Welcome to the Celebration of Lights, a CMW Digital Gathering!

For those of you watching with children, we've included a Scavenger Hunt worksheet for them to use while they follow along!

Join Clan MacFarlane Worldwide on November 7th for our 2020 Fall Digital Gathering. The theme is Worldwide Celebrations: A Celebration of Light! We will be exploring how various cultures around the world celebrate Christmas, New Year and the Fall/Winter Seasons! Start time is 12:15  EST and a link will be made available on our website for our viewers to tune in!

Food Glorious Food!  And a Call for Your Favorite Holiday Recipe

I will make no apologies for my love-affair with food.  To know me is to understand that I have not missed too many meals.  I learned from my own parents who used to say that they “ate their way across Europe.”  They also told me to clean my plate.  There was also the phrase “your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”

I grew up with parents from the 20’s with 30’s habits of saving money.  So, my mother had finessed the art of saving a dime.  Dinner one night for a family of 6, would be pork chops.  Leftovers the next night turned into biscuits and gravy.  Tuna fish on toast was our substitute for Lobster Newburg.  Waldorf salad was a can of fruit cocktail with a carefully added box of prepared Dream Whip.

Mother would insist that there was no difference between a Danish for breakfast and leftover cake or pie.  When it was beastly cold in New Jersey, she would crank open a can of Bean ‘n Bacon soup to warm us up before we headed out to brave the walk to school.

I have horrible table manners if you watch me eat.  I do chew with my mouth closed, and my left hand in my lap.  I don’t let my elbows onto the table (well, almost never).  But I eat at lightning speed.  I blame this on my Navy boot camp experience where we were told we had 10 minutes and 10 minutes only to eat.  My apologies to anyone joining me for lunch.  I don’t talk much, just pick up the fork and get it done.

I’ve used donuts to count down the number of days I had left to graduate from same Navy boot camp.  Those were the days when I was skinny as a rail and could afford the luxury of coffee and donuts.

I do not like what I term “art on plate.”  This is the little dab of artfully placed bite of food that is listed as the main entrée.  I want a fair-sized portion for a fair price.

I’ve eaten eel at a Japanese restaurant.  Too sweet and oily for my liking, but I did it.

I’ve eaten escargot at a restaurant in Dallas.  I would have eaten them in Spain, but just couldn’t work up the nerve.  I finally ate them in Dallas as part of a dare.  No taste, just a lot of butter and garlic.

I finally enjoyed my first bloody mary when my boss invited me to sit with him in first class and ordered one for me.  I do believe we have some bloody mary mix in the refridgerator right now!

Alligator is a mild-flavored meat, and lamb can be really good or awful.  My sister, Vashti, makes a splendid grilled leg of lamb.  I’ve tried an Aunt’s oven-roasted leg of lamb and gagged my way past the taste of lanolin with a glass of wine.

I love gazpacho and have made an entire mess of my own kitchen making a batch from my own garden.  There is a restaurant in Breckenridge that serves up a salsa that tastes exactly like the gazpacho I have grown to love.

I’ve had a meal at a University of Arkansas campus hotel that was so delicious, I threatened to pick up the plate and lick it clean.  Instead, I opted to share my appreciation to the chef verbally.

I used to say that there isn’t a cookie out there I would not eat.  However, if you ever stay at a Hilton Garden Inn and head to the large platter of cookies (which is always full for a reason), you will soon find that one cookie I will never eat again.  Not so much a cookie as it is a tablet of sawdust with forbidden raisins in it.

I have eaten a white chocolate bread pudding flambe at the Hereford House restaurant in Kansas City that I can only describe as orgasmic.  I really need a different descriptor, but you get the idea.  One serving is best shared by 4.

Finally, a true confession:  I am ashamed to admit I have eaten a bowl of turtle soup and enjoyed it.  I left nothing in the bowl simply because it was delicious as well as very expensive.

So yes, this girl loves good food. 

With all that shared with the reader, this leads me to the purpose of this Diaspora.  I am working on the next issue of the Loch Sloy! and would like to publish recipes from our Clan MacFarlane for all of us to enjoy.  I would really like holiday recipes, but anything you would like to proudly share would be appreciated. 

I am looking for recipes no later than 1 December 2020, so I can get the issue out in a timely manner for the holidays.  Please consider sending along a good recipe no matter where you are from.  I am looking for Sandy’s Divinity and Michael Haine’s, guacamole.  My kids really want me to share my Chinese Ginger Thins.  I might just do that!

So, find that lovely recipe and email it directly to me for inclusion.  Email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  If you have a photo of your delectable entry, send it along.  So, MacFarlanes…

This I will eat!

Cheers!

Marie Robb

Pioneering McFarlands

By Mary Helen Haines ©2016

Many of our McFarland forefathers who came to North America in the eighteenth century made their homes at the very edge of English settlements. These new settlers were amazed by the abundance of land compared to their previous homes, as well as the fact they could own, not just rent. The first wave of English settlers in the 1600s were now living in settled areas; the new Scots-Irish and Germans in the 1700s were pushed to the frontiers if they wanted to patent their own land. This was risky business because it often led to confrontations with Native-Americans who were beginning to understand the insatiable appetite Europeans had for land and more land.

Several McFarland men died in Indian fights in the 1700s and early 1800s, while others served as scouts and “spyes” in the service of traders, settlers, and local militias. In 1755, just as the French-Indian war was heating up, Native-American raids increased on the New River settlements in Augusta County, Virginia. From May through August families were attacked in their new homes with many people killed or wounded, while others were captured and taken away.*  One of those killed was James McFarland (Chalkey, Vol. 2, p. 510), age 22, son of John and Mary Montgomery McFarland. The attacks caused most of the settlers to abandon their new homes and retreat behind the Blue Ridge Mountains to more protected territory until the war came to an end. However, as soon as the peace treaty was signed in 1763, the settlements were repopulated, which led to more conflicts.

In 1764 an Indian raid attacked the home of William and Barbara Willson, which was located on the banks of the Jackson River in what became Bath County Virginia in 1791. The family was building a new house and “An Irishman was weaving outdoors near the old house...In fleeing toward the house, Barbara Wilson was struck by a flying tomahawk and rendered unconscious ...The weaver escaped with a bullet wound in his shoulder." (Morton, p. 83) The weaver was Duncan McFarland (b. abt. 1700) who eventually purchased this land from the Willsons in 1767. Duncan continued to live here with his sons William (b. abt. 1732), Robert (b. abt. 1725), and Alexander (b. 1750), who are discussed below.