St. Patrick's Day

It came to me a few years ago that for all of the Irish festivals, music, t-shirts, knick knacks and beer around, we didn't do much for St. Patrick's Day. I decided that we could at least have an Irish meal once a year. So over the past few years I have prepared corned beef and cabbage for the feast day. I am not a very comfortable cook with a new recipe, but each year the meal has gotten better. We have made it a point to tell the girls the story of St. Patrick. and remember that it is a Feast Day.

Jim, Em, Rae, and Bridget all went to the St. Patrick's Day parade downtown with the Brinks. Meg and I instead spent the morning together at a teddy bear tea for Daisy scouts. We enjoyed hanging out at our fancy tea, but then we met up with the rest of the family at the Brink's house for pizza . One of these years I hope to see the parade too.

 When I pulled out the decorations this year the girls dove into the hair accessories like it was lost treasure, each staking claim to their desired pieces. We happen to have lots of green hair decorations, head bands, bows, clips, and pony tail holders and yes hats. Thursday morning they were able to don their prearranged outfits of green and put in their festive hair items with great speed before heading off to school. I made a batch of shamrock sugar cookies when they got home from school and we set them aside for after dinner. Well most of them were set aside. Rachael played around with the little bits of extra dough to make little rose shaped "bisquits."

This year I made corned beef which everyone loves and an Irish dish called colcannon, which is a potato and cabbage pancake type side dish. Most everyone loved dinner but Bridget had a hard time with the colcannon. After many gagging fits and letting her food run down her Irish lamby shirt. We settled on her eating the beef and then we got out the cookies. She was on her last cookie when she declared "Treats are better than dinner!"