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Below is an extract from Fusion – a Family Recipe Cookery Book compiled by Claregalway Educate Together National School (C.E.T.N.S.). The book contains lots of lovely recipes and memories of days gone by.

 

As part of an inter-generational community project, a group of children, parents and teacher, Niamh Mannion, visited the Claregalway & District Day Care Centre to share food memories and recipes with the older people.

What the children discovered during the visit was that being able to cook over 50 years ago was a necessity as food was largely produced at home and shop bought convenience items were rarer.  The older people explained how they did all of their own baking including brown soda bread and scones.  Food was home-grown or gathered locally.  People had small vegetable plots for growing vegetables such as potatoes, cabbage, turnips. carrots and peas.  They had their own orchards, with fruit trees; apples, crab apples, plums, pears and berry bushes; redcurrants, blackcurrants, white currants and gooseberries.  They foraged for hazelnuts, berries, mushrooms and nettles.  Foraged food would have been used for jam making, soups, broths and stews.

People had small farm holdings and farmed their own livestock for meat and other produce; pigs for ham and bacon, chickens and hens for eggs, turkeys, sheep for lamb and mutton and cows for beef and milk.  This was then traded with other local farmers.  They also hunted wild animals such as ducks, pheasant, hares and rabbits and fished for trout, salmon, herring, whiting and mackerel.

It was the women of the house who did the majority of the cooking. Cooking was a life skill to be passed from generation to generation, mother to daughter and sister to sister, including how to bake, make jams and preserves and how to reuse leftover food.  Everything was used; there was no waste.  Like today, different festivals and celebrations during the year involved different food dishes.  St. Patrick’s Day was a day with no meat.  Good Friday meant a fish supper.  Easter Sunday saw Spring Lamb on the menu and for Christmas a goose or duck and, in later years, a turkey was served to the family.

Over 50 years ago a traditional food dish would have been Bacon and Cabbage; Colcannon using potatoes, cabbage or kale, or Irish Stew with mutton, potatoes, onions and water.  Today’s children listed a variety of traditional foods including meat and potatoes and black pudding alongside ingredients such as falafel, noodles, pasta and rice.  A mixture of Swiss, Romanian, Italian  and Bangladeshi traditional dishes, to name but a few, highlights the multi-cultural diversity of today’s young Irish.  Where the older people would have used seaweed as a fertiliser for vegetables, today’s children would be more accustomed to seaweed as a food ingredient.

After comparing favourite foods, both young and older agreed that desserts were the most favoured.  However, over 50 years ago deserts would have been much scarcer and simpler.  Rhubarb and Custard and Apple Tart, compared to today’s children’s favourites of Red Velvet Chocolate Cake, Tiramisu and ice cream. the most “exotic food” memories of the older generation were listed as Boiled Fruit Cake and Sherry Trifle whereas the children listed unusual meats and seafood; Alligator and Kangaroo meat, Octopus, Squid in Ink and Shark meat.

Memories of Christmas Past

Another inter-generational community project included a group of children, parents and teacher Siobhan Broderick, on a visit to the Day Care Centre in Claregalway to reminisce with a group of older women about what Christmas was like when they were young.

In the days coming up to Christmas the older women recalled that there was a lot of preparation for Christmas Day.  As there was no electricity until the 1950s the women told the children that they didn’t have Christmas trees adorned with fairy lights and baubles, instead they decorated their dressers with holly and ivy.  They made candle holders out of turnips by cutting off the base to make it stand upright and, by boring a hole in the centre, the candle was placed inside with holly decorated around the outside.

On Christmas Eve it was a day of fasting meaning no meat for the day.  All of the chores had to be done on that day as Christmas Day was the only day off from work.  Treadle bread was made on Christmas Eve and the women remember eating some after dinner that night and leaving some out for Santa.  Doors were left unlocked until midnight and the animals got extra feed.

On Christmas morning after the excitement of opening presents and checking stockings for treats such as candies, nuts or fresh oranges, the women went to mass with their families.  Christmas dinner was usually goose though some women remembered having a turkey.

Families kept their own fowl so they would have reared, slaughtered, plucked and hung their own goose or turkey in preparation of the Christmas dinner.  Plum pudding was made in November and hung up by the ceiling in order to dry out.  It was made with dried fruits, spices, suet and some kind of alcohol, either whiskey or stout or, if you had any, poitin.

On St. Stephen’s night the wren boys also known as mummers called to houses and sang for food, drink and/or money.  They were dressed up and had their faces obscured with masks and hats.  None of our ladies remember ‘Women’s Christmas’, they would have referred to it as ‘Little Christmas’,  It was the twelfth and last day of Christmas and the family would have a lavish meal again with either goose or turkey.