School's Out... this week! Memories of food and innocence...

Pack your favorite things, we are off to Skibbereen, Co. Cork, Ireland. Growing up in Cork City, we would spend our holidays every summer in the cottage that my father was born in. It is one of my fathers' most favorite places to go and for me it is a place I go to in my head to find solitude.  I remember the neighbors coming over in the evening for a visit and my parents serving some goodies and before the night was over there was a song to be sung, or a story to be told. My father was surrounded by his relatives and friends and that was very comforting to him. My mother of course had the kettle on and she would have brought a fruit cake with her from the city,"just in case someone popped in". 
My father had this cousin that was known for his dry witt and his famous expression was "When I am dead don't bury me at all, just soak my bones in alcohol" he is since gone but a wonderful man and story teller, oh what fun they used to have together.  I can remember my fathers' hearty laugh coming from the kitchen.  

Those who know me know that I have a lamp of this in my living room.

It was in one of the most beautiful settings on God's green earth.  One cannot imagine how lucky we were but being kids/teenagers of course we did not appreciate it.  I am lucky enough to go home now and be able to walk the land and soak it up.  When I was a child my brothers, sister and I would tell each other ghost stories as we fell asleep, all cuddled into the one bedroom.  The Fasnet Rock light house could be seen from the windows.  It is an incredible daunting statute...
My memories are probably different from that of my siblings but happiest ones are of picking blackberries with my mother and she would make Blackberry Apple jam.   They would grow wild on the side of the road.  The smells and rainy weather that we have been having over here in New England has brought me right back there.  You would literally be walking around the roads in your wellies and raincoat picking the berries.  

Blackcurrant Jam will always bring me back to West Cork :)

One other favorite of mine was of my neighbor who was this wonderful woman over the road. Her name to us was Mrs Driscoll. On the night that Elvis Presley died we were on "holidays" and we did not have any television otherwise known as "telly" so we had to walk to the neighbors house in the pitch black of night to find out what was the latest news. I was only 14 so of course I was devastated by it.  she did not mind us coming, take into consideration that there were no phones available like there are now so we just showed up.  Immediately she took out her enormous loaf of Whole wheat Irish Soda Bread, and when I say DELICIOUS! it does not do it justice.  She also had so many blackcurrant bushes outside in her garden that she made t.h.e. B.E.S.T blackcurrant jam there was or will ever be again. 

This was definitely the role I took on those hot summer days!

I strongly feel that the Driscoll family gave me a childhood that I would never have had otherwise.  We got to see newborn chickens been born and got to hold them when they were barely out of their mothers womb. I remember walking the roads in the wee hours of the morning to go to the local farmer to collect a gallon of milk, to this day I still cannot drink raw milk.  What a wonderful healthy way to grow up though.  If I was getting the milk, someone else was going to the well to get buckets of water, we did not have running water in the house at that time.


 I am seriously thinking of taking my children strawberry picking this weekend and we can make jam.  I really want my children/teenager to appreciate where things come from the way I did. Oh to be able to live the simple life again.