Our class novel for this half term in P6/7 is Under the Hawthorn Tree which is a very powerful story about 3 children escaping through the countryside on a quest to find their aunts in the midst of the Irish famine of 1845. Along the way they encounter many hardships and harrowing adventures. At one point they are so desperate for food that they bleed a cow 🐄 (which Meabh in P6 assures us would not have harmed the animal!) and mix the blood with oatmeal and some wild garlic and nettles to make a blood cake.
We were fascinated by this and wondered what it would have tasted like.
The modern day equivalent to this ‘blood cake’ is black pudding which is made from pig’s blood, oats, onions and flavourings. So for a tasty treat Mrs Breen brought some black pudding into school for us to see, smell and taste. We cooked it in the air fryer in the shared area and could smell the spicy smell from our classrooms.
Some of us were more than happy to try, some thought the idea was completely disgusting and some of us including Mr Denvir loved it!!! … Mums and Dads don’t be surprised if you get some requests for a fry with black pudding over the weekend! 😁
