In the fall, there’d be always a cow — if a whole cow wasn’t kept, half would be kept. And there’d be always a pig put in the barn. There’d be always a whole lot of herring bought, a little keg or a barrel... . And there’d be always lots of vegetables. Every spring, there’d be a whole lot of chicken: at that time the roosters’d be no good only just to eat and the

pullets’d be saved or kept for eggs. There’d be cookies and breads, and there’d be sweet bread and biscuits

— generally molasses cookies or oatmeal or sugar cookies. We’d eat bannock; that was just the flour and the baking powder and the sour milk. If you had sour milk all you’d need was the soda... . In fact, years ago, the men’d rather the bannock than anything else.

From Scratch

Most every woman making yeast... had a hop vine and in the fall of the year you’d pick the hops. They’d be green, and after a while when they ’d get ripe they’d turn brown. I guess, perhaps, you’ve seen it made before... . That went on so much, making the yeast. No such thing as yeast cakes... . They came in later.

You’d take a kettle and put a handful, or more than a handful, of hops in the kettle and put the boiling water on it and put [in] one or two potatoes. And when that’d be all cooked, you’d take and peel the potatoes and mash them and you’d add flour and the juice from the hops. And you’d put it in a bottle. Oh sure, strain it. You’d strain it before, once you peel the potatoes. And then you’d put it in the bottles and it’d be a couple of days before it’d be worked; you work the yeast. And sometimes the bottles’d, if they were corked too quick, they’d blow up. They’d pop off.

One of our near neighbours, one of our neighbours in the settlement, they were saying the rosary. And his wife had made the yeast that day in a bottle nearby the stove. And while they were saying the rosary one of the bottles popped. And he said, well, I guess it was, “Goddam it!” The bottle’d split; you could split a bottle if the cork didn’t go out. Powerful stuff.

Oh, you’d make two or three bottles. You’d use a cupful of yeast, 3 big cupful of yeast you know. Good-sized cups would make, oh, six loaves. Like you make now.

You have to make a sponge. Put the yeast and the flour and the sugar [in the bowl]. I don’t know if there’s salt in that. Now you mix that up and when that’d rise up, then you’d take that and you’d put it in with more flour. Set it near the heat. You’d have to have it near the stove someplace;

130 BELFAST PEOPLE