Inspired by “brown bread” ubiquitous in Ireland, where I’m told every family has their own variation based on their preferences

A vestige of this can be found in American grocery stores at St. Patrick’s Day called “Irish Soda Bread” which is white and smooth and full of dried fruit, losing the appeal of the rich brown color that the following recipe is going for. The most essential Brown Bread recipe is made of flour, buttermilk, baking soda, and salt. So you won’t go wrong with those, and what follows are my favorite embellishments…at this moment. This year I craved sweet in the winter and savory as the weather warmed up.

Brown Bread lends itself to endless variety and is truly democratic because it comes together as easy as cake mix – no kneading, no rising, just a few dishes to clean up. I’ve found the part that takes the most work (for a stressed-out person) is planning ahead to buy a pint of buttermilk (as once you’re in the habit, you’ll have all the other ingredients on hand), then completing 3 brief tasks in 2 hours: set out the refrigerated ingredients that need to come to room temperature, 1 hour later throw them all together and pop into the oven, 1 hour later be home to take the bread out of the oven and turn the oven off.

Overall, making brown bread is one of the few habits that I was able to hang onto during a whirlwind year when I got married, bought a house, and started a full-time job for the first time in two years. That’s because it was relatively low effort as a weekend to-do, definitely low cost (compared to buying cereal, for example), made me feel a little accomplished – especially when it filled the house with the smell of warm bread, as if I had my s*** together when I was really white-knuckling it – and it supplied an easy breakfast for the workweek that could come with me on the bus.

If I had extra time and energy, I would toast 1 of the cups of the whole wheat flour in a pan for 10 minutes, stirring constantly, to bring out wheat’s nutty flavor and darken the color of the bread – keeping an eye on whether this led to needing more buttermilk when combining the wet and dry ingredients. Like I said, endless variety. What follows just lays out the basics for success.

Kitchenware AKA stuff you’re going to have to clean up:

• 2 mixing bowls
• Butter knife
• Measuring cups
• Measuring spoons
• Whisk
• Mixing spoon
• 12 count muffin tin or 9″ loaf pan
• Parchment paper or cupcake papers
• Tea towel – I got a set of 6 from the dollar store, it’s really just a piece of fabric you can dampen that will cover your baking dish. I store the clean ones with my loaf pan, so I don’t mix them up with the ones I’ve been wiping my dirty hands on, because it’s going to touch the food!

Method:

• Let buttermilk and egg (and butter) come to room temperature (1 hour from fridge).
• Line pan with parchment paper/muffin tin with papers, or else bread will stick
• Preheat oven to 450°F.
• Melt butter
• Whisk wet ingredients for a minute, and stir together dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then combine, stirring with as few strokes as possible, as more stirring toughens the bread.
  • Dough should be almost too stiff to pour into the baking dish, but thoroughly moistened, no dry lumps. Add more buttermilk (or milk, in a pinch) if too dry.
• Sprinkle dry oatmeal over the top for a pretty color contrast.
• After putting baking dish in, lower heat to 375°F. Cook muffins 20 minutes, loaf 60 minutes.
• After removing from oven (and having a sample!), place a damp tea towel over the top while bread cools. It is necessary to prevent thick crust (it gets hard, not nice and crunchy).
• Refrigerate after first day. Microwave slice or muffin for 40 seconds to reheat. Top with fantastic butter, like Kerrygold, or just eat it on its own with a beverage nearby, since it goes down a little dry.

Sweet Loaf

Dry Ingredients

• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup cake flour
• One cup goodies
  • Cooked wheat berries or other un-ground grain
    • Re: oatmeal: though it creates an interesting voluptuous crumb, it weighs the whole loaf down so it doesn’t rise
  • Nuts
  • Fruit
    • Re: blueberries: if frozen, thaw completely – takes less than 8 hours – and drain, or else bread will collapse and be doughy moist around the fruit.
    • Re: dried fruit: I found sweetened dried fruit like golden raisins to be sickly sweet, didn’t match the brown bread flavor. Unsweetened dried fruit is fine.
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon or cardamom
• 1 tsp instant rolled oatmeal for topping

Wet Ingredients

• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 0.5 cup melted jam (or 0.25 cup brown sugar, or 3 tbsp molasses)

Savory Loaf (This version is noticeably salty, you may want to use just 1 tsp salt.):

Dry Ingredients

• 3 cups whole wheat flour or millet
• 1 cup cake flour
• 1 cup blanched almonds or other savory goody
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp instant rolled oatmeal for topping

Wet Ingredients

• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 (to 2.5) cup buttermilk

When I first began experimenting to find my preferred Brown Bread recipe, I found the following recipes focusing on authenticity, simplicity, and added molasses for sweetness and darkness useful for reference.

American jargon for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction fields can be tricky for a student of the English language to learn. HGTV provides a consumer’s perspective. Undergraduate study materials assume native English proficiency. Construction dictionaries list words without indicating how common or obscure they might be.

While teaching English as a Second (or in this case, Third) Language to an urban professional in this field, I wound up cobbling together vocab lists from various sources. This is not my professional background, but I think we covered a number of areas that will come up on-the-job in the student’s new English-speaking career path.

How was this list created?

As my contract supervisor said to me in her English Language Learning library, no one resource is enough to rely upon entirely, but good material from different sources can be combined. Using (free, online) visual dictionaries, I selected a fraction of the words listed and introduced those to the student as relevant vocabulary.

Additionally, a friend who has a civil engineering degree pointed out the importance of abbreviations and numeric references in fast-paced workplace conversations, and she directed me to the MasterFormat Division system referenced below.

Reinforcement and review

After reading through the list, the student practiced using the new terms and definitions with real world scenarios and especially images (as on Google Streetview). We discussed which vocabulary items were visible and the processes of how they might interact or need to be created.

This turned out to be more effective than using fill-in-the-blank questions describing the function or appearance of the items. The student was more engaged and recalled words more successfully with a visual to work from. I would have prompted discussion of the function of the pictured features, but the student I worked with initiated those conversations herself. We reviewed the vocabulary weeks afterward using the same technique, as well as by reading and discussing authentic documents that used the vocabulary.

Lessons

Each text file below contains 5-10 vocab words, with links to pictures as often as possible. There are also suggestions for sites to use for review, practice, or real world examples for reading or listening.

Topics:

• Measurements (learning the Imperial System: Distance, Area, and Slope)
• Construction site
• Types of housing
• Exterior
• Interior
• Parts of stairs
• Parts of doors
• Types of windows
• Architectural phases and drawing views
• Divisions (construction specification documents)

What’s missing?

We did not cover materials, architectural styles or engineering systems, zoning/regulations, or nitty-gritty construction equipment (e.g. screws vs nails), but those could certainly be valuable lessons.

What would you add?

What a productive opportunity to create! During the past six months, I’ve been looking for local work that applies to my Arabic skills. Concurrently, I’ve been making things on a number of fronts.

Writing

I’m excited to be writing for FluentU, an online service that uses video captions to teach languages. I’m looking forward to incorporating their tool into my routine as soon as the Arabic content is live to subscribers. In the meanwhile, I write blog posts for them to attract search engine attention to this new tool, situating it in the world of Arabic learning resources.

My first two posts have covered Arab music and online language study.

Writing for my own Tumblr blog has been vehicle to express the best challenger to Islamophobia: hope. Hope often gets lost in the shuffle. Acts of bigotry are easy to discover – there’s even an academic journal of Islamophobia. Less attention is paid to the defiant creativity of Muslims and allies as they express the humanity of the victims of Islamophobia. There are so many people doing exactly that and with great energy! I compiled some of the most inspiring examples into two posts, oriented around finding role models that the reader can identify with and emulate: The Debater and The Organizer (many more to come!).

I also looked into whether Rumi, a household name more so than perhaps any other Muslim, is a successful ambassador for Islam, and – informed by some of my reading – I wrote a lineup of Muslims portrayed in mass media and the impact they are likely to have on public perceptions.

Visual

This spring, I volunteered around 50 hours at the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, offering my communications skills to freshen up their brochures and to compile concepts in PowerPoint for redesigning their event flyer and annual report templates.

In Jordan last fall, as an Arabic student, I had to process and memorize a lot of information, almost exclusively in written formats. I have since been intrigued by students on Tumblr posting visual learning materials under the #studyblr tag. While reading a parallel-text abridged copy of Dracula in Arabic and English, I played around with drawing out purely written material into memorable visual representations.

I tried my hand at the Bullet Jornal system to practice Arabic vocab for daily tasks, and I did a little collaging.

Working across media lets me cover a lot of ground.

Audio

Thanks to those who helped me pick out a microphone – I went with one that’s supposed to be good for podcasting. To try it out, I recorded the birds that sing in our alley, a broom sweeping across a wooden floor, and Chris’ routine for making cold brew coffee. I think the sounds of home are so interesting – both complex and comforting at the same time. I posted them on Freesound so they’re available and easily searchable by folks looking for open source sound effects.

I’m also tiptoeing into interviewing folks about small (and big) ways they make a difference in the world. I had the supreme honor of interviewing Tandiwe Ngwenya, Programme Manager for Nonviolent Peaceforce in South Sudan. I met Tandi because she’s one of the 25 Mandela Washington Fellows receiving training in Pittsburgh. I’m in the process of editing her soft-spoken experience and wisdom to share with you.

Horticultural

My professional life doesn’t seem to be taking me in a direction that calls for horticultural skills, but I have certainly been growing things (mainly from seed) and tasting the sweet (and bitter…) fruits of my labors.

Almost everything on the balcony grows in “self-watering” (aka sub-irrigated, aka reservoir) planters, made out of recycling. The herbs, tropicals, and succulents are thriving, but I’m happiest about the edibles: rail planter beets and strawberries, hanging peas.

I’m enjoying spectacular failures with flowers appropriate to my zone: chamomile, nasturtium, and borage.

Pattipan squashes and ginger are on track to harvest in the fall.

Skeletomuscular

I would be remiss not to include my powerlifting stats in a list of things I’ve built. My glamor poses don’t look much different from January, but the proof is in the lifts.

Squat:

• was: empty bar (~45lb)
• now: 45lb on the bar (doubled!)

Bench:

• was: 12lb dumbbells
• now: 30lb dumbbells

Row:

• was: 50lb
• now: 125lb

My injuries prevent me from deadlifting, so I can’t give that figure. However, the injuries that hold me back the most are the ones I got from slouching in a cubicle, so I’m just glad to be in the gym.

Team?

Pittsburgh provides great networking opportunities that I’ve been able to attend through Meetup.com, Global Pittsburgh, the World Affairs Council, and the Center for Women. One thing I’m still hoping to make are more connections. If you’re interested in partnering with me, especially to develop any of the areas listed above, I’d love to hear from you.