A Holiday Treat from "The Old Country"

This is a different fruitcake and based on an old Irish recipe. I am not a fancy cook but this one is so easy you can hardly mess it up--even me! So give it a try and enjoy. I am sure it would be most suitable for Midwinter Solstice or a Yule supper or just about anytime. I swear Brighid has Her hand on my back every time I make it and ensures it comes out good!

As among other things, a  goddess of hearth and home, it isn't unfitting that She be there to assist a lady who says with a mixture of defiance and pride that, "Martha Stweart does not live here!"

Tea Brack

 Source: Winfred Abbe, County Offaly (C: 1900)

A simplified version of the traditional yeasted Barm Brack.

The following recipe makes three loaves for 8x4x3 pans.

*1 cup sultanas (blond raisins)

*3 cups raisins

2 1/2 cups brown sugar, firmly packed

3 cups black tea   (or 1 1/2 cups tea and 1 1/2 cups Irish Whiskey)

Soak fruit and sugar in tea overnight. (use large mixing bowl, cover with a tea towel.)

The next day add alternately: (Mix dry ingredients and add alternately with beaten eggs)

4 cups flour

3 beaten eggs

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp assorted spices to taste

Pour into greased bread pans and bake for 1 1/2 hours at 300^o.

When cool, brush with honey to give it a fine glaze

Some variations I’ve made use of over the years: 

At times I’ve replaced half of the brown sugar with an equal amount of Sugar Twin artificial sweetener or Stevia to reduce calorie/sugar content. Also, the equivalent of 4 eggs in a product like Egg Beaters can be used in place of the whole eggs to reduce cholesterol. There is no regular fat, which makes this a healthy recipe!  You can also use whole grain flours.

*I generally use no citron (like traditional fruit cake) but do add 1 medium package of dried fruit bits (1 cup or so), about 1 cup of chopped dates, and reduce the regular raisins to 1 cup. Dried cranberries, strawberries, blueberries or cherries can be used, too. You can be as creative here as you like with generally good results. Just dry fruit, not fresh or canned.

You can also use a liqueur like Amaretto or Kalua, or a good rum in place of the whiskey or use 1 tbsp of rum or almond extract/flavoring to impart a similar taste. Best when wrapped and "seasoned" in a refrigerator for 1-2 weeks and will freeze well for later use.

Note! This is not to be confused with the legendary "Miss Fogarty's Christmas Cake" referred to by Robbie O’Connell in a hilarious song with the same title! One passage refers to a "crust that was nailed on with glue." The list of ingredients would gag a hungry coyote and the song says it "would kill a man twice after eating a slice.” The song is a real howl. Get it if you can find it. O’Connell is kin to the famous Clancy Brothers, BTW.

Midwinter and Ancient roots of Christmas

I've loved Christmas since I was a small child. This past several months I have been scanning in to digitize a lot of old family photos and found some to celebrate Christmases over the years as I went for a baby to a teenager and my brothers came along and grew with me. Our family was far from well-to-do but when I was little Mom and Dad always managed to make Christmas special and as my brothers came along and the parents were older and more careworn, I took over a good part of trying to make the holiday memorable for the boys. Then when I had kids at home, I did the same for them. After they were grown and gone, I did not quite become a Scrooge or Grinch but a lot of the fun went out of it.

In the past ten years since my hubby has been gone, I've varied from doing quite a bit in terms of decorating, baking etc. to almost nothing. In 2003, he'd just been gone a few weeks, having passed away on November 10, so that year the holiday was barely noted. Now that I live with my middle brother after we both ended up single--our youngest brother died of an aneurysm in 2005--we're both kind of jaded about it.  So we do not do a whole lot to mark the season but agree Midwinter Solstice is just as significant as Christmas. Below is that middle brother and me; I was eight and a half and he was six weeks old! I had to look twice to be sure it wasn't a baby doll I held. And yes, we always had fresh cut trees we got in the forest for our Christmas tree! They were usually juniper or pinyon pine, both plentiful in the high desert area of Arizona where we lived. This holiday would have been in Jerome, AZ by the way.

Even when I was in my teens, I also felt that the midwinter solstice was a very special time too. I've been a sun-centered being all my life. I say jokingly that I operate on solar batteries and they run down in gray bleak weather and lose some power when the hours of darkness exceed those of daylight. So that day when the sun stands still at its farthest point is critical to me.  And solstice means just that--the sun standing still! I often feel like that is the real New Year's instead of the arbitrary day of January 1. Well, actually the day after the solstice would be New Year's Day and the day itself New Year's Eve. My internal calendar kicks over on that night between anyway. Again I go back to my ancient Celtic ancestors who marked the night more than the day in terms of festivals.

These days I celebrate midwinter about as much as Christmas and now know why I always climbed a few old Cottonwood trees as a kid to collect mistletoe--my Druid ancestors got it from oaks but they held it sacred too, not just for kissing under! The evergreens, the candles, the gifts, and the special feast-style dinner all have roots many thousands of years old so I cherish all the time-honored customs. I still observe some of them in reality and others in memory.

I found a neat link if anyone is interested in some special music and such to mark the solstice date--which will be December 21st this year. Aine Mineague is the artist featured here. http://wintersolsticemusic.com/ I hope the link will work for you and you can enjoy this!

Then I came across another neat thing, a suggested Midwinter Solstice Rite. While it differs somewhat from some that a group of Druid friends have devised and performed it is simple ans clean and I like it! The author is in Australia so her midwinter is our midsummer but that is not critical! Here you are:

MIDWINTER SOLSTICE

Copyright Stella Woods (June 2009): 

Decorate a room with winter greenery. Place a large bowl of water and a

lighted candle in the centre of the room. Have some golden glitter and

scented oil nearby and a candle for each person. Sit in a circle with a

lighted candle in front of you and talk about what you wish to release at

this dark time of the year, blowing out your candle once you have

finished speaking. Once everyone has had their turn, blow out the

central candle and sit in the darkness reflecting on what you are leaving

behind. After a long silence, relight the central candle, which represents

the sun, and sprinkle golden glitter on the water. Then each of you light

a candle from the central candle and place it by the water so you can

watch the glitter sparkling. Pass around a glass of wine and offer a toast

to the sun, the bringer of new light. Then go round the circle again, each

of you talking about a dream for the future or a new attitude you wish to

embrace. Finally sprinkle scented oil on the water and choose someone

to anoint each person with sunshine by dipping their hand into the

sparkling, scented water and sprinkling it over each person’s hair. Hold

hands and offer thanks

As I wrote in my post over at the Amber PAX blog:  http://amberpax.blogspot.com/  the Norse god Odin is featured as a gift bringer driving a sleigh with an eight-legged beast drawing it! I will style myself Odin's handmaiden here and offer a gift for a selected commenter on my posts either there or here. You can have your choice of the three PAX tales I had released this year: A Different Drummer, Dark and Stormy or Last Train to Clarkdale. There's info on all three in earlier posts here this year if you want to look them up or you can go to www.amberquill.com/AmberAllure/bio_ODare.html to find them on my backlist.

I wish all of you a wonderful midwinter season and whichever of its special days and festivals you observe! It is a magical time of year and one we can all enjoy, whatever our persuasion in terms of religious practice or simply our preference. Go in peace and harmony into the new year and may it treat you well!

I'm still here--and have some news!

Yes, I have been way too quiet lately. I can only plead a bit of the down cycle of my mild bi-polar and the SAD impact that hits me even here in the southwest desert. I miss the sun as its hours of shining shorten and when the cooler temps and some storms come, it is hard not to hibernate. Maybe I was a bear in a previous incarnation!

Anyway, Last Train to Clarkdale has been out for several weeks now and seems to be doing well. My next PAX story has been submitted but I am not sure yet when its release date will be. I do not have a cover for it yet either but my readers here will be the first to learn about it, I promise. The title is Wrenching and it will be part of a PAX group which all take place or at least begin with something that happens in a garage! It was a kind of off-the-wall idea but I think we've come up with some neat and unusual tales. Hey, with the great writers that participate in these packages of themed stories, you can count on that!

And one more bit of news, this for Gwynn Morgan. I'm not sure the exact date yet but I'm going to have a novel out in January! This one was briefly published by the now closed Treble Heart Books about ten years ago but has been out of print for a long time. The old title was Healing Hearts and it is now called Hearts to Heal. Yes, it is a medical romance of sorts since the hero is an orthopedic surgeon and the heroine an EMT who aspires to be a doctor but a lot of the story takes place in other than hospital or doctor's office venues! I do have a cover and it is perfect! Here is a sneak peek at it. I'll be posting some excerpts and offering a giveaway or two as the release date nears. Stay tuned!

All Aboard!

That's both the time honored call to get on the train and the title of a brand new PAX--about railroads, of course--that will be coming out this weekend. Yes, I do have a story in the group of five and to say I am excited about it would be putting things mildly. I  love writing romance--doesn't matter to me whether it is hetero or GLBT or even about dogs! Love is the One True Thing in my beliefs and happily ever after may not always happen in real life but it sure as heck can in my stories and it does. After that, I love trains too!

Last Train to Clarkdale is a very special tribute to my one-time home town, to the past as my brother and I lived it years ago when we both became avid rail fans and to the rebirth of the little Santa Fe spur line into an incredible scenic excursion that I feature in this tale.

Just for fun I typed in "Last Train to Clarkdale" into a search engine a few days ago and I was amazed what all popped up! Of course there is that great old song, the Monkee's first hit, Last Train to Clarksville and I do pay homage to it in my story. I also learned there is a Clarksdale, Mississippi which was the home town of blues legend Muddy Waters.

But as far as I can find, there is only one Clarkdale. It is in central Arizona and was named for a one-time politician and investor in the Verde Valley mining industry whose name was Clark. There is plenty of history involved in the paired communities of Jerome and Clarkdale, which were the mine and smelter towns of the past century and even before just as several more pairs of towns were in Arizona. Mines happen where the ore bodies are found but smelters have to have a certain type of terrain and usually rail access to handle the heavy industrial process and transport of the raw material and the purified metal, usually in ingot form. I may visit some of the others later and my alter-ego Gwynn Morgan is working in the preliminary stages of a historical novel about building the narrow gauge railroad into Jerome back in the late 1800s. So you are likely to hear more but for now, let's focus on the upcoming tale and the inspiring little railroad.

If you would like to learn more about the Verde Canyon Train they do have a website! The URL is www.verdecanyonrr.com  There's also at least one U-Tube video about a couple's experience on the excursion, an article about an Elks Lodge in Havasu City, AZ which organized a trip on that special train  for some returning and recovering veterans and more. What fun!

Anyway I have loved trains forever. My first trip was a solo one in December of 1965 when I took the San Francisco Chief from Flagstaff, AZ to Stockton, CA and spent the holidays visiting relatives in Sacramento, CA. During my college years I took several more train trips including one west from Flagstaff for the holiday break when the rails were the only thing rolling during a huge blizzard! Those big, powerful diesels could shove through quite a bit of snow. As it was, the trains were running hours late but highway and air traffic in northern Arizona was at a total stand still. By the time I got back to campus after the holidays, a total of nine feet of snow had fallen and melted/settled to about five or six feet still on the ground! Come to think of it, that could make a pretty good story setting too...

Whoo-hoo, my cover!

All right! I've now got an awesome cover for Last Train to Clarkdale and I am just tickled pink with it. What do you think? Isn't it just fab?? More about this story soon!

Check this out!

Hey, I am interviewed this week at the Amber PAX blog! Click out to www.amberpax.blogspot.com to learn more about me and about our great five-story collections that sell at a discount for the group. There are links to the past and current collections and news on the upcoming plus author interviews and more.

And if you leave a comment there this month you could win a $25 gift certificate good for some wonderful reads at the Amber Quill site. The offerings there are many and varied from a wide range of general and genre fiction on the basic Amber Quill page to erotic hetero romances at Amber Heat and LGBT romance at Amber Allure. I actually have featured works on all three so whatever your taste you could get something of mine!

Go to www.amberquill.com/ and work your way through all the pages. For Deirdre you can visit either www.amberquill.com/AmberHeat/bio_ODare.html or www.amberquill.com/AmberAllure/bio_ODare.html for my 'hotties' of all kinds. My Amber Quill books are under Gwynn Morgan's author name and include two of my favorite 'western' set novels, a modern suspense/ adventure The Man In Black, and a time travel, Back to Tomorrow. Come January a revision/reissue of my 'broken leg story', Hearts to Heal, will be there too! It is a kind of medical romance with an sailing adventure thrown in as well!

And watch this site for more about the upcoming October Pax, All Aboard with five delish train-themed stories!! I don't have a cover yet for Last Train to Clarkdale but here's the collection cover. I'm drooling on my keyboard!! A train and a yummy hunk:what's not to love??

Sooner instead of later

...is when All Aboard will be released. The latest word is October, probably the third weekend of the month which is the normal PAX release date! Wow, just about seven weeks. I'm already excited.

I have never ridden on Amtrak but I did do some train travel while I was in college at Flagstaff, Arizona when Arizona State College-Flagstaff had just become Northern Arizona University. There were about three trips on the San Francisco Chief to Stockton where relatives residing in Sacramento and suburban towns came to pick my up for holidays and  a couple probably on the Chief or El Capitan to San Bernadino where I was met by a friend who lived at the time in the Elsinore/Perris area. I loved it! Not too many years later I flew for the first time, after I had gone to my first real job at Fort Huachuca, Arizona but the rails still held most of my travel-heart. Maybe I can manage an Amtrak trip on of these days.

Here is a color ad type photo of one of those old "War Bonnet" diesels and a B&W shot taken by me in Flagstaff at about that time. In mine there was a puddle--either  snow melt or summer rain--between the tracks throwing up a reflection.

I've also had the thrill of riding at least two tourist scenic excursion trips--the steam powered train that runs from Durango to Silverton, Colorado and back and the train out of Clarkdale, Arizona that I feature in Last Train to Clarkdale. The latter was a special treat, for like Clay in my story, my brother and I were both avid train watchers and very  much taken with the historic route up through the Verde River Canyon to connect with the main line of the Santa Fe.

In his great book Canyon Lands and Super Chiefs, railroad historian Joe McMillan gives a vivid picture of the Santa Fe routes through Arizona to include the Clarkdale District. The book is liberally illustrated and I use it and the others in his series on the Santa Fe for a lot of research plus just enjoying the atmosphere and memories the books evoke. Most of my middle childhood and youth is interwoven with train memories. The Santa Fe was "my" railroad and I still miss it. The modern successor BNSF just does not have the mystique! Thus you can almost bet there will be more train stories from the pens of Deirdre and Gwynn in the future.

It's going to take a lot of research and work but I am going to write a story about the Harvey girls to focus on one fictitious member of that legendary group. It will be a novel but I'll weave as much authentic detail and historical fact into it as I can. But meanwhile, you'll soon be able to read Last Train to Clarkdale. Yes, the title is a shameless play on the Monkees' song--which I also recall with a vague, slightly guilty fondness! (giggle)--more memories. I perhaps should have dedicated the story also to the memory of Davy Jones--RIP, anyway. You gave us in the hippie era some fun songs!