Every culture (and indeed nearly every family) has deeply evocative holiday food traditions. Think of treasured Christmas cookie or Thanksgiving stuffing recipes that are preserved on stained and faded recipe cards. Food is both a symbol of a season and—before the global food supply chain could furnish produce very much out of sync with our local environment—a function of it.
As I’ve patterned my habits and my creative rhythms to follow the Wheel of the Year, I’ve expanded my definition of holiday cookery to include seasonal food practices beyond the Easter-Thanksgiving-Christmas pattern of my familial tradition.
What takes this practice beyond seasonal cooking1 is the intentionality, symbology, and continued observance of these newer-to-me rituals. It is a creative liturgy in a spiral pattern—repetitive but never identical.
Descending primarily from people who left Ireland and Scotland for North America sometime in the 19th and 20th centuries, I have a family soda bread recipe I make every March and I’ve even taken to brining my own corned beef. This year I tried my hand at an Irish lamb stew that will be making its way into the rotation next year as well.
One of my favorite recipes to make during March is Irish chef
‘s Foragers Soup. This year I also made her Brown Bread. The bright green of the soup is an echo of the the greenery just beginning to bud in early spring, and of course, makes it a strong contender for a St. Paddy’s Day meal. It also utilizes those earliest of edible spring plants—tender leaves and herbs.Aside from the recipe being very simple and delicious (the whole is greater than the sum of the parts here), I love how it can easily evolve into a non-recipe kind of recipe once you have the basics down.
I also love how she recommends either chorizo or bacon as the optional porky garnish. Chorizo is, of course, not part of the traditional foodways of Ireland, but it is (in my opinion) one of the highest and best uses of pork. I like how its inclusion in the recipe makes something traditional modern or different. It’s a little reminder that we can update our traditions based on our own tastes and proclivities.
This is why I believe life is often symbolized as a spiral not a flat circle; there are cycles and repetitions but you are never in the same place twice.
I had never made Irish brown bread before, though I saw it’s echoes in the New England brown bread I’ve eaten all my life. The most curious thing about Darina’s bread recipe was the instruction to remove the bread from the pan when nearly done and then replace the naked loaf upside down back in the oven on a bare grate to finish it off.
I had never seen anything like that in a recipe before! I was a little afraid it would come out over cooked, but the result was perfection. Or close to it—perfection occurs when a slice is topped with a healthy pat of Kerrygold.
If you’re interesting in exploring Celtic food traditions and how they relate to the Wheel of the Year, check out “Celtic Folklore Cooking” by Joanne Asala. Though I would prefer if the book was organized by season instead of food category, there are many simple recipes along with lots of history and folklore.
The practice of choosing locally foods that are locally available for the season you are in.
I love this! I have also working on cobbling together new family traditions inspired by the wheel of the year and it feels really nice to land on recipes that you know are winners to be replicated year after year. Also, what a vibrant green soup!! 😍