I have pretty decent memories from St. Patrick Days past. Good memories. Pints of green beer, shots of syrupy liquors and time spent with friends. Working maintenance at Wegmans, clocking out at 6 then sprinting home to meet my best friend to eat my mom's corned beef and cabbage then consuming copious amounts of green beer. Luckily, I've never had matching green vomit to match that consumption. The time we got kicked out of Club 37 in North Syracuse defending the honor of a girl and I was home by 11:30. Look, it sounds corny but the dude grabbed the girl by her face. Honestly, thank goodness there were no cellphones or social networks back then. All we had were disposable cameras. But the constant was my mother's corned beef and cabbage.
Something you need to know about me. I don't like corned beef. I can't tell you why. It's never appealed to me. And I despise cooked cabbage. It makes me gag even writing about it. That being said, every year, on St. Patrick's Day, I try to make sure I eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day. It's not out of some obligation to my Irish heritage but because of my mother.
Mom made a big deal of corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day. It has roots in her relationship with her mother. I'd always try to make sure that I was in her kitchen to sit at the table and have my corned beef. Always the same plate: the meat, some carrots, potatoes and a few pieces of heavily buttered rye bread. No cabbage because there are concessions I'm not even willing to make. For each bite of corned beef, I'd take a bite of the rye bread. Never putting the corned beef on the bread, it's two separate bites. If I wasn't able to be at her table, I'd make sure that I had corned beef and cabbage somehow. Then each year, when I finished, I push my plate away and I would literally say, "Alrighty then, I don't have to do that again for 365 days."
For the last few years, I've prepared St. Patrick's Day dinner. Not always on the actual holiday, but I'd make it. We're talking the whole nine yards. I prefer brisket to round (when I finally get my smoker, there will be a long post about my initial attempt at smoking a brisket), cabbage (despite my disgust), red potatoes, carrots and rye bread. The only thing missing would be an ice cold Killian's Red because my kids aren't fans of me consuming alcohol.
I do all of this for my mother. It's not out of any sense of obligation or pressure. Mom doesn't ask me to make it, I just do. I think it's just a connection I have with my mom and, by proxy, to my grandmother.
Continuing the motif of me gleefully playing host to family functions at my home, we had St. Patrick's Day dinner last weekend. Despite a malfunctioning CrockPot, it went off without a hitch, complete with my proclamation of being done with corned beef for the coming year. But it was not meant to be. I'm having it again tonight. At least I'm not preparing it. I'm sitting here typing this up and watching THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, so maybe that's going to be a new tradition. It could be worse.
So, Erin go bragh, if you're going out tonight be smart and safe and may you get to Heaven a full half hour before the Devil finds out your dead.
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