St. David’s Day

For years I’ve heard about the St. David’s Day Tea at Lebo. This morning, Marilyn Wallace mentioned it on Facebook, so I decided to take an afternoon run over to Lebo’s Methodist Church to check it out this event.

A number of Welsh people settled in this area. March 1 is the feast day of St. David, the patron saint of Wales.

The room was bright with silk daffodils. Yellow! (Yay, March. Let the color begin.)

Two women were baking the Welsh cakes on electric griddles. These are raw.

These are cooking.

Here’s a close-up. And let me tell you, yummy to the nth degree. They made available copies of the recipe, but I’m not going to type it out. Here’s a similar online recipe, but theirs calls for butter, as opposed to shortening.

I didn’t recognize anyone in the room, so I asked two ladies if I could join them. They let me and they were such a joy to be around. Pearl, above, was just as bright and cheery as the daffodils and wasted no time in telling me that she was 96-years-old. She has lots of stories and she just sparkled. If you get to live till you’re 96, this is the way to do it.

Carol was the other half of the joy. She is Pearl’s niece. These warm and friendly women came from Topeka today, but they have roots in the region, Welsh roots. Pearl’s grandfather came over from Wales and settled in the Princeton area (Franklin County.) They saw a mention of today’s event in the Topeka newspaper and so they showed up. (And were headed to Beto Junction after this for cinnamon rolls.)

It was a full house – every seat taken, standing room only.