May 2009 Newsletter

Hello friends,

With April behind us and warm weather on its way, we can start thinking about all of the outdoor activities to enjoy. It's time to clean up our yards, plant flowers and vegetables, and get out the grills for all of those cookouts. My eight year old granddaughter, Jordan, has joined the local Little League, so I will be spending some time watching her play, as I did with my son, Chris, many moons ago.

LittleShamrocks.com has some new articles on line. I started to search for information about May Day in Ireland, and I learned that it was one of the original eight Celtic holidays. I had touched on a couple of their holidays in previous articles but I didn't know that there were eight Celtic holidays. The Celts believed in all things in nature on earth; and the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets played a large part in determining the dates for their holidays.

I know that Mother's Day is celebrated at different times around the world, but Mother's Day in America is coming up on the tenth of this month. On this month's Home Page we are featuring three of our prettiest and tastiest cakes for you to surprise your mom with. The Irish Lemon-Carrot Cake is decorated for Mother's Day, but the Irish Cream Chocolate Mousse Cake and the Chocolate Irish Cream Truffle Cake are very pretty as well.

Since Mother's Day is upon us, I have added an article about the Celtic Queen Medb (Maeve) of Connaught who bore many children. She was said to be a warrior queen and was once thought to be an historical figure but is now being accepted as mythological.

The American holiday of Memorial Day (actually May 30th) will be observed on May 25th. This is the day set aside to honor both military veterans and civilians who have passed away by decorating the cemeteries with American flags and floral bouquets. The U.S. government has changed the observance of several of our holidays, to be held on Mondays in order to allow the working class an occasional three day weekend. In Ireland, they do something similar; they call their three day weekends 'bank holidays' and usually have one per month.

We have just exchanged links with another Irish web site called Irish Culture and Customs.com. This is an extremely well done web site that includes a collection of articles and stories that cover a wide variety of topics drawn from Ireland's rich history and heritage.

As each day passes, Terry and I get more excited about our trip to Ireland in December. I am looking forward to hearing from my distant cousin, Anya, to see if we can get together in December. She and her husband moved to Dublin from Poland a few years ago. The last time anyone from our American branch of the Kosciewicz family met with our relatives in Poland was in the 1920's, when my mother and her sister traveled to Poland with my grandparents. Anya is a descendant of my grandfather's brother, so it would be a real treat for us to make a connection.

I received an interesting submission from a person in the U.K. who was looking for a recipe for "Fifteen's" or "15's". When I first read it, I thought 'what in the world are Fifteen's?'. Well, I was able to find several recipes for these no-bake, refrigerator biscuits. I decided to make them with my own twist, and I have added a recipe for Irish Fifteen's Bonbons. They are called Fifteen's because the recipe contains 15 cookies, 15 cherries, 15 nuts and 15 marshmallows; and because it yields anywhere from 14 to 16 pieces.

Well, that's the news for this month, and I will look forward to writing the June newsletter. Until next time ... I wish all of you mothers out there a very happy Mother's Day!

Sláinte, Tyna

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