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- Written by: ESTHER OERTEL
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – They say that everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, and this month many in our country will mark the date by drinking green beer and feasting on corned beef and cabbage.
It’s not well known, however, that corned beef is rarely served in Ireland and is not a St. Patrick’s Day tradition there.
Irish immigrants in the U.S. and Canada found that beef was more plentiful and less expensive on this side of the Atlantic. They used the corned (or salted) version in place of an Irish favorite, bacon joint, to cook with cabbage, thus spawning the tradition.
The Irish don’t have a particular dish they associate with their patron saint; instead, they may mark the holiday by attending Mass in his honor or by enjoying a pint at the local pub. Sometimes they do both.
Since we’re all honorary Irish this month, let’s take a look at some favorite foods that are served year-round on the Emerald Isle.
Lamb stew may be considered the quintessential Irish meal; in fact, some call it the national dish of Ireland.
Irish stews began when animals were slaughtered for landowners and tenant farmers were given the less desirable cuts. They threw these into a three-legged pot to boil over a fire. Over the years, the recipes were refined to use lamb as the only meat in the stew. While there is some controversy as to whether carrots or peas should be included, potatoes always are.
Other dishes that include lamb are Kerry pies (lamb and vegetables in a rich pastry crust made with mutton fat) and shepherd’s pie, which is ground lamb and vegetables baked with a mashed potato crust. If ground beef is substituted in the latter, it’s called a cottage pie.
Not surprisingly, potatoes form the basis of many Irish dishes. They were introduced into Ireland from America in the second half of the 16th century, eventually becoming the main food crop of the poor. Because they provide a high amount of energy per land unit as well as lots of nutrition, they were a valuable staple.
“Irish champ” is the name of a traditional mashed potato dish that includes sliced scallions. It’s served with a pool of melted butter in a well in the middle.
“Potatoes colcannon” (or colcannon potatoes) is a combination of mashed potatoes and cabbage. The word colcannon is from a Gaelic term, cal ceannann, which means white cabbage.
Another popular potato dish is “boxty,” a simple griddle cake that combines raw and mashed potatoes. Sometimes boxty is served as part of an “Ulster fry,” a hearty breakfast dish that includes eggs and a variety of fried meats such as bacon and sausage. There’s a traditional Irish poem that goes, “Boxty on the griddle; boxty in the pan. If you can’t make boxty, you’ll never get a man.”
“Bubble and squeak” is the name of a large pancake that’s made from potatoes and the vegetable remains of Sunday lunch, traditionally served on Monday. Any veggies will do for bubble and squeak, including cabbage, carrots, rutabagas (called “Swedes” in Ireland), or Brussels sprouts, but it must include a good amount of potatoes. The name, among my favorite as food names go, comes from the sound it makes as steam is released from the vegetables as it cooks.
Oats and barley are traditional grains in Irish cooking and are often the main ingredients in desserts or breads. Puddings are made from barley and cakes or breads from oatmeal. Apples, which grow well in Ireland’s clime, are often added to each.
Other fruits used for desserts include strawberries, raspberries, and rhubarb, which also grow well there. These three are used in fruit “fools,” a fluffy, chilled dessert that is a precursor to ice cream.
Years ago, I asked a local Irish celebrity of sorts, Father James McSweeney of Middletown’s St. Joseph’s Church, which food he missed most from his homeland. Sausages topped the list for him. He was especially fond of the simple sausage and brown bread breakfasts of his youth.
According to McSweeney, sausage makers in the U.S. have been unable to duplicate the taste of those from his home in County Cork, where a local herb added unique flavor.
Sadly, Fr. James passed away in August of last year, which makes me especially thankful to have his authentic brown bread recipe, which I’ve shared below. It’s a rustic bread, very hearty, and can be equally delicious in savory or sweet applications. Try it with sausages or cheese, for example, or with some good Irish butter and jam. It can be accompanied by some Barry’s Irish Breakfast Tea, another favorite of Father James.
It’s hard to talk about bread in Ireland without mentioning Irish soda bread. There are many varieties of this (and some will show up in supermarkets this month), but the traditional version is simply four ingredients: flour, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk. A special alchemy occurs with the buttermilk and baking soda that renders yeast unnecessary.
I enjoy adding currants to mine (it doesn’t feel like real soda bread to me without them), but if you want yours to be authentic, stick to the original four ingredients.
Believe it or not, a Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread exists. If you’re interested in learning more about this comestible – including history and recipes – visit their website.
St. Patrick’s Day will be here in just ten days, and in case you’d like to adventure outside the corned beef and cabbage box, I’ve provided some recipes inspired by Ireland below. First up is Fr. McSweeney’s Irish brown bread and following that are three from a culinary class I taught on Irish cooking.
Though they’re not used often in our country, parsnips are a common vegetable in Ireland. In the past they were a year-round staple, sustaining people through cold winters when other vegetables were scarce. They’re paired below in a soup with another vegetable popular on the Emerald Isle, leeks. A bit of horseradish adds a dash of interest and an apple is added to round out the flavor.
Shepherd’s pie with a twist is next on the agenda. A bottle of the dark Irish stout Guinness imparts a rich flavor to the dish. Guinness is Ireland’s oldest stout and has been brewed there since 1759.
Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, was an Irish satirist, essayist, clergyman and poet who lived in the 17th and 18th centuries. His deadpan, ironic writing has led to that style of satire being called Swiftian. He’s known for such quotes as “satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everyone’s face but their own” and “but nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.”
The final recipe, a dessert with intense citrus flavor paired with sweetened flamed whiskey, is a centuries old Irish recipe that is said to have been his favorite.
Whatever you do on St. Patrick’s Day and whatever you eat, I wish you a happy March 17!
Father McSweeney’s Irish Brown Bread
The seven-grain cereal that Fr. James used for this bread is made by Bob’s Red Mill. If unavailable at your local market, it can be found online.
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 ½ cup seven-grain cereal
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups buttermilk
1/3 cup butter, melted
2 eggs
Mix dry ingredients in the bowl of a large mixer using stir speed for about 30 seconds.
Add buttermilk, melted butter, and eggs to bowl. Mix all ingredients until well blended, but not longer than a minute. Scrape sides of bowl to moisten all ingredients.
Remove to a floured board and knead about four or five times only. Form into six small round loaves. If desired, cut a crisscross on top of loaves.
Place loaves on greased or parchment paper-lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees in an electric oven or for 25 minutes at 450 degrees in a gas oven.
Leek and parsnip soup with horseradish and frizzled carrots
2 medium carrots, peeled
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
Salt
3 cups diced leeks, white and light green parts only
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound parsnips peeled and cut into half inch dice
½ pound thin-skinned potatoes, peeled and cut into half inch dice
1 apple, peeled and diced
4 cups vegetable stock
Freshly-ground black pepper
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
¼ cup chopped fresh dill, plus for garnish
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Use a vegetable peeler to peel carrot strips the length of the carrots.
In a medium bowl, toss the carrots with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and ¼ teaspoon salt.
Transfer to a parchment paper-covered baking sheet and roast, stirring every 10 minutes, until the carrots are crispy and curled, about 40 minutes. (After 30 minutes, remove the ones that are browned.)
Remove from the oven and store in a container at room temperature.
Meanwhile, warm the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in a medium pot.
Add the leeks and sauté over medium-low heat until softened but not browned, about seven minutes.
Add the garlic and sauté an additional two minutes. (Be careful not to burn the garlic as it becomes bitter.)
Add the parsnips, potatoes, apples, stock and 1-1/2 teaspoons salt.
Cover the pot, raise the heat and bring to a boil. Then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered to allow the steam to escape, until the vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes.
Use the back of a spoon to smash half of the vegetables against the sides of the pot to thicken the broth or use an immersion blender to roughly blend some of the vegetables.
Stir in a generous sprinkling of black pepper, the horseradish, lemon juice, and dill.
Taste and add more salt if necessary.
Serve hot, sprinkled with fresh dill and topped with a mound of carrot curls.
This recipe serves four to six and is adapted from a recipe that appeared in “The Healthy Hedonist Holidays: A Year of Multicultural, Vegetarian-Friendly Holiday Feasts” by Myra Kornfeld.
Guinness shepherd’s (or cottage) pie
Vegetarians may substitute mushrooms for the ground meat.
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 pounds ground lamb or beef (with beef, it becomes Cottage Pie)
1 large onion, finely diced
4 large carrots, finely diced
1 cup frozen peas
4 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves removed and finely chopped
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon butter, plus more to grease the pan
1 bottle Guinness
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 cup stock, chicken or vegetable
1 large quantity mashed potatoes (estimating 6 cups, fresh or leftover)
1 egg, beaten
Grated parmesan cheese (optional)
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and grease a 9-inch by 13-inch oven-proof dish with butter.
Sautee carrots in the olive oil until starting to get tender.
Add in the onions and sauté for a minute or two, and then add the meat.
Season with black pepper and thyme.
Cook until browned then drain fat.
Add the butter and peas.
Sprinkle with flour and stir through.
Add tomato paste, Guinness and Worcestershire sauce.
Let this reduce slightly then add the stock. Allow to reduce down until you have thick, meaty gravy.
Season to taste with salt & freshly-ground black pepper.
Remove from heat and pour into prepared pan.
Spoon or pipe the mashed potatoes over the top.
Brush with egg and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese if using.
Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the potato crust is nicely browned.
This recipe serves four to six and is adapted from a dish served at the Old Bay Restaurant, an Irish pub in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (It closed in 2017 after 30 years of serving up Emerald Isle fare.)
Dean Swift’s burnt oranges
4 large oranges (or 6 to 8 Seville oranges)
About 5 ounces (just over ½ cup) medium white wine (or sweet wine with Seville oranges)
4 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons granulated sugar
About 10 ounces (just over 1 cup) fresh-squeezed orange juice
2 tablespoons warmed Irish whiskey
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Using a fruit zester or a very sharp knife, remove all possible zest from your oranges. (If using a knife, carefully peel just the orange skin from the oranges and slice into thin strips.
Put the zest in a bowl with the wine and allow to steep gently.
Peel the zested oranges and separate the segments out. Pull or scrape off as much as possible of any white pith from the flesh of the orange segments.
Put the oranges into an ovenproof dish that can also be used over direct heat (as the final stages of this dessert happen on the stovetop). Dot the orange slices evenly with the butter. Then sprinkle the orange slices with half the sugar.
Put the orange slices into the oven for 10 minutes, or until the sugar caramelizes.
Meanwhile, mix the orange juice with the remaining sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat slightly and let the mixture cook and thicken until syrupy. When it has thickened and reduced, add the orange peel and wine mixture and bring to the boil again, then cook rapidly to reduce and thicken again.
Remove the oranges from the oven. If they're not fully browned, you may want to run them under a broiler for a few minutes, watching carefully to make sure the caramelizing sugar doesn't scorch.
When the browning process is finished, pour the warmed whiskey over the orange segments and set it alight. (Do not neglect to warm the whiskey – otherwise it won't catch fire.)
As the flames die down, add the orange syrup and let the whole dish simmer and bubble gently on a stovetop burner on medium heat for about 2 minutes.
Serve the burnt oranges at once, or if you prefer, they can be served cold. (Pouring double cream – a high-fat cream with 48 percent butter fat not generally available in the U.S. – over the cold version, in the Irish style, works very well.)
This centuries-old Irish recipe serves about four.
Esther Oertel is a writer and passionate home cook from a family of chefs. She grew up in a restaurant, where she began creating recipes from a young age. She’s taught culinary classes in a variety of venues in Lake County and previously wrote “The Veggie Girl” column for Lake County News. Most recently she’s taught culinary classes at Sur La Table in Santa Rosa. She lives in Middletown.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The wreck occurred at about 9:45 p.m. Saturday along Highway 20 at Garden Court.
Firefighters were first dispatched to a report of a vehicle into a house with one person reported trapped.
However, when arriving on the scene, Northshore Fire personnel reported over the air that they found the vehicle behind a house, not into it, with one person who had been ejected from the vehicle trapped underneath it.
Incident command requested an air ambulance to land at Cal Fire’s Station 40 in Clearlake Oaks.
Extrication efforts continued until after 11 p.m. The crash victim was transported to the landing zone at about 11:20 p.m. to be flown to a regional trauma center, according to radio reports.
Scanner traffic indicated the incident was terminated at 11:50 p.m.
Additional information will be published as it becomes available.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Richard B. Primack, Boston University
Weather patterns across the U.S. have felt like a roller coaster ride for the past several months. December and January were significantly warmer than average in many locations, followed by February’s intense cold wave and a dramatic warmup.
If you’ve ever seen lilac bushes crushed by snowdrifts, then budding on a warm day just a few weeks later, you may wonder how plants tolerate such extremes. I study how climate change affects the timing of seasonal events in the life cycles of plants, birds and insects in Massachusetts, so I know that species have evolved here to handle New England’s famously changeable weather. But a warming climate is disrupting weather patterns and testing the abilities of many species to adapt.
Tolerating cold
On brutal winter days when temperatures are far below freezing, animals hibernate underground or huddle in protected spots. But trees and shrubs have to sit there and take it. The tissues in their trunks, branches and roots are alive. How do they survive the freezing cold?
In autumn, woody plants in many parts of North America start preparing for winter. When their leaves change color and fall, their twigs, branches and trunks start to lose water. As a result, their cells contain higher concentrations of sugars, salts and organic compounds.
This lowers the freezing point of the cells and tissues, and allows them to survive temperatures far below the normal freezing point of water. The trick has its limits, though, so extreme cold events can still kill certain plants.
Tree and shrub roots remain largely unchanged and inactive during winter, relying on insulation from snow and soil for protection. For the most part, the temperature of the soil around roots stays at or above freezing. Soil, fallen leaves and persistent snow layers insulate the ground above the roots and prevent it from losing heat.
The surprising danger of spring frosts
After plants stoically withstand cold winters, early spring brings new dangers. Plants need to leaf out as early as they can in spring to take full advantage of the growing season. But this involves pumping water into their developing leaves, which reduces the concentration of sugars, salts and organic compounds in their tissues and removes their winter protection from cold.
Each species has a characteristic leaf-out time. Early-leafing species such as blueberries and willows are the gamblers of the plant kingdom. Later species, like oak and pine, are the cautious and conservative types. For any species, leafing out too early is a risk because late frosts can damage or kill young leaves.
Flowers are also vulnerable to unpredictable spring frosts because they contain lots of water. If the flowers of fruit trees, such as apples, are killed by frost, the trees won’t produce fruit later in the summer. Late frosts also can cause disappointingly short flowering seasons for early-flowering ornamental plants such as forsythias and magnolias.
Plant wake-up calls
To guard against frost and still take advantage of the full growing season, trees and shrubs have developed three ways to know when it is time to start growing in spring.
First, plants have winter chilling requirements: They hold on to winter dormancy until they have been exposed to a certain number of cold winter days. This trait helps them avoid leafing or flowering during abnormally warm periods in midwinter.
Second, plants also have spring warming requirements that promote growth after they experience a certain number of warm days each spring. This feature helps them start to grow as soon as it is warm enough.
Third, some plants also have a photoperiod response, which means they react to the length of time they are exposed to light in a 24-hour period. This prepares them to leaf out as days get longer and warmer in the spring. Beech trees have both a warming requirement and a photoperiod response, but the temperature requirement is much stronger, so they get going after just a few warm days in late spring.
Interestingly, North American trees such as red maple and black birch are more cautious and conservative than European and East Asian trees. The weather in eastern North America is more variable, and the threat of late spring frosts is higher here than in those regions. As a result, North American trees have evolved to leaf out a few weeks later than comparable trees from Europe and East Asia.
Climate change scrambles the signals
Plants are highly attuned to temperature signals, so warming driven by climate change is making it harder for many species to withstand winter cold and spring frosts. As spring temperatures get warmer than in the past, trees such as apples and pears may respond by leafing out and flowering several weeks earlier than normal. This can increase their vulnerability to late frosts.
Such late frosts are becoming more common because climate change is destabilizing the jet stream, leading it to dip much farther south, bringing bursts of unusually cold weather.
In 2007, an exceptionally warm period in March triggered trees to leaf out across the eastern and central United States. A hard frost in April then killed the young leaves and flowers of oaks, hickories and other tree species. The trees were able to produce a second crop of leaves, but could not fully replace the leaves they’d lost, which quite likely stunted their growth for that year.
Insect pests also pose an increasing threat to plants. Harsh winter weather holds in check many insects found in northern climates, such as hemlock woolly adelgids and emerald ash borers. As winters become milder, these insects are more likely to survive, move further northward, cause major outbreaks and damage trees.
Warmer winters also lead to more days when the ground is bare. Cold snaps that occur when there is no insulating layer of snow can freeze the soil and kill roots. Tree and shrub branches then die back because the damaged roots cannot supply enough water and nutrients. In extreme cases, the plants may die.
In coming decades, many cold-loving tree species such as spruces and firs will become less abundant when they are not able to handle new challenges associated with a warmer climate. In the Northeast U.S., native species such as sugar maple and beech will be gradually replaced by native species from farther south, such as oaks and hickories. And nonnative species, such as Norway maples, are taking advantage of these disruptions to disperse into forests from roadsides and neighborhoods.
Similar shifts are happening in many places as climate change alters the signals plants rely on to mark the changing seasons.
[You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter.]
Richard B. Primack, Professor of Biology, Boston University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of boxer, Chihuahua, German Shepherd, Labrador Retriever and pit bull.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm for information on visiting or adopting.
Boxer-pit bull terrier mix
This female boxer-pit bull mix has a short red coat.
She is in kennel No. 18, ID No. 14356.
Male pit bull terrier
This senior male pit bull terrier has a short tan and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 22, ID No. 14392.
German Shepherd-Labrador Retriever mix
This male German Shepherd-Labrador Retriever mix has a short black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 31, ID No. 14383.
German Shepherd-Labrador Retriever mix
This male German Shepherd-Labrador Retriever mix has a short black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 32, ID No. 14382.
Female Chihuahua
This female Chihuahua has a short brown and gray coat.
She has been spayed.
She’s in kennel No. 33, ID No. 14368.
Email Elizabeth Larson at