An Irish American historical adventure

Happy St Patrick’s day, and welcome to a history-packed post!

My genes are predominantly composed of a mix between Scandinavian and Celtic roots, and as such, I am Irish. In honor of St Patrick’s day and my Celtic roots, I thought I would talk about some Irish American history; specifically during the American Civil War.

There are two big mistakes you could make when thinking about Irish involvement in the Civil War. One would be to simply overlook it; MANY Irish immigrants fought and died on both sides. While the other would be to think of it as glory-laden, war is messy, politics doubly so.

I want to start by saying that the Irish were highly flawed, most of them were not only fine with slavery, but even in favor of it, and displayed the racism which most people associate with the South during the Civil War, so that you don’t get the wrong idea off of the bat, BUT… 

Immediately before the Civil War broke out, Ireland went through the Great Potato Famine, which wiped out almost 1/3 of the population, one way which the Irish managed to survive was to immigrate in America. But when they got here, they were treated horribly, the strong anti-Irish sentiments at that time kept them from finding employment, or even found them doing jobs deemed too dangerous for even slaves, and starving in the new world was not preferable to starving at home, so many entered the war, and those who didn’t were later conscripted. And even after fighting and dying in the Civil War, the Irish continued to get a bum rap for several decades. (There’s much more to this story and I would encourage you to look into it! I would also recommend you listen to “By the hush” an actual Civil War song about Irish conscription. But I’m gonna move on for now.) 

So in honor of the rough trip, many Irish Americans had throughout the Civil War, and their often ignored struggles, (and the fact that I couldn’t find any historical Irish cookbooks,) I decided to have a Civil War-era bake day.  

As always I tried to keep to 2 big rules.

1. 
   
   
   As much as possible, keep to tools that were already around, IE I needed to use my stove and oven, but the stand mixer? Nope. The rubber scraper? (as I’m not sure when that was originally created) Not really a need no.
   
2. 
   
   
   Use authentic recipes as much as possible. Being one of two vegetarians with two gluten sensitivities as well as living in a house FULL of lactose intolerances, some things did need to be tweaked.
   

These recipes were taken from “What to do with the cold mutton: a book of Réchauffés.” Published in New York in 1865, the year the war ended. And this time, for fun, I invited a friend who happens to love baking over to help! And just like last time, I had a marvelous kitchen elf named “mom” to help me as well. 

Needless to say at this point, some things didn’t go as expected, so here as our menu as it technically should have read (there were also green beans on it originally, but we straight up forgot to make them, so I pulled them off for accuracy.)

Breakfast: Ravensworth pudding- An apple “pudding”, (think English puddings, not wet and squishy, more like bread pudding.)

Lunch: Soupe à la bonne femme- “Soup of the good woman” Basically potato soup.

Dinner: Roman pudding-Basically macaroni and cheese with rabbit added, (we used vegan chicken.)

Dessert: Strawberry Soufflé.

Let’s go through the day chronologically shall we? 

I started the apples for the Ravensworth pudding at about 8:00, they needed to be cooked through and cooled before I could start much, and my friend arrived at 9:00, just in time to help me “pulp” the apples. At that point, we realized that we should have already toasted some bread to make crumbs, and proceeded to spend the next half hour or so trying to toast and crumb some freaking bread. Gluten-free bread doesn't toast well to start with, but even by those standards this was ridiculous.)

After we had stuck the Ravensworth pudding in the oven to cook for an hour and a half, we started the Soupe à la bonne femme, which had some odd instructions of its own. I decided to make an executive decision that cooking onions for a full half-hour was madness, so we fried them up and tossed them in the boiling broth. The really odd instruction came in here; we were supposed to fry the potatoes BEFORE tossing them in the soup, and, that is exactly what we did, albeit with a little confusion.

By the time the potatoes were cooked up, (it took many batches to finish frying all of the potatoes) the soup was nearly done, but there was still about 45 minutes till the pudding was done, and there were loudly growling stomachs to address by that time, so we went ahead and ate the soup-lunch, BEFORE the pudding-breakfast. 

All in all, both of these dishes were well received, we could see exactly why the potatoes were pre-cooked, as this imparted a delicious raw-fry type taste, and we were all quite glad to have officially become “good women” by making this soup together, and the Ravensworth pudding was amazing. 

Two success under our belts, we gathered our confidence to stand united against my old foe; Soufflé. 

This time the instructions told us to beat the egg whites to “snow” which we all agreed was quite vivid imagery, and much more descriptive than “stiff peaks”, and we set to work. 

Once this rather exhausting task was completed we took to the stovetop, melting butter and cooking jam and milk together. Once these many parts were combined into an oddly fluffy looking batter, we poured about half of it into a soufflé pan, while the other half was chucked slightly less ceremoniously into a dish in the oven to cook, and proceeded to play peek-a-boo through the oven window for the next hour as it cooked. We chattered and wondered at what would come out, although there was no way to predict what would happen next.

The first of the two came out much like the last Soufflé I attempted, without an abhorrent amount of salt that it, while the other dish, being a little larger, and oval rather than a circular thick sided dish needed to cook a little longer. Once the second Soufflé (which was BREATHING!) came out we decided to try a little bit, to see if it cooked any differently… and as it happened it came out completely opposite to the other, as you can see in the photo. But what the photo fails to show is that they even TASTED different! While the first was sweet and almost a little fruity, almost like some sort of sweet bread in flavor, the second tasted like straight sweet butter! It was quickly agreed that some sort of scientifically impossible transformation had happened.

After this confusing episode, we started dinner, which as you can probably guess by now, had a rather strange instruction. We were to “sprinkle vermicelli and place paste around the edges of the pan.” I misread this to mean that we were meant to paste the raw vermicelli (spaghetti, they don’t seem to make gluten-free vermicelli) around the edges of the dish decorative, although I’m still not exactly sure what was meant by this, with hindsight I’m sure that it didn’t mean this, as the paste burned quite badly, and the paste remained completely raw.    

With the exception of this massive error on my part, the Roman pudding was a success, quite good, although it tasted more like a hot dish than macaroni and cheese. 

It seems that with every historical bake day, I grow as a baker, and I certainly use the failures as a chance to continue practicing the ancient art of laughing at myself. All in all, this was a great bake day, with nothing being inedible, and we all enjoyed a wonderful time to laugh and hang out together. And if I may go this far, I think that we are all beginning to grow a deeper appreciation for the housewives of old, and envy for the bulging biceps that they must have had with all of that mixing. Although I’m also sure that somewhere, a Victorian lady is rolling over in her grave at those three fools who put RAW pasta on the sides of the pan, and we are rolling with her, although we’re rolling in laughter.

Happy St Patrick's day, and thanks for the read!

When things go wrong

So being a small business owner means always getting it right, correct? NO, it doesn't! I’m just as human as I’ve always been, and as such just as fallible, BUT as a business owner, I have to correct my mistakes, and as a human, I’m willing to own them. So where is this coming from? After all, I was planning an entirely different post for this week; well… I made a slight error when I made some of my necklaces, and I thought that I would talk about that! 

Let’s start at the beginning. One week ago, I was headed to a local lake to get photos of my necklaces, and one of my pendants fell off a small issue, and easily corrected, I just slipped it back on. Fast forward a couple of days when I set back out to the same lake for another set of Instagrammable photos… and my pendant fell off again. I tracked back to the car, found my pendant, and set back towards the lake, trying to replace my pendant as I walked; being a bit of a klutz, I dropped the necklace to the ground, and one of the glass beads shattered, effectively ending my hopes of a photoshoot for the day. 

On the way home, I was forced to consider the fact that I had pendants fall off of my necklaces not once, but twice now and in my mind at least, this is a big enough issue that I should fix it before I sold any. So upon returning home, I decided to restring all 15 necklaces which had their pendants attached in this troublesome manner and fix them once and for all.

(After taking this photo, another one of the pendants simply fell off one of the necklaces, I swear before the first photoshoot this had NEVER happened before!)

So what was the issue? Simple, I had decided to use jump rings to attach my pendants so that they wouldn’t hang crooked, what I hadn't counted on, was the TINY little gap was JUST big enough that the hyper-thin beading string I use allowed it to slip through. 

How did I fix this? I tied the pendants on, the knot allows the pendant to hang straight, but this is a technique that I have only discovered recently; after I had strung all of these.

It took me about 9 hours, almost without breaks, but I managed to finish restringing them within a single day.

After they were restrung I needed to reglue them (I use a thread-sealing glue to make sure that the knots won’t come undone.) I asked my mom to help me, because the glue is VERY strong stuff, and it makes me lightheaded to work with for more than a few minutes. 

Two days after this annoying episode I was able to set back out and take the photos I had set out for in the first place, this time with the assurance that my necklaces were now in even better condition than they had been originally… And that the pendant wouldn’t simply fall off. :)

All in all, I think that it was worth it. 

Thanks for the read!

Why work from home?

Hello again!

Let me start out by saying that there are thousands of reasons to work from home, but there are also thousands of reasons not to; this isn’t meant to be why you should (or shouldn’t) work from home, but rather why I am trying to, and the adventure it has taken me down. So let's start at the beginning, shall we?

I graduated high school at 16 years old, and spent the next year volunteering at the local zoo every week, interpreting, (teaching) about the large cats and wolves, which was great! But then I began to flounder. I got and failed two highly optimistic interviews in a row, (one at a local historical house, and one at the local children’s museum.) At 17 and a half, with only a year’s experience under my belt, I simply wasn't qualified enough for the type of job I wanted, and I was too impatient to want to spend the next few years gathering this experience. I wanted to work in a history museum, I had learned from the zoo, that I loved interpreting and even the ladies from the historical house who I had interviewed with encouraged me to continue pursuing this path, as I was clearly gifted in this type of teaching, but lacked the practical experience they needed. I was upset, these interviews were only about a month apart, and I’ve never taken criticism or rejection well, so in my self-pity, I began to open my eyes to something I had ignored before… I am a zebra.

Even by then, my body was beginning to go downhill more than I had ever experienced before, and at this point in medical history, I’m just going to get worse, so obtaining a job which I am passionate about, and which requires me to work out of the house would only break my heart later, when I go far enough downhill that I had to give it up. So I started looking in a new direction; self-employment- specifically making my own jewelry to sell on Etsy. I got very excited very quickly, and within a few months, I had an organizer full of beads, jewelry making supplies, and finished products, when I ran into another roadblock… taxes and legalities. I had somehow managed to completely forget that self-employed individuals were watched like hawks and that they had special tax considerations, so once again, I sank into a bit of a funk. I read through probably hundreds of pages of legal jargon, and answered questions I didn’t even know existed, before finally being able to start my Etsy last month.  

I am also working on self-publishing a book, with two others in the works as well as dozens on ideas rattling around in my brain, and next year, I plan on taking on from home Voice Over work as well. “Three jobs at once?!” Yep, and I’m not even sure that will be enough, so I have a contingency for if all three of those flop AND a contingency for if my contingency flops. “Why don’t you just get a desk job like everyone else?” ‘Cause that would kill me, and I’ve known that since I was like 5, I NEED to do something I am passionate about, or I will wither, it’s just how I am.

“Wouldn't it be easier though?” Yep. I’m not gonna lie, I’m in the middle of a crash course on marketing right now, and it sucks! I’m not a self-promoter by nature, and it feels really strange, and a little ingenuine… Not to mention being hard work, as it lies now, I spend every Monday morning pre-writing my blog for the week, my business Facebook post for the week, and making sure that I’ve got good, edited photos for my business account Instagram every week, and that’s just gonna get worse after I self-publish my book! But I also genuinely think that, due to my EDS, and my personality, this is the best path for me, even if it is tricky now.

Thanks for the read!

Are you self-employed, or thinking about it? Leave a comment below!

Books books books!

Hello again!

If you can remember my “Victorian experiment” post from January of last year then you just may remember me mentioning that I was editing a Steampunk Spy novel, and that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. 

No, it’s not out yet (unfortunately) and no, I’m not talking about editing either, (although I may do so in the future.) I’m going to talk about my first ever novel; what’s inside (without spoilers that is) and a little bit about what’s it’s taken me to get here. 

So let's start with the “pitch” shall we? My story, (which is still between names,) is about Grace; a Victorian lady, and mother who is looking back on her youth. “But wait, I thought that you said this was a spy story?” It is, and that’s the hook, Grace, this now seemingly settled mother of two girls was once a young spy. “Well, what happened?” That, my dear reader, is what the story, which will span a trilogy once it’s done, is about. During this particular venture into the past, Grace looks back on her first “serious” mission, which took place aboard the world’s first cruising submarine. She was tasked with helping her partner, John, watch the Liberté à Jesse gang, who believe that Jesse James did not die of a shot to the back, but rather that he is held in a prison, and that he should be free to spread trouble throughout the Country once more. Her boss believes that this dangerous gang may have caught wind of Samuel, a man who claims to have invented a gold detecting machine, and as it was in the thick of the Klondike Gold rush, this would be a very crucial piece of tech. As you would expect, things start to go wrong, and Grace quickly found herself trapped in greater danger than she could have imagined, with little more than her training as a spy, and her faith in God to guide her.   

Sound interesting? I hope so, as it’s taken me over two years to get here. “Where is here?” Well… Here is coming up on ready to self-publish my book through Amazon, and most of the way through editing the sequel as well. What has it taken to get me here? Sweat and tears. “No blood?” None of my own anyways… and I’ll leave you to chew on that. In all honesty, my first book should be out by now, I should have been able to finish it in a year to a year and a half, but I couldn’t yet. Writing this book has been more of a learning experience than I can express, and although it may sound like an exaggeration, it has actually helped me to grow as a person as well as a writer. When I started I couldn’t write every day, nor did I really care to, I would tap down a few words when the muse hit me, but otherwise I basically just ignored it. Now I can write and edit almost every day, not to say that I always do, but I’m getting there. 

Now, I’ll admit something that no writer should, I didn’t hire anyone to help finish my book. From editing to cover design it’s been my mom, myself, and a beta reader or two more recently. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been edited by myself and my mom and an online grammar checker. And my cover looks far from amateurish, but technically these are tasks which are usually farmed out… for good reason. Why didn’t I hire someone to do the work? It’s not cheap, and much as I love my books, and writing them, I need to be practical, I know that the odds against my books selling well are astronomical, and as such I’m going to need to treat my writing as an intensive hobby till I have a good handful of regular readers.

That said, as we designed my cover ourselves, you can have a sneak peek, I posed myself for the photos, with my mom as my photographer, and you can see a few of the photos that we didn’t decide to use!

 

Thanks for the read!

I'm back!

Welcome back!

I know that it’s been ages since I’ve blogged regularly (as much as I ever did) but I’m hoping to be back to posting once a week, (9:00 AM every Tuesday to be specific.)

As it has been so long since I last used this space with any sort of regularity, I thought that I would use this week to play a little bit of catch-up with ya’ll.

In my professional life, I have had some huge leaps and bounds. As I wrote last time, I have now officially opened my Etsy! It’s been up almost three weeks now, and I couldn’t be any happier to have it up and running! I have one book almost ready to be self-published, and another already well on the way as well, so keep an eye on this spot! With all of these exciting things on their way to the public, I’ve had to start work on another project: marketing. Believe it or not, even with these crazy career decisions, self-promotion isn’t really my thing; I’d honestly rather if people could just find my work on their own, but unfortunately, that isn’t how life as a self-employed individual works. And I’m gonna be upfront here; yes my blog is another form of self-promotion, and yes that’s why I’m gonna be in here more often, no worries though, my content will still be roughly the same brand of craziness it has always been, I just need ways to get my name out there.

In my personal life, there have also been several things going on, the most fun of which would be… Spirit had her 12th Birthday! Spirit is my beloved Eskie, and according to my mom my fur-sister. I know that 12 is rather old in dog years, but I still see her as my little (occasionally annoying) puppy. Spirit was a rescue, and the shelter we got her from didn’t know when her birthday was, other than “some time in early February” so I decided that she MUST be my birthday buddy, and we’ve celebrated that way every year. She enjoyed peanut butter oatmeal puppy-safe cookies for her birthday, and even put up with me taking a few photos as well.

With the Zebra regards to my life, I’ve been working on building up as much muscle as I can to help protect the weakness of my joints. Some days are rough and I can barely get out of bed without a hot pack, but I’ve been fighting this battle since I was 2, and I’m not giving up anytime soon!

Thanks for the read!

Exciting news!

Hey all, and welcome to an extra special blog post!

I know that I haven’t posted for quite a while now, but I HAD to let ya’ll know about this! 

I’m gonna let you all in on a secret: I have finally opened my Etsy shop TODAY!!! I have taken many months to get here, designing, manufacturing, researching, and the all-important procrastinating of course, :) but now I am FINALLY able to have my grand opening! I’m so excited and glad to have finally gotten here, and I hope you’ll check out my shop here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/StorybookgemsbyKat?ref=seller-platform-mcnav now that it’s live! 

Have a great day, and thanks for the read!