Archive for March, 2013
St. David’s Day
March 1st was St. David’s Day. St. David is the patron saint of Wales & no, I am not that knowledgeable on these things but I recently joined a British educational site & the first email that came through was sharing info on St. David & the various printable/activities available. Although we do the core subjects in our homeschool & do use textbooks from various companies I am always on the look out for something different to accentuate learning & also to educate. SO with that in mind I decided we would learn a little bit about Wales & St. David. Richard & I took Michelle & Michael camping in Wales one time so have actually been there but it was a LONG time ago!
I printed off some booklets that gave many of the welsh words. Welsh is a HARD language & very gutteral so you have to roll those “r’s” & much more. We looked at them over breakfast while we ate our Welsh Cakes. Boy, were they good! Reminded us SO much of the bakeries in England!
Welsh Cakes Recipe
2 cups (8oz) whole wheat flour
1/2 cup (4oz) salted butter (plus extra for cooking)
1/4 cup (2oz) sugar
1/2 to 3/4 cup (4oz) of raisins – adjust for taste
1/2 tsp bicarb
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
Milk
- Rub butter into the flour, then mix in the sugar, raisins, bicarb & baking powder.
- Add the beaten egg. Mix to a dough, adding milk if necessary. With whole wheat flour I found I needed to use more milk.
- Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick & cut with whatever reasonable sized cutter you have available.
- In a large flat frying pan (or ideally on a griddle) melt some butter. I discovered extremely quickly that the griddle does not need to be too hot due to the sugar content! I burned the first batch! Between low & medium works great! Cook on each side for 3-4 minutes until they caramelise. You will need to add more butter between batches.
- Sprinkle with caster sugar while they are hot. (I actually think they are sweet enough without being sprinkled.
- Serve hot with fresh butter 🙂
Please note that the original recipe calls for sultanas but here in the USA sultanas are rarely used, hard to even find in the store.
For lunch we had Roast Lamb. Wales is like New Zealand in the fact that it has more sheep than people & they eat a lot of lamb. Our lamb was superb. It was from one of the lambs we butchered a couple weeks ago – SO tender, almost melted in your mouth. We actually had folks here buying sheep in the morning so didn’t get to do school until the afternoon. Many of you may know that the Welsh flag is a red dragon so we actually made dragons & the kids also colored in the flag.
For tea I made Bara Brith (like a very juicy raisin bread) & Richard made Welsh Rarebit. Daniel was quite mystified by the names of these recipes & wasn’t at all sure if he was going to like what was going to be served up! LOL! He helped Richard make the Rarebit so knew it was going to be good & also ate the Bara Brith. Below you will find the recipe for the Rarebit but I am not sharing the Bara Brith recipe as mine turned out really soggy. We toasted the slices under the grill to dry it out but I also had to add more flour than they said so don’t have exact measurements for you. It was delicious though & maybe one day I will perfect the recipe.
Welsh Rarebit Recipe
2-3 slices of wholewheat bread
1oz butter
1/4 cup (1oz) plain flour
½ cup milk
4oz grated cheese
Drops of Worcestershire sauce (to taste)
1 tsp wholegrain mustard (adjust to taste)
1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
- Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat. Stir in the flour. Add the milk and whisk until there are no lumps.
- Melt in the cheese, then whisk in the egg.
- Add the Worcestershire sauce and mustard.
- Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool.
- Toast the bread on one side. Turn over and spread the cheese mix over the bread.
- Return to the grill and cook until starting to brown and bubble.
- Serve hot.
All in all a fun day & we all got to learn stuff that we did not know before & we ate well too 🙂
Liz
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