St. Patrick’s Day: Side Trip to Ireland

Happy St. Patrick’s Day Week!

I realize that if I was going to give you some St. Paddy’s day recipes, I should have done it last week so that you’d have them in advance. However, then I’d be eating these goodies a week early, and that seemed wrong somehow, so this week it is.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, I am not Irish. Not at all. Probably a negative amount. However, I still celebrate the day. Here’s why.

First- Mama Buddha. I’ve said before how awesome she is, and one of the reasons that she gets major mom points is that she made a big deal about every holiday. Every single one. We made heart shaped pizzas for Valentine’s Day, dyed eggs for Easter, celebrated both Canadian and American Thanksgiving (as well as both Canadian and American Independence Days), baked cut out cookies for Christmas and always, always had corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe part of it is that we went to Catholic schools, where the day was celebrated anyway, but even so, the celebration continued at home. We even had special St. Patrick’s Day outfits, and if I had access to mom’s photo album, you’d be seeing evidence of that right now.

After I grew up and went on my merry way at the age of 18, I attended Notre Dame, the home of the Fighting Irish. So, after spending 4 years at the greatest university on Earth, I can say I’m Irish to the core, even if not by blood.

Even though my trip to the Emerald Isle piqued the idea for this blog in the first place, when it came to cooking Ireland, it sort of got the brush off when I combined with the United Kingdom. Why, I don’t know. Irish food stands as one of the top countries for food in all of my travels– Tomato and I couldn’t stop raving about every single thing we ate on that trip and still dream of a certain lamb shank stew from Killarney. This week serves to make up for my previous negligence on the subject.

A fun fact for you: Mango and I went to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day back when we were studying abroad in England because we were SO close and it just seemed like the thing to do. Turns out, it’s not all that big of a deal to the Irish (confirmed by my Irish friend, Zucchini) and we spent most of the weekend partying with fellow Americans or Ozzies. In attempt to be religious and cultured in between bar hopping and our trip to the Guinness factory, we figured we’d go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for mass on the day. Turns out, St. Patrick’s Cathedral is actually for the Church of Ireland, whereas Christ Church Cathedral is the Catholic Church. Perhaps we should have done our research beforehand, but since we didn’t, it was quite the surprise as we rolled out of bed for 9 am mass that morning. So, take note if you’re ever heading to Dublin, and Catholic mass at St. Patrick’s was on your to-do list.