20 Irish Dishes Served at an American Wake (From County Mayo)

Is there a drawer beside your cooker with string in it? You got that drawer from somebody. 25 things my Irish mother never threw away, and what she did with every one of them, from a farmhouse kitchen outside Ballycroy in County Mayo. Some of them you can start using this week. Butter papers for greasing a cake tin. Bacon fat in a jar. A candle stub for the drawer that sticks. Stale bread you'll never buy as breadcrumbs again. Some of them you'll remember from your own grandmother's house. The flour sacks that became pillowcases, and on one windy day in 1952, my underthings. The biscuit tin full of buttons. The sheets turned sides to middle. The rag rug in front of the fire with a bit of my father's jacket in it. One of them my mother got half right, and for her that was a bad day. And number 25 isn't in the kitchen at all. It's in the chest at the foot of my bed, and it's been four different things. Go and look in that drawer, then tell me in the comments the strangest thing you'll find in it. The thing you'd never throw out and couldn't tell anyone why. Nana Bridie's Kitchen. Old Irish kitchen wisdom from a County Mayo farmhouse, written down before it goes. #irishgrandmother #oldfashionedthrift #irishkitchen #zerowaste #countymayo