Music and Dance for St. Patrick's Day in Butte, MT

For St. Patrick's Day this evening, we took our son Patrick to see the Tiernan Irish Dancers - backed up by the local band Dublin Gulch - at the "Handing Down the Heritage" event held at Butte's Civic Center. Butte, with its Irish heritage, celebrates big every March 17th.

Patrick enjoyed the music and dancing (he said he liked watching all the girls). Here are a few photos from this evening:









HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!


Michael @ Reading in Montana

Memories of Montana

Today we have a special guest post from a fan of Reading In Montana, Diane Lockard - hometown Saco, Montana currently in Salt Lake City...

"Memories of Montana"

1910 - 2010

I went home to Saco, north of Billings in May 2009 for my 50^th class reunion. Out of a class of 24, seven of us ladies were there. Some I had not seen during that time. I went home with one of my classmates, Wilna (Fisher) Swain and her husband, Nick. Wilna and I came the furthest distance.

Wilna's brother, Glenn owns our grandparents’ farm. First thing we did was to go to their farm. The house was the only building left and has been vacant for over 50 years, but we could still go inside. I entered the side door – wallpaper peeling off the walls, and to my left was the fireplace where my mother’s picture was photographed 67 years ago...

My mother and her brother came from Jamestown, North Dakota with her family (Stuffs) who homesteaded in Northern Montana close to the Canadian border in 1910. After my Mom and Dad married (Bergans) – Nov. 26, 1925, they started farming nearby. It was a dry-land farm; some people ask what is that, a "dry-land farm"? It doesn’t have any irrigation and, and "you pray for rain."

I was born in my Grandparent’s house, and have a picture of my mother when she was expecting me, sitting in front of their fireplace. The picture included our Grandma Stuff, great-aunt Martha Kelly and two of my cousins. The farmhouse started out as a 20’ x 24’ ft. room, and two rooms were added downstairs and two upstairs for the seven children. My mother was the oldest…

My four brothers and I grew up surrounded by family and friends. There was always "room for one more." We rode the school bus five miles to Saco that had grades first  – twelveth in one building. You can view the one-room schoolhouse that Chet Huntley, the television newscaster attended in Saco, MT, years before he became famous. 

                        "Good night, Chet." 

"Goodnight, David."

Thank you Diane!

If you would like to share your Montana story please send me an email at ReadingInMontana@gmail.com and we'll give you a post on the Reading In Montana blog.

Catherine @ Reading In Montana

Ciabatta Bread in the Morning

Yesterday I came across this interesting blog post from Lifehack/Seth Simonds, Kitchen Hack: One-Minute Bread.  It takes a few minutes to prep, 8 - 10 hours (or overnight in our case) to rise, 25 minutes to bake, and 10 minutes to cool.

I thought it would be fun to try a quick alternative to bread machine bread and see if this recipe for little to no effort bread really was a Lifehack.

After dinner, I threw together the ingredients (water, yeast, salt, flour).



Mixed it all up for a few moments, until it was a sticky mess and covered it with a dish towel.



I let it sit quietly overnight and when the alarm started blaring, I "jumped out of bed" and threw it in the oven.  This was the result.



It was too dense, not airy enough (darn mile high elevation!).  Next time I'll allow it to bake a little longer and add some spices.  It was a great easy (and cheap) alternative to our beloved bread machine.

I did enjoy the bread though.  It was tasty in the morning, fresh with Hutterite butter and huckleberry jam.

It was great as a quick snack in the afternoon.

It was best toasted and used to sop up the olive oil from the pasta at dinner.

I cannot say it was a perfect Lifehack but I'm going to make it again and invite you to do the same.  Does anyone have good advice for tackling the mile high elevation baking challenge?

A little something different from...

Catherine @ Reading In Montana

  

New Books and New Prices

Hello friends!
We just put up about 35 copies of The Message by Lance Richardson  for a great sale price of $8.99.  It seems to be a wonderfully popular book right now.  It looks like a great inspirational read about life and Richardson's spiritual experience while comatose.  An interesting life story! If you have read this book, please tell me what you thought. Inquiring minds want to know.



Also we have lowered some of our prices on our new children's titles we purchased last fall.  We'd like them to get into eager hands as soon as possible!

Thanks for your support and for choosing Reading In Montana!

Catherine @ Reading In Montana

124 Fans and Counting...

A big thank you to everyone who took part in the Facebook Fan drive contest!  We we able to give out the Book Butte, Images of America by Ellen Crain and Lee Whitney or the postcard set of images from the book to Anita, Dee Dee, Kara, Cass, and Adrianne - all supportive fans of Reading In Montana.  It is never to late to be a fan  of Reading In Montana on Facebook! We had so much fun with this contest... we are sure to have more.  Thanks again!


Catherine @ Reading In Montana