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Health & Fitness

You Don't Have to Be Irish to Celebrate St. Paddy's Day!

You don’t have to be Irish to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and my Italian/Chinese-American family is proof of that. Today we had our annual St. Patrick’s Day dinner, albeit one day early, but it was our very own traditional celebration that we’ve been carrying down for years.

My first exposure to St. Patrick’s Day was when I was in the 5th grade at Sacred Hearts of Jesus & Mary School. My teacher that year was a young Irish laddie named Mr. William Fitzgerald. Well, when March rolled around that year, he decorated the whole classroom in green crepe paper and shamrocks and a banner that read “Erin Go Bragh.” I had absolutely no idea what it all meant but it sure looked like we would be celebrating a new holiday.

Several years later, when I was a student at St. Joseph’s High School, some of my Irish classmates brought in Irish soda bread. I thought to myself: “soda” bread??? What could that be? Sure enough it turned out to be something yummy, crumbly and full of raisins.

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As I got older, my mom started making corned beef and cabbage dinner for St. Patrick’s Day and I even started going to the parade on my lunch hour when I worked in midtown.  I really love a parade and New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is the oldest in the country.

This morning I got up really early and donned my green sweater. I was lucky that my 10-year old nephew, Alexander, was spending the weekend. Alexander is as much of a foodie as I am and he’s a great sous chef. We took three thin-cut corned beefs out of their wrappings, put them in a couple of pots, covered them with cold water and liberally sprinkled pickling spice, allspice, cloves and cinnamon sticks. Then we brought the pots to a boil, reduced them to a simmer and cooked for three hours. In the meantime, I made the cabbage which I have to admit I cook Italian-style. That means I saute a good amount of garlic cloves in some olive oil, add crushed red pepper and then half steam/half saute wedges of Savoy cabbage until tender. Next up were some small potatoes, boiled and dressed with butter, salt, pepper and parsley. This year I also made some sweet baby carrots.

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Almost everything was ready by the time we got home from church. At that point we realized that we had an over-abundance of soda bread!!  Some of you may remember the College Bakery’s soda bread which had caraway seeds and green icing. I hardly missed that this year because my brother had sent a loaf from Caputo’s, my brother-in-law had brought one from Holtermann’s in Staten Island, and I had picked up a delicious loaf that my old friend, the lovely Maureen Murphy DiGiovanni had made. Maureen has her own cake and gift basket business, MRS Dee's (www.mrsdees.com), and her beautifully golden soda bread was fully loaded with raisins and caraway seeds. We also had a really nice rye bread from Mazzola’s. I couldn’t find any Kerry Gold butter this year so we had to settle for some Danish butter which proved to be a good creamy substitute.

We all enjoyed our dinner laid out on the kelly green tablecloth. For dessert we had green sprinkled devil’s food cupcakes and some sfingi and zeppole (after all, St Joseph’s feast day is only two days after St. Patrick’s). 

Tomorrow I’m going to make a hash with the leftover corned beef, potatoes and cabbage. That recipe comes from my dear friend, Nora Ball, who told me to chop everything up, put it all in a frying pan with a little oil, diced onion and worcestershire sauce and cook it until it gets nice and crispy.  

Our St. Patrick’s Day usually ends with my hubby and me watching one of my all-time favorite movies, The Quiet Man, in which John Wayne roughs up his bride, Maureen O’Hara, a bit and has a huge brawl with her brother, Victor McLaglen, all because Mary-Kate (Maureen O’Hara) won’t stay married without her dowry. Despite my synopsis, it’s a terribly romantic love story. After that movie, anyone would have sweet dreams of the Emerald Isle, whether you’re Irish or not!

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