Family

There are few things in life more important than family, in fact, in my experience there are none. Whether you have the best family in the world or whether you come from a broken home, there's no getting away from its importance.

No matter what way you skin it, it's where you came from in terms of parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins or its who you brought into this world in terms of sons and daughters.

I am lucky in so far as I have great relationship with my family and we all got together recently and my Dad made pizzas for everyone at his home built pizza oven.

Is there any smell better than pizzas cooking in a home built pizza oven, while spending time with your nearest and dearest? So that's one of my three, my Dad's pizzas when he has a get together.

This is the main man, my Dad busy cooking the pizzas. This pizza oven build was one of his favourite pet projects of recent times and he loves having family around to enjoy the fruits of his labour.

Did somebody mention pizza?

Everyone got involved in the prep. Some made the pizza bases, others brought toppings and some made up the pizzas and my Dad cooked them to perfection in the pizza oven.

We all took a turn of making our favourite pizzas with our favourite toppings and washed it down with some beer and wine. What a day!

A friend of my brother in law's made the trip down to Galway and he really enjoyed getting to know our family and fit right in.

Here's a closer look at the fire bricks and materials used in the pizza oven.

Suffice to say, this is piping hot and it takes under a minute to cook a pizza.

We never grow tired of these pizza parties and the smells will forever remind me of my Dad.

Oh and a photo of the finished product for brother @bozz

A nod to the past

The pizza oven is on the family farm in Connemara and is built beside the Sean Teach, which means the Old House in Irish. Before my Dad bought the farm around sixty years ago, a family lived here. He bought the little Sean Teach and surrounding farm and forest.

The photo below shows the lady who he bought it from and her daughter and sits proudly in the middle of the Sean Teach which has been transformed into a space for art therapy, story telling amongst other things in recent years.

I love how her spirit and the spirit of her family stays alive within the space her family once lived out their simple lives in impoverished 1700s 1800s and early 1900s Ireland. May she rest in peace and shine light upon us 🙏🏻

As you can see some of the space in the Sean Teach is used for growing herbs and vegetables also, which is pretty cool and brings me to my second smell, which is herbs. Coriander is a great example. Get a little leaf of corriander and rub it between your thumb and finger and savoury the aroma. Mint is another fine example. Once you've savoured that mint smell, reach for the Havana club Rum and fix yourself a Mojita, my favourite cocktail by far!

He knows every stone

My Dad is a very interesting man and he could tell you a story about every stone that went into building the pizza oven, where it came from, who was there, the type of stone, everything. He can recall number plates of cars friends of his had in the 1960s and 1970s. The only person I've known with as good a memory and attention to detail is my eldest son, who turned 11 yesterday. He obviously didn't lick it off the stones!

Dad will celebrate his 90th birthday in a few years time, so he's been around a while, and sadly when that happens, you lose lots of friends and family along the way, who he has remembered fondly in the initials and inscriptions below, which is a lovely touch.

When my Dad is not building pizza ovens with his bare hands or cooking pizzas for his family, he's hard at work saving turf.

That's my third and final smell, which will be no surprise to @niallon11 @blanchy @trucklife-family @killerwot and any other Irish person who has smelt turf burning in an open fire. It's my number one favourite smell.

Here are some photos of turf burning, you'll have to take my word on how good it smells.

This post is part of @galenkp's weekend engagement and specifically the prompt "What's three of your favourite smells and why? Remember to use your own photos."

If you want to find out more, check out the post below from @galenkp.

https://hive.blog/hive-168869/@galenkp/weekend-engagement-topics-week-203

The images used throughout are all my own captured on my Samsung Smartphone

Thanks as always for stopping by everyone.

Peace Out