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I was recently looking at the page on "Kale" when I saw a reference to some irish dish called colcannon .

Colcannon is traditionally made from mashed potatoes and kale (or cabbage), with milk (or cream), butter, salt and pepper added. It can contain other ingredients such as scallions, leeks, onions and chives. There are many regional variations of this dish.[1] It is often eaten with boiled ham or Irish bacon. At one time it was a cheap, year-round staple food,[2] though nowadays it is usually eaten in autumn/winter, when kale comes into season.[3]
An old Irish Halloween tradition is to serve colcannon with a ring and a thimble hidden in the fluffy green-flecked dish. Prizes of small coins such as threepenny or sixpenny bits were also concealed in it.[4]

The greek also have something similar where they at Christmas back a cake with money in it.

I recently purchased and planted about 50 Kale seeds as the vegetable interested me as Eustace Conway in Mountain Menplanted it. For some reason its not planted here. I saw with Pak Choi that foreign cultivars has great potential as its a very strong plant which is great for transplanting later.

Well anyway the dish also has a song. Apparently irish people like to sing at their grub 😃

The song "Colcannon", also called "The Skillet Pot", is a traditional Irish song that has been recorded by many artists, including Mary Black.[4][6]

It begins:

"Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?"
The chorus:
"Yes you did, so you did, so did he and so did I.
And the more I think about it sure the nearer I'm to cry.
Oh, wasn't it the happy days when troubles we had not,
And our mothers made Colcannon in the little skillet pot."


The song was featured on her great hit album : Leg of Lamb with gravy.


Here is a recipe:

You can substitute the kale with cabbage.

And here is how it looks in the pot



Well our winter is almost over usually it lasts until the 15th of August or 1 st of September. See in Alaska they have 8 months of winter and a large part of the summer they spend gathering food for the winter. So I love our climate. Thus year I would describe it almost as hunting weather as it corresponds to the weather we got when I went hunting in the past usually hot days and very cold at night. I have switched on my heater about 10 times the whole winter. This is not necessarily good as it usually means a scorching summer and bad crops next year which is what we had this year.