Dydd Gŵyl Dewi, unwaith eto!

St David's Day and, for children that means dressing up in national costume for school and, for everyone else, it means CAWL!!.  As three of the four of us had already eaten cawl at lunchtime, however, I decided not to repeat it at supper, opting instead to prepare another of our favourite Welsh dishes, Wyau Ynys Môn.

I love the patriotic enthusiasm that March the 1st brings out in the Welsh, and as Wales is my adopted homeland and the birthplace of my children, I do all I can to embrace it.  People may joke about the Welsh; the language, the long placenames, coracles and the ever-popular sheep gags, but their passion for their country should never be denigrated.  A straw poll of my Saes (English) friends revealed that no-one does anything to celebrate St George's Day (though I do wear red roses in my hair on the day, most years in any case!) and none could tell me when the English patron saint's day fell (23 April, if you're interested).  If you can find me a Welsh person who doesn't know the date of St David's Day, it would be rhyfedd iawn (very surprising)!  Just a thought...

Cath xx

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant

Yes, it's the 1st of March - St. David's Day. Christopher has been full of excitement for it, having done various activities and crafts at school this week. He even had me on the floor earlier, attempting to make a Welsh dragon out of red building blocks. Not so good, however I was very pleased with my Lego Daffodil!


For our supper tonight there was only one choice. Cawl is peasant food; good food to warm the cockles on the coldest night and has, beyond a doubt, the right to be called Wales' national dish. As it is proper home food, recipes vary hugely - as I found when I picked the brains of the other ladies at our W.I. cawl supper the other night. Opinion is divided between whether cawl should be made with beef or lamb; I've eaten both and lean towards the beef versions (cawl cig eidion), as does one of our near neighbours, who also introduced the notion of the lentils to me.

Cawl

I like shin of beef best for stewing, but chuck or skirt would do very well too. Replace the beef with lamb, if you fancy a cawl cig oen more


25g beef dripping or other cooking fat
1 onion, peeled and chopped
400g stewing beef (and see above), cubed
4 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 swede, peeled and chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
100g split red lentils
knob of butter
3 leeks, sliced
parsley

Melt the fat in a large casserole and fry the onion until softened. Brown the meat, then add the chopped vegetables and lentils and turn them in the fat. Pour over 1.2 litres of water and bring to the boil. Scoop out any scum that rises to the top as you can, adding a knob of butter to disperse any that remains. Transfer the pan to a 160c oven and cook for an hour, then add the sliced leeks to the pan and cook for 30 minutes more. Swirl in some roughly chopped fresh parsley just before serving.

The only accompaniment you need is bara menyn (bread and butter) a caws (and cheese), and perhaps (if you feel like going really Welsh) some Bara Brith for pwdin.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Or, in English, Happy New Year. I hope that the festive season has been kind to all of you (and not too exhausting). I've been revelling in the fact that since Christmas, the meal planning has pretty much taken care of itself; all those leftovers and the inevitable 'good idea' buys that didn't get used as quickly as I thought.

The relative lack of cooking in recent days has given me time to make a wedding cake for a friend who's getting married on Friday and start my next knitting project; a knitted patchwork blanket. I can knock one or two squares out quite easily in an evening and knitting them corner-to-corner is really quite addictive. My Mum got me into these, she used to knit squares this way as a girl. You cast on one stitch, then increase by one on every row until the 'half-square' is the size you want (for my blanket, that's 15cm in width along the needle). For the other half, you knit two stitches together at the end of each row. A little pile of squares is now growing in my knitting bag and will (eventually) get stitched together into a blanket.

Dinner tonight was good old spaghetti alla carbonara and some garlic bread to go with. I've recently taken to doing garlic bread using those part-baked petits pains you can get in the supermarket. As long as you've made the garlic butter (and I usually have this in the freezer), it's no harder than heating up packaged garlic loaves. Just split the rolls lengthways, spread with garlic butter and bake as per the pack instructions. Lush. Do make the garlic butter good and strong, though, won't you? I would never use less than a whole head of garlic per 250g pack of butter (and frequently use more than that).

I can hardly wait to see what 2008 has in store for us...

Siarad Cymraeg?

I've finally bitten the proverbial bullet and decided that after 10 years living in Wales, I need to try to learn to speak Welsh properly, at least conversationally. Largely because Christopher will be starting nursery school in January and will be taught, in part, bilingually. I don't think children should be encouraged to have a secret language that Mummy can't understand, do you? I have picked up bits and bobs over the years, mainly numbers and hello, how are you?-type things (sut mae?), and I can sing along to Welsh hymns yn Gymraeg when we go to church (though I don't understand them at all), but none to use 'properly'.

A lovely girl from Twf came to start us off on 'Using Welsh with your children' at playgroup yesterday and, all fired up by her enthusiasm, I came home and began to put the ideas into practice with the boys. Yesterday evening I had a look at the BBC Welsh learners' site and learnt quite a bit in just a little while from the in-site, free, Colin and Cumberland course.

Today I made Bara Brith ,which I make regularly anyway but which seems particularly apposite at the moment, and cooked a dinner of cig oen, tatws a pys (lamb chops, potatoes and peas). I was far too excited by writing what was for dinner tonight on the blackboard in Welsh, but there you go.