it’s that time of year…
…when I go into a frenzy of making Irish soda bread. I don’t know if it’s a vestige of my time in schools when coordinating daily life with seasons and holidays was the norm or my ancestors agitating in my bones, but when the calendar flips to March, I just can’t help myself. This year, I’ve at least diversified my annual abrupt foray into Irish “cuisine” and made an enormous Guinness pie in addition to the steady stream of soda bread loaves. Never one to let a tradition pass through me untouched, though, I did it vegan. I can hear my mother’s eyes rolling in her grave.
For a few years, I maintained a strict(ish) vegan diet. It emerged neither from medical nor moral concerns–I just needed a reset…but that’s how they get you, isn’t it? The more immersed I was in a plant-based menu, the healthier I felt. It was really the first time I ever paid attention to what I was eating, and, along the way, I started paying attention to food sourcing and got a much-overdue education about factory farming and the impacts of the beef and dairy industries on human bodies and on the natural environment, which give.
That said, I’ve never really been one with stiff scruples, and I’d easily bend my rules if I didn’t have a vegan option (or really, a convenient vegan option) or if I was, as my friend Shalini and I joked, “in foreign.” On a trip to Japan, for example, I was not going to deny myself the wonders of Japanese seafood, and, I’m sorry vegan friends, it’s a law of the universe that I must consume gelato while in Italy. Shalini anointed me an “opportunivore,” which, not gonna lie, is me in a nutshell. An ethically sourced, non-GMO, organic, and fairly traded nutshell.
Despite the clear benefits I experienced, despite what I'd learned, and despite my confidence (I wouldn’t have called it “conviction”) in food choices, telling my mother that I was vegan was harder than telling her I was gay. And unlike the moment where I shared my sexual identity, a moment for which I was prepared after months of reflection, practicing monologues, and role playing different parental responses with friends (yes, literally, it was like putting on a production), I had no time to prepare for the big vegan reveal.
I remember it all so vividly. My parents were visiting me in DC, and we were out to dinner at a lovely restaurant in Woodland Park, along with my sister and brother-in-law and their daughter, my niece, who lived nearby. I placed my order and, as I closed the menu and handed it to the server, I felt my mother’s gaze sharpen on me and noticed her purse her lips and furrow her brow, which was Sheila for “nope” and the launch pose for disapproval. It was the same look she gave me when I was 15 and timidly hinted that I maybe might possibly be pro-choice, just before she said sternly, “What house did you grow up in?” The same when she noticed an earring in my left ear when I was 19, just before she said “Oh, I don’t like that. I don’t like that one bit.” The same when I told her that my now-ex was moving in (and he’d in fact already moved in a month before). It was over the phone, but I knew the brow was furrowed, and the lips were pursed before I heard a heavy, deliberate, “Hmm.”
“I notice you haven’t ordered any meat this weekend,” her opening salvo. “Have you gone vegetarian?” It was subtle, but anyone who grew up in her house could’ve detected the shift in tone with vegetarian. For Mom, it wasn’t a factual designation–it was an accusation, an insult. And, mystifyingly to me, it was a blindspot in an otherwise intelligent, principled, and self-aware person. Once, a few days before Christmas, she pulled out a Stouffer’s lasagne to thaw in anticipation of the arrival of my brother’s family, which included two vegetarians (my sister-in-law and one of their kids). The lasagne, though, included a layer of beef. “Umm, Mom?” I inquired, “Do you want me to pull something else out for tonight?” When she asked why, I reminded her of the two vegetarians. “Well, they don’t have to eat that layer.”
Another time, she griped about making lunch for a priest-friend who was on a very strict vegan diet after a heart attack. “I mean, what am I actually supposed to make?” She couldn’t imagine a meal without a meat core and a layer of cheese, or at the very least, a healthy smear of Hellman’s mayonnaise. Even on Fridays in Lent, we suffered frozen-til-overbaked fishticks and, worse, those tiny frozen shrimp at the center of her “Shrimp Scampi,” or what my siblings and I knew as the casserole with the water on top. She’d drop a bag of unrinsed rice, a bag of frozen tiny-ass shrimps, a can of tomato soup, and a can of water into a Corningware casserole dish and then add a layer of American cheese slices. With only half an hour in the oven, the rice would never fully cook, and, as the cheese melted and congealed, a pool of yellow water would grow in the middle.
The first time my ex had dinner at my parents’ house, Mom made this, and my ex went for seconds, and then, horrifyingly, a third helping. Maybe he’s just being polite, I thought, but at a party the next day, three siblings asked, concerned, about his first meal at Mom’s table. With a conspiratorial whisper, each asked, “What did she make?” My ex started to describe it, and each looked at me, hovered a hand over the urine-colored lagoon at the middle of an imagined casserole, and asked, “With the cheese on top?” Each apologized to my confused ex, who raved about how tasty it was. I should’ve known then, but, hey, we all have our blindspots.
“Have you gone vegetarian?” I looked quickly and with a panic at my niece, who instantly understood the gravity of the moment. “Well, actually,” I stalled, “I’m, um,” I took a gulp, “vegan. I’m eating a vegan diet.” I might note, here, that I was 37 years old, held two master’s degrees, and was a successful and confident educator. Despite my so-called adult life, my confidence quickly collapsed. I regressed, was 15 again. I knew I was in trouble, but this time, I didn’t know what would come next.
She sat back in her chair. “What, exactly, does that mean?”
“Well…” I considered carefully how to explain it, knowing that if I pointed to particular foods, she’d remember the meal that she made that apparently ruined my life and turn my revelation into a guilt assault. If I was too intellectual about it, she’d scoff and write me off. So I said, “Nothing from an animal?”
“Hmm.” She pursed her lips again, lifted and looked at her menu as the server approached her, and muttered, “Well, I hope you enjoyed eating at my house.” A dagger to the gut. Or, more precisely, to the stomach. It was an instant declaration that this was beyond her capacity for adaptation and a disinvitation from her table until I came to my senses. By the time dessert arrived, she’d started talking to me again, but there was a dark cloud over us, a storm ready to burst at any moment.
Two days later, I met them in the bar at their hotel for a drink. “So this vegan thing,” Mom said as I lifted a Manhattan to my lips, “what is this all about?” I took a longer-than-usual sip, partly in shock at my mother’s rare desire to reopen a closed case, partly to stall and conjure a response, and partly to edify myself for what could be a rough dinner. I explained that, after my break-up and a whole lot of other changes in life, I had been in a rut, and my body felt much older than thirtysomething. I described my monthlong detox from meat, dairy, alcohol, and caffeine and how reintroducing each went. Alcohol and caffeine, no problem. Meat and dairy, though, something was different.
Her brow relaxed, and, almost with a sigh, she said, “So it’s not an ethical concern.” Oh! THAT’S her tack. She wasn’t part of the beef lobby or the Got Milk campaign after all. Instead, when family members or other guests in her home made different choices, she felt judged, accused, and unfairly scrutinized. Sure, some folx are bound to say “my way or the highway” when it comes to food choices–I’m sure we’ve all met those zealous food-evangelists—and I suddenly remembered other encounters that kept Mom suspicious of food extremists in the family. Once, while on vacation, a server was placing amuse bouches on the table that included a small slice of beef. Another sister-in-law (different from the lasagne story…I have a big family and have an in-law story for any scenario…it gets confusing, I know) physically pushed the server’s arm away from her plate and declared with a sneer, “Um, no shredded cow for me, thank you.” Mom didn’t forget moments like that, and where my sister-in-law claimed a moment for autonomy, she saw an unrepentable transgression of basic etiquette and a direct and personal derogation.
Since we’d just mended a rupture, I tap danced around the ethical question–this was not, I thought, the moment to summarize Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals in an effort to open her eyes to the evils of factory farming. Instead, I started telling her about the adaptations I made while cooking, about how easy this or that substitution was, and I told her about how I used coconut milk to make Irish soda bread, guided by the recipe she passed on to us. And, I emphasized frequently, I was so much healthier.
Of course, I didn’t tell her that I thought I’d improved her soda bread recipe, though I had. She was famous (infamous to some) for her raisin and caraway seed loaves with so little sugar you’d be forgiven for assuming it was a savory dumpling to crumble into a stew or, after a couple of days, serve as a door stop. It wasn’t my favorite, but I liked that her soda bread was different from the sweeter and buttery ones we’d see in bakeries or on St. Patrick’s Day spreads. It was also some very real Depression-era baking–I always assumed her minimal use of sugar and preference for Crisco instead of butter reflected a once-upon-a-time era of rationing.
When March rolled around, Mom would start to plan her St. Patrick’s Day dinner of corned beef and cabbage (served with a side of guilt in the form of a reminder that “of course, my people couldn’t afford beef–that was for the landowners,” landowners with a slight tone of resentment, a code-word for the English in the dialect she inherited from a generations-spanning grudge), and baked a steady flow of soda bread to peck at on the kitchen counter or to hand off to visitors.
No, it wasn’t an “authentic” Irish recipe or observance, whatever that means. But it was the recipe she inherited and her way of adapting and preserving something that told a bigger story, one of to remind us of our roots in impoverished and culturally oppressed Irish immigrants. She liked to tell the story about how her grandfather and his brothers left Cork and arrived in Boston. One stayed there, one went to Philadelphia, and one went to Chicago. “None of them could read or write. Can you imagine?” she’d say, injecting her commentary and making sure we understood the connection and contrast between their lives and ours. “They never saw their families again, couldn’t even write a letter.” Whenever she visited Boston, she would peruse the Murphys in the phonebook and wonder, which were the cousins she’d never know.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how a little mound of quickbread can tell a story? The basic ingredients, the basic method survives, but flavors wax and wane as each generation faces bounty or scarcity or just finds something good to add. When I make soda bread, my instinct is to forego spoons and mash the fat into the flour with my fingertips, counter-intuitive to an OCD Virgo who otherwise strives to minimize kitchen messes. I like to feel the flour and fat with my finger tips, and I picture Mom’s hands in a bowl, efficiently, if not precisely, breaking down lumps of Crisco into her flour mixture. When she made a loaf, I wonder if she could see her mother’s hands, or her grandmother’s in the bowl, whether she worked her fingertips through the Crisco and flour so particularly in imitation of her mother. I can picture the rings she wore daily set on the window sill behind the sink, her wedding and engagement rings and a twist of tiny diamonds and emeralds that Dad gave her one anniversary. She’d slip them off to work the dough then slip them on again once it was in the oven. Sometimes, after washing her hands and putting them back on, I’d catch her stretching out her hands to consider her fingers reunited with their bands, and I’d wonder what she was noticing, what stories were emerging…but just as I thought she was about to be sentimental, she’d pull her hands into a fist or grab a dish towel and move to the next task.
I find myself doing the same thing, slipping off my wedding ring and setting it on the shelf above the sink, before I make soda bread or roll out pie dough. It’s become a punctuation, an epilogue of sorts, when I bake. No matter how far I stray from her recipe, when I put the loaves in the oven, wash my hands and slip my ring back on, I can feel continuity, a kind of communion with her. In this way, March has become a different kind of sacred time for me, a time to summon the hard-learned wisdom of my ancestors to nourish me, to make some meaning from the stories and memories that emerge, and to remind myself, even while remembering the past, to keep looking forward.
An Irish Soda Bread
Make ¾ c buttermilk.
⅔+ c milk (whole milk, coconut milk, or another thick non-dairy milk; in a pinch, almond milk will do)
2-4 T apple cider vinegar or lemon juice (if you’re making a citrus-flavored soda bread, use its juice)
Mix together and set aside. With cow’s milk, it’ll curdle; with non-dairy milks, less so.
Preheat the oven to 375F.
Lightly grease a round baking dish or pan. I use a 6”x2” pan and grease it with the same shortening I’m using in the recipe.
In a large mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients.
2 c flour (a standard gluten-free baking flour works just fine)
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
2-4 T sugar (white or brown sugar, depending on your preference, and for a more savory loaf, reduce to 1 T or even 2 tsp)
Cut shortening into the dry ingredients.
⅜ c (6 T) shortening (Crisco or Spectrum vegetable shortening, unrefined coconut oil, or butter of your choice…I highly recommend Violife)
Using your fingers or a pastry cutter, cut the shortening into the dry mixture. Vary the shortening to make it more or less crumbly–less shortening=crumbly, more shortening=less crumbly.
Add other ingredients to the mixture. You don’t have to, but if you want you can add:
1 T caraway seed (at your own risk, best for a savory loaf and to complement currants or raisins)
½ c dried fruit (my favorites are whole currants or raisins, or chopped cranberries, apricots, dates, or cherries)
½ c chocolate chips (really good with orange zest)
½ c chopped nuts
Bake.
Form into a round loaf in the prepared pan.
Optional: sprinkle a little turbinado sugar on top.
Bake for 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out dry or it reaches an internal temp of 190F. That’s enough time to fold a couple of loads of laundry, watch an episode of The Golden Girls, or call your mother.
Cool & eat.
Let the loaf cool in the pan for 10 minutes.
Remove onto a cooling rack and let rest for at least another 10 minutes before slicing into it. I slice my loaf like a pie into 6 pieces. Feel free to slice any way that appeals to you.
Smear sweet soda bread with butter, a little jam, or your favorite condiment. Sop up some stew or soup with savory soda bread.
Variations on a theme: Play with the recipe and adapt to your preferences or what’s available.
Citrus flavors: add the zest of 1 lemon, 1 orange, 2 limes, or a mix of them directly into the sugar, mix, and let it sit for a bit together before adding to flour mixture.
Nuts: add ½ c (or more, to your taste) of chopped walnuts, almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, or whatever you’re feeling. Consider toasting the nuts lightly before adding them to the mixture.
My favorite variations: Orange & Chocolate Chip, Lemon & Pine Nut, Cherry & Pistacchio, Apricot & Almond, Date & Toasted Walnut
