Auntie Jen's Family Trees: YouTube

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Traditional Irish Foods & Recipes

Happy St. Patrick's Day! As my mom says, "The day where everyone is Irish." Well, thanks to DNA testing and research, I have learned I am actually part Irish on my Dad's side! I wrote about Harry Hill, my Irish Ancestor last year. Check out that post and come back here to see what we have in store for this St. Patrick's Day.

I love watching this Channel on YouTube where Irish people try all kinds of things from all over the world. It's called The Try Channel. That gave me the idea of trying traditional Irish Foods to celebrate my Irish heritage. So that's what I did. I reached out to some friends on the internet for some ideas. Here is what I came up with.

Mark & me trying Irish foods

Watch me try all these Irish foods!

Boxty

“Boxty in the griddle, boxty in the pan, if you can’t make boxty, you’ll never get a man”.

Boxty is a traditional Irish Potato Pancake with grated potatoes and mashed potatoes. It is commonly made with about 70% potato and about 30% other ingredients. The most popular version of the dish consists of finely grated raw potato and flour. The grated potato may be strained to remove most of the starch and water but this is not necessary. The mixture is fried on a griddle pan for a few minutes on each side, similar to a normal pancake. The most noticeable difference between boxty and other fried potato dishes is its smooth, fine-grained consistency.

The dish is mostly associated with the north midlands, north Connacht and southern Ulster, in particular the counties of Leitrim, Mayo, Sligo, Donegal, Fermanagh, Longford, and Cavan. (Irish: bacstaí)

The recipe I used I found on Pinterest. There are other recipes that might have just a slight variation, but this one turned out so well, I'm going to stick with it.

This recipe made quite a lot of potato pancakes. I had enough leftovers for my husband, daughter, and my mom. I served mine with sliced green onions and a couple of sausage links. Other sites state you can serve them with syrup or sour cream, depending on your taste. 10 out of 10 would make this again.

Irish Coffee

This was something my husband has been wanting to try for a long time. He loves coffee and he loves whisky. So I looked up many recipes for Irish Coffee. I was surprised at all the variations. I finally landed on a simple recipe that was perfect. Click the link to read about the History of Irish Coffee.

Irish Coffee
4oz Coffee
1-2 TBS sugar (hubby doesn't like it too sweet)
1 shot of Irish Whiskey (I used Jameson Black Barrel)
Homemade Whipped Cream

Pour hot water into the glass you are going to serve your Irish Coffee in so it will warm up. Make your coffee. Put the sugar in a small pot, add just a bit of water, and heat it until it melts. Remove from heat and pour in the whiskey to warm it with the sugar. Pour out the water from your cup. Add the coffee, then add your sugar/whiskey mixture and then top with homemade whipping cream. (Just whip heavy whipping cream until solid)

There you go! Like I said, there are many variations. So make it however you want. This is just the way I make it and hubby loves it! I don't have a traditional clear glass to serve it in, so I used what I had. I served my coffee with Irish Soda Bread. I did not make that. I purchased it from the store. It was one less thing for me to make.

The Irish Coffee was created in the winter of 1943 by Joe Sheridan, chef at Foynes Port near Limerick, Ireland. When he was asked by the passengers if he had used Brazilian coffee, Sheridan replied: "No, it was Irish coffee.” https://weaverscoffee.com/blogs/blog/the-original-irish-coffee-recipe-and-its-history

Irish Soda Bread

I had thought about making this from scratch, but with everything else I was doing, I decided to just pick it up from the store. I served it with my Irish Coffee and some Kerrygold Irish Butter.

"Despite its hefty presence during Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations, the history of Irish Soda Bread doesn’t nearly date back to the days of Saint Patty himself—roughly 400 AD—but rather only a couple of centuries. Irish Soda Bread was first created in the late 1830s when the first iteration of baking soda—or bicarbonate soda—was introduced to the U.K." Source: History of Irish Soda Bread

More history: http://www.sodabread.info/history

Irish Beef Stew

I wasn't planning on making this at first, but since I wanted to try a Guinness for the first time (and you can only buy the cans in a four-pack) I decided to try this recipe. It called for a full can of Guinness. Wow! It takes all day to cook to get the flavors melded together. The house smelled delicious. I got the recipe from here: Irish Beef and Guinness Stew. She explains it so well, so I'm not going to type it all out below. follow her instructions and it will turn out amazing.

I served this with Colcannon Potatoes since they recommend Mashed Potatoes.

Colcannon

Colcannon is an Irish Mashed potato recipe that contains kale or cabbage and bacon. I absolutely LOVED this. It paired well with the Irish Beef Stew, but I would serve this by itself some time.

Recipe: Irish Colcannon Potatoes

During the 1600 and 1700’s in Europe and Ireland, potatoes, cabbages, and leeks were considered the food of the common man so it was inevitable that a dish would evolve that combines all the ingredients. The word colcannon is from the Gaelic term “cal ceannann” which means white-headed cabbage. It is also believed to be a derivative of the old Irish “cainnenin” translated as garlic, onion, or leek.

In Ireland, colcannon is served as a special treat with ham or Irish bacon. The Irish tradition is to serve colcannon as the main dish for Halloween festivities and refer to the evening as “Colcannon Night”. Colcannon is used for the foretelling of marriages. Just as Americans have the fun superstition of the single young lady who catches the wedding bouquet will be the next to marry. Young single Irish women hope to find the ring hidden in their plate of colcannon. Source: What's Cooking America

All in all, it was a good day trying traditional Irish foods. I did end the day trying my first Guinness, and I have to say... eh... well watch the video to get my take on it. What a great way to celebrate my Irish heritage. I am going to try some other items soon that were recommended to me. Such as a Tayto Crisp sandwich. I ordered the chips from Amazon.

Have you tried any of these recipes? What do you like to make for St. Patrick's Day? do you have Irish heritage? Let me know in the comments below. And don't forget to check out my video!

via GIPHY

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Week 39: Map It Out

Do you have a family that moved around a lot? Have you ever wondered how close in proximity your family lines lived to each other? Are you trying to locate what possible church they would have attended? These are questions I have asked myself when it came to my family. And the only way to answer them was to "Map It Out". That is this week's prompt for the 52 Ancestors Challenge.
My family's roots are deep in St. Louis. I've traced the majority of the lines back to the time they immigrated. On my mom's side of the family, we have the Ilg Family, Buer Family, and the Helfrich Family. They all lived in the same area of St. Louis, the Carondelet area, from around the 1890s-1945. Some of them moved quite a bit but still remained in the Carondelet area. When I started documenting the addresses for all the families, I started noticing familiar names. So I started comparing the addresses on the maps and lo and behold, they were all within a few streets of each other for years. For some of them, I was having a hard time locating records, so I wanted to look at the churches they went to. Thanks to the advice from my Aunt Patty Fuchs, she told me if I knew their religion, look for the closest church to their residence that was the same religion. That led me to St. Boniface Catholic Church. Even though the church is closed, the St. Louis County Library headquarters had many records from them. I was able to find baptismal records, birth records, death records, and marriage records.
As you can see from my examples, mapping out the addresses helped me answer the questions at the beginning of this post and many more. I learned a lot more about my family than I ever knew before. I even took the time to drive the area that they used to live in. Most of it has been redeveloped over the years, but there were some that were still original.
I still wanted to take a map and plot the different addresses all together so I could actually visualize all the different residences along with places of employment, churches, and other important addresses. It was during this time, I came across a video put out by Family History Fanatics featuring Melissa Finley from Boundless Genealogy. She explained how you could use Google Maps to place points on the map to represent the different addresses. See the videos below:

Thanks to Melissa, I was able to create my own map. This was exactly what I was looking for. Now I have a visual to go with my research. Even though the area has changed, I was able to look at old maps to pinpoint the exact location. After going through all the addresses I had, verifying through census records and city directories along with other sources, I created my own map. It's not done yet, but here is the work in progress.