2. Peel, core, and either dice or shred the apples. I chose to dice the apples, because I like the chunky texture. Once the apples are ready, mix in sugar and cinnamon to suit your own taste. 







3. Sift flour, sugar, powder, soda, and salt into a separate mixing bowl large enough to accommodate
strong mixing movements without spilling batter all over the counter. (Yes, I learned that the hard way). Using the pastry cutter, combine the butter with the flour mixture until your flour has the texture of a course meal. 

Note** By "room temperature" I mean the consistency of Crisco. It just makes the cutting process a little easier.



4. Combine the apples with your flour mixture. Add cream or buttermilk until your dough is sticky but moldable.












5. Coat your hands in flour and carefully mold dough in balls about 3 or 4 inches in diameter (or, if you need a visual, somewhere between the size of a baseball and a softball). If your hands are well
coated, then the balls should become firm around the outside edge, maintaining it's sticky dough texture on the inside.

With a rolling pin, gently flatten the ball into a small cake about 3 or 4 inches in diameter and about 3/4 of an inch tall. Cut into four pieces.












6. Using a pastry brush, gently glaze the top of each cake with cream, buttermilk, or butter, and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon to taste.









7. Bake for 12-15 minutes in preheated oven, or until browned and risen. Separate the slices and transfer to wax paper or a cookie rack to cool. Serves 20-24 scones.

Sorry if that seemed inordinately long for a scone recipe. I tried to write this post so that someone who has never baked before might be able to understand it, and I included pictures for almost every step. These scones are a little sweeter than the ones I've bought from bakeries in the past, but I prefer them like that. If you want something more traditional, don't add the cinnamon sugar mixture to the apples in step two, and only add 1/2 cup sugar to the dough. Granny smith apples work the best, but any apples you need to use up in your kitchen should do.

If you try this recipe at home, please let me know what you think in the comment section below. Happy baking!

Forgotten Household Crafts

Hello, friends.


There are a few craft ideas I'm working on now, but since they are still works in progress I will share this book with you today instead: Forgotten Household Crafts, by John Seymour.

Printed in 1987, this book, "...demonstrates in beautiful details and illustrations a range of traditional skills that show you how to produce what you need for yourself...Part manual, part a celebration, this treasury of ageless techniques gives readers step-by-step advice on how to master each craft."

Despite its description, I wouldn't say this book is a how-to manual for anything — more like a coffee table book for the homesteading enthusiast to show off when company comes over. But Seymour does provide fascinating historical accounts of how each craft was used in daily life, and the sketches are amazing. As a writer, it's a useful manual, because it provides descriptions of tools and how they were used that are hard to find online if you don't know what you're looking for. If you already have technical know-how for certain crafts, it also provides some inspiration for projects and organization.

Whenever a passage applies to something I'm working on, I'll probably share an excerpt with you. Once in a while I might also experiment with some of the descriptions Seymour provides concerning common activities such as tea-making, cooking, canning, etc...stuff people think about sometimes but never really bother to try.

I think you'll find it interesting, and I can't wait to get started.

New Blog!

Hi, Readers!

Most of you have been following me for a while now on my official writer's blog, but you may not know that I'm also an avid butcher, baker, and candlestick maker. Okay, so I don't actually make candles yet — and I only plucked chicken feathers once — but I probably will before long at the rate I'm going.

The idea for this blog formed in my mind about a month ago when my mother *ahem* intervened, forced, helped me sort/organize my crafting supplies into tubs. This picture to the right is the result of a solid three days of work, and it's probably less than half the size of what we started with.

My thoughts: "O...M...G! I'm turning into a crazy craft lady!"

The thing I realized (after four weeks of reflection and a whole lot of coffee) is that this isn't the only type of thing I tend to hoard. My mother's kitchen is littered with different baking pans and specialty cookware that I've picked up at various thrift shops over the years — things I've mostly never used. It just sits on my Mom's shelf, gathering dust in the hopes that someday I'll have a kitchen of my own in which to use it.

Not anymore. I've decided I'm going to embrace my inner crazy craft lady and add yet another blog to the endless list of DIY websites available on the internet today.

Welcome to Soil and Strings and Old Fashioned Things! This is where I'm going to let myself share the different projects I get myself into, as well as monologue about the different hobbies I've grown to love. If you like creative stuff, hopefully you'll find this blog inspiring.

Here's to organized chaos and mouth-watering food! Enjoy!