My father was a funny man who had precious little capacity to be serious, but he hated April Fool's Day. I suspect that he would have embraced it wholeheartedly had he been born a day earlier or later, but as it was, he was fundamentally offended that people celebrated his birthday by playing tricks on him. I went through a phase as a child where I thought that silly pranks were pretty funny, but I grew out of that quickly enough and embraced my father's disdain for the holiday.
So in my family, on April Fool's Day, we didn't play pranks. We had Irish Soda Bread instead.
Why? Because it was my father's birthday, and he liked it. Or maybe he just liked my mother, who liked making it. Either way, every year she would make it for him, and because she added currants or raisins or something ridiculous like that, I wouldn't eat it. (Not very much of it, anyway.) I was confused -- I thought it was a sort of cake that wasn't sweet, and I thought my parents were a little touched in the head.
Which they almost certainly were, but not on this point.
Soda bread is just bread -- a daily bread that doesn't keep long but doesn't take long, either. A hearty kind of comfort bread, and I'd almost say it's better than the kind with yeast in. I didn't know what I was missing as a kid -- but I know now.
I followed this recipe almost exactly, but I skipped the sugar and skimped on the honey. I'll skimp even more next time. It's a little sweet, but that's all right -- it makes up for the day, for the bitter part that accompanies April 1st since my father died. And for the snow we have in Seattle today, Mother Nature's April fools.
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