Ep. 302 - Irish Soda Bread and Community

With 9 days until spring begins, Rob reflects on the importance of getting our hands dirty and reading books in our journey of personal growth and development.  He also touches on vegetable seedling identification, diet and supplementation, and Irish Soda Bread! 

Rob shares a great story about the community that led to this delicious bread he recently tried for the first time...and the community that has grown from it.  

Here's to breaking bread with our community.  

Do YOU like Irish Soda Bread?

Tell us about your family recipes in the group chat!  

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Discussion Links:

March 10, 2022

• Many other mentioned show links are contained in the above post!

The Pomodoro Technique — Why It Works & How To Do It

Vegetable Seedling Identification: Pictures and Descriptions

Irish Soda Bread

SerpaDesign - YouTube

Walstad Method Tanks: 2022 Definitive Guide | Wild Aquarist

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:02

Well, hello there, and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. Today we've got the topics seedling or weedling, square foot gardening, soda bread, and more on the menu. We'll see where the dialogue leads us, but this is a show that provides insight and tools to build the life and homestead of your dreams. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. Today's Thursday, March 10th, 2022. This is episode number 302. If I'm not mistaken, I'm feeling a mildly discombobulated this morning, getting a little bit of a later start than usual, but that's okay. All that means is that this is going to most likely get uploaded a little bit later than usual. However, I had a banger morning and I made some solid progress on an article that I have been procrastinating writing because I didn't know what to write about. I didn't know how to approach it. You know what you do when you can't figure something out, guys? You just sit down and do it. Dedicate 25 minutes to the task at hand and make some kind of measurable progress in some way, shape, or form, right? And if you're feeling it, continue. And if you're not, then at least you did something. But my lack of doing something other than just making myself anxious about the things that I had not even taken action on was unfounded, kind of silly, because once I finally did it, I quickly found myself in the groove making more progress than I initially expected. But, anyways. Like I said, today's Thursday, March 10th. This comes from the Farmer's Almanac, the old farmer's almanac. I will link to this in the show notes. We've got a lot of things going on. Nine days until spring begins, lots of facts, information to learn. But before we hit the road and kind of examine what we're going to get into today for topics, let's read a little quote from Constance Fenimore Wilson. Spanning over the winter's cold garal. Easy for me to say. Spanning the winter's cold gulf with an arch. Over it rampant rides in the wild march. Eh. I felt like my enunciation was off a little bit there, but sometimes these old writings don't really resonate that well with us because we've lost our way with the English language. We are becoming ignorant and dumb through the world of technology, playing video games and wasting our time doing things that don't really matter instead of getting our hands dirty and reading books. But I digress. What is on the menu for today? There's an interesting article about vegetable seedling identification with pictures and descriptions because sometimes plants are very young and just tiny seedlings, and if you're not that well organized, it can be difficult to tell your little vegetables from weeds. So here's a little guide that you can use in the show notes in the link for today to help you identify that. There's also some an article on the top three spices to fight colds and flu. And I'll tell you something, since I have been on this path of functional medicine and simply taking care of myself, I have not gotten sick in well over a year. But we can discuss that another day as well. Take care of yourself, supplement your diet, if it is a good diet, because if you're taking supplements and your diet is garbage and you're eating a bunch of processed shit, you might as well throw your money in the pond or just piss it away and burn it. Because that's effectively what you're doing. Supplements are exactly that, they are supplements, and if your diet is terrible to begin with, you're not supplementing anything. You're just supplementing, you're trying to put a band-aid on an arterial wound, right? But again, another topic for another day. Irish soda bread. I kind of love this because I have a little story about Irish soda bread. There's also an article about planting a square foot garden. I've got stories about that too. Going back to childhood when my dad first built some raised beds and experimented with square foot gardening at our suburban home when I was an older teenager. So there's all of that and more in the link in the show notes for March 10th, 2022. That'll take you to the Old Farmer's Almanac where you can read about everything I just talked about and more. But let's touch on Irish soda bread as the primary topic for the remainder of the drive. Because I'm not very familiar with this, and I had my first loaf of Irish soda bread uh just the other day. And I'm a little distracted now because it looks like the head honcho, the big boss man, Mr. Manager, is behind me. Oh, check that. It's a different vehicle, same make, same model. Not him. But the headlights threw me off and uh got my feelings uh all in a mess. Right, so that is interesting, isn't it? You want to learn why? You gotta join the chat group t.me slash allaround growth. But let's get back to soda bread, shall we? I'm not familiar with Irish soda bread, and the first time that my father and I set up at Richardson's Indoor Farmers and Makers Market this winter, about a month ago now. So this will be our fourth market this Saturday, the highlight of my week. We set up next to a couple, a couple about my age, uh mid-40s or so, and they were just a wonderful couple. Really hit it off with the guy. We were geeking out on bonsai and fish tanks, and introduced me to the idea of blackwater tanks, and just shared a bunch of information with me as I did with him, and we kind of became fast friends. His wife is pretty cool, and they've got a nice, nice dog, too. Um I forget the name of that kind of dog, but anyways, one of the things that they were selling was Irish soda bread, and it smelled wonderful. She made it with a kind of uh a butter and a kind of hard cheese as well, which kind of gave it a nutty aroma, and supremely dense, just excellent when toasted mildly or for soaking up whatever. But for I'm just gonna read a little bit from this as I get to this stop sign here and get some bullet points. So, what is Irish bread or soda bread? Um, our loyal reader, Maureen Marino, got this recipe for Irish soda bread from her Aunt Rita, who wrote at the bottom Nobody outside the family has this recipe. There are many variations, but not the same. Even a baker from Ireland asked for it, but he didn't get it. Now, Maureen comes from a large Irish family and always celebrated St. Patrick's Day with the gray corn beef and cabbage with all the fixings to Irish step dancing that would always take place in the home. Now she's made some adjustments to the recipe, but only to soaking the raisins in Jameson. There's ingredients and instructions on how to do this, and that is not really what I was looking for, right? And but there's also a bunch of other links to Irish soda bread, Nana's Irish soda bread, whole wheat Irish soda bread, Irish soda bread, French toast, how to make Irish soda bread, Irish beef stew, Irish oatmeal scones, Irish potato biscuits, Irish potato pie, old-fashioned soda crackers, and an article for the best uses of baking soda. Now, why did I go there? Because all of this stuff is really homesteady oriented. And I'll tell you what, this is one of the reasons why I like driving earlier, because not only do I just arrive before everybody and I can get some things taken care of and get this uploaded, but I avoid all this traffic up by the school. But yeah, all of this is more homesteady, and there's a lot to be said for the nature of the content that I produced over the past year, year and a half or so. And it was important for me to do that because I needed to. And I hope that as time goes on, the nature of that content will serve you and others in your journey. And accordingly, I hope that these stories about soda bread do the same down the road. I love this because it turns out that the couple who made this delicious soda bread then make other various things. Scones, little muffins, uh, just all sorts of little handmade baked goods and a few other crafty things that they sell. It turns out that Crystal, Crystal and Chris was the name of the couple, that Crystal is the daughter of Linny, who is my new friend that I've been playing tunes with periodically. We're shooting for weekly, but on average we are playing about once every other week, once every two to three weeks, just due to life on life's terms and the holidays. And it turns out that it is a small world, and that's what happens when you engage in your community. The small world gets smaller. We begin to connect with those of like mind, and we bring them into our circles, and they bring us into theirs. And more often than not, we end up crossing paths with many of the same people time and again, and that, my friends, is how we cultivate new relationships. And those of those relationships grow into friendships, and there's a lot to be said for Irish soda bread, relationships, family, and community. And again, I'm gonna take the time to plug the all-around growth community, t.me slash all-around growth, because over time we've developed a core group of people that interact regularly, that are part of what we're doing. We're all on the same page. We're trying to do something simple. It's not easy though. We're trying to build the life and homestead of our dreams, and we're doing it together. So if that sounds appealing to you, come join us on Telegram, t.me slash allaround growth. We are on other platforms as well, social media-wise. I am constantly putting content on Facebook, both the page which is new, so go ahead, go to Facebook, give that a like. We've also got a Facebook group. Updates are posted to Twitter and Float as well. But I have a hard time keeping up with the social media in general. And uh if you'd like to help, you know, you are welcome. And um there may be some added bonuses with that. So here's where we wrap it up. Even though I am feeling like I am late, I am still relatively early and one of the first to arrive. So what does that tell you?

SPEAKER_00 16:17

I don't know, guys, but sometimes these little observations speak volumes to me. So uh I can't park. It's like walking and chewing gum.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Trying to park and bring closure to an episode. Anyways, thanks for listening today, guys. Happy Thursday. I hope you have a great day. And like I said, join the community at t.me slash allaround growth. I look forward to seeing you there. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow in another episode as well. This is Rob Kaiser. Thank you.