Irish Vegetable Soup and Brown Bread

This post is dedicated to Lori, Ann/Annette, Jill, my aunt, and the Derg Inn in Tipperary, Ireland.

In the video, I make Irish vegetable soup and brown bread. Both of which were good, but not great. I needed to improve, as COVID was keeping me from my beloved Irish pubs for a while longer. 

A month or so later when I had another hankering for pub food, I asked my aunt for her Irish vegetable soup recipe. She uses one from the Derg Inn in Tipperary, posted on this woman’s really charming blog. The blog is written by a woman named Lori, who has impressively been posting regularly since 2008 (#inspo). This post comes to us from 2012, through Lori’s friend Ann who originally made her the soup. But then Lori posted the recipe because Annette and Jill especially liked the soup? Who are Annette and Jill? Is Ann short for Annette? How did Ann get the recipe from the Derg Inn? How did my aunt even find this blog? The journey of this soup from south central Ireland through some incoherent web of women to my kitchen is part of what I love about it so much. 

The bread was more straightforward. I ordered a bag of Irish-Style Flour from King Arthur, added two tablespoons of molasses to the recipe on the back, and baked in a loaf tin. I thought this would be a starting point to more fiddling, but I’m really pleased with it. So I think I’ll stop fussing and just enjoy.

Recipe from the aforementioned Derg Inn, by way of Lori’s blog and my aunt.