Lesson #1: "J'st a wee drop o' the craytchure"

In order to remain most efficient, one must preempt questions about predicted subjects as long as the volume of questions will be greater than the time it takes to preempt.  Thus, this preemptive response to what the title of my blog means.  But that is not Lesson #1 of my social learnings & teachings.  Lession #1 lies in the explanation...

One of my brothers and sister went to Ireland with me 5 years ago.  My sister was in charge of planning one thing: where we would stay at night on our 10-day road trip. That did not happen.  Instead, we drove our minature car until we were tired of sheep and green beauty, and then we pulled into any house that had a sign out for visitors.  A bit of a different setup on the west coast of the emerald isle, where there aren't many hotels.  Rather families, rent out a room in their home that used to be occupied by their now mature and moved-out daughter.  They make you tea and biscuits in the evening, guide you on what pub to drink in that night, and make you a brilliant Irish breakfast in the morning, hopefully containing homemade Irish brown bread.  Brilliant.  But, more importantly, you get a picture of what life is like in an Irish home in small western villages in Ireland.

On our first night in Ireland 5 years ago, we pulled into a farm, and a large 60 year-old woman standing 6ft tall with a plump face, pale as the sheep's underbelly, a cooking apron around her middle, and wearing rubber "shit kickers" on her feet, walked out to greet us.  Agnes welcomed us in, fed us, and sent us down to the seashore to help her extremely shy husband, John, with getting some eggs for breakfast out of the chicken coup (where I think she had just been in her "shit kickers").  We had a brilliant first night in Ireland and I tasted my first homemade brown bread the next morning.  Before we left to hugs from my new favorite Irish woman, and a shy wave from her husband John, I asked Agnes for a brown bread recipe.  She gave it to me with her name and phone number on the back of it.

When I returned home to Minnesota, my brother and I tried to make Agnes' brown bread.  Mistake.  I don't know if it was an issue of not being able to convert metric measurements or if it had to do with the fresh butter from the cows that Agnes used, but it wasn't what we had remembered.

In June of this year, Jessie and I decided that Ireland was the perfect honeymoon location.  After several days on the west coast of Ireland, we found ourselves without a spot to stay one night.  I had Agnes & John's brown bread recipe in our guide book, because I was set on figuring out what was wrong with the recipe on this trip.  I decided that Jessie should meet them, so we phoned Agnes to see if their room was open.  She was extatic.  We arrived to the same scene I had remembered 5 years earlier with John in the field down by the seashore, this time with a new baby donkey that had just been born, and Agnes with an apron on,  "shit kickers" replaced by bright red Crocs this time. I told Agnes that I had made her brown bread with minimal success, and I had to come back for the real thing.  We looked up my entry from 5 years ago in the little log book they keep, and we were there 5 years prior, to the day.

That night, Agnes and ever-shy John, brought out 4 glasses of their wedding Waterford crystal with a little unlabled glass bottle of what looked like whiskey.  She asked if we could toast to the newlyweds with a "wee drop o' the craytchure."  Jessie looked scared, but I said sure.  Agnes poured four shots and toasted in her thick western Irish accent while John quietly smiled at her, "to a long and happy life together, lots of healthy Irish children...Oh, and don't forget what my dad always said, you need a comfortable bed, and a very good pair of shoes...Because if you aren't in one, you're in the other".  With that, she took one of her old oven mitts she was hiding behind her back, stuck 2ft down in her skirt and gave it to us as a wedding present.  An interesting gift from someone who obviously did not need to give us anything.  Later, Agnes explained to me, that there was nothing wrong with the bread recipe she had given me, the ingredients I got from Cub Foods, or my metric measurements.  Rather, it was a well used Irish oven mitt that would be the answer to my brown bread difficulties back in Saint Paul.