Today is St. Patrick's Day, and being part Irish, I expressed pride in my heritage by wearing a small green plastic ring shaped like a shamrock. Something subtle. :-)
I wasn't too pleased, though, with bakeries and office cafeterias serving green bagels to celebrate. Geez, they've managed to insult two cultures! (Wonder what folks who are half Irish, half Jewish think of that? Well, maybe Bill Maher - who is just that - will bring it up on his show tonight.)
I couldn't have corned beef and cabbage today, though, because as a Catholic, I'm forbidden from eating meat on Fridays during Lent, and my archdiocese hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, offered a dispensation from Lenten dietary rules for tonight. So I'll have it tomorrow. Even though St. Patrick's Day always falls during Lent, Irish Catholics won't have to worry about violating Lenten rules for the day for another eleven years. March 17 doesn't fall on a Friday again until 2017. Look it up.
Speaking of corned beef and cabbage, it's a traditional dish among Irish-Americans only by accident. Irish immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan couldn't get authentic Irish bacon for the holiday, so they used corned beef from their Jewish neighbors as a substitute. They never bothered to buy Irish bacon once they could get it, and so a new tradition was born.
Top of the evenin' to ya! :-D
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