Sláinte, y'all!

How does the South celebrate St. Patrick's Day? By wearing green, of course, like the rest of America.

This is a facsimile of a shirt that a 7th grader wore to school on March 17. Any resemblance to his actual shirt is definitely intended. Because seriously, this was the shirt he wore.

Camouflage and Piggly Wiggly really scream "Céad Míle Fáilte."

As a former resident of the great commonwealth of Massachusetts, I did take some delight in hearing that St. Patrick apparently came from Boston.

I was less amused, when asking what the symbol of Ireland was, to hear "cabbage" posited as a legitimate answer, but I suppose we've brought it on ourselves.

Really though, what person, when planning a feast, hits on corned beef and cabbage and decides to run with that idea? There is a reason why Irish immigrants ate it. Because they were starving and poor. And putting a lot of stuff in a pot and letting it boil was easier than learning how to cook.*

Furthermore, the inferior cut of meat they were forced to buy in their poverty didn't come from the motherland: more like Mama Goldstein's Corner Deli. So really, you might just as well eat bagels and lox for all the Irish history that surrounds corned beef and cabbage. And they would taste a lot better.

*Disclaimer: S. made the best CB&C I have ever eaten. But she uses witchcraft, I think. Just take a look at the cake she created out of crumbs and the love child of cream cheese icing and Irish potatoes.

My opinion is that we ditch the corned beef and cabbage. If you're going to celebrate, eat some fine Irish cuisine, like...

Or maybe sushi.

In my family, we always celebrated the feast with Irish potatoes. This is a foolproof (read, Irish cook-proof) candy recipe that looks remotely like a potato and is therefore in keeping with the holiday. Simply mix cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar and vanilla, roll in some cinnamon and chill for an hour. Make sure you have lots of people to share these with if you don't want to also look like a potato.

Unfortunately, my Irish blood runs so deep that apparently no recipe is proof against it. I could literally mess up a peanut butter sandwich. (I mean, literally. The last time I made one for my niece she made a brave show but failed to finish. Probably because she couldn't open her jaw after the first few bites due to my overly-liberal spreading. Apparently you can have too much of a good thing).

I put too much butter in the first time, so my potatoes were of an icing consistency. Granted, that is pretty much exactly what they are, but somehow it's easier to justify eating straight up frosting when it's rolled in cinnamon and has a clever name. Only I, in the secrecy of the kitchen, feel comfortable sailing in with a spoon.

With my candy looking more like Irish Mashed Potatoes, I decided to add coconut flakes, hoping for some volume. I said a prayer to St. Patrick and stuck them in the freezer ("them" is a very generous pronoun. This would imply that they were actually distinct balls, instead of the gooey amorphous mass spouting coconut flakes that they more closely resembled).

Two hours later, they were no closer to looking like potatoes. Spend four dollars on more cream cheese? Or sacrifice the potatoes? (hold off on the Guinness so that I could drive to the grocery store? That, of course, was the real question).

I decided in favor of salvaging, but after adding the cream cheese was still stuck with frosting that absolutely refused to be "gently rolled into balls about a quarter inch long and dusted liberally with cinnamon."

And this time, the Guinness won. Also the Bailey's and Jameson (incidentally, the man who can invent an Irish car bomb that doesn't curdle deserves a medal. And my hand in marriage). These Irish potatoes were determined to be icing and I was not going to fight it any longer.

Fortunately, S. came to the rescue with a carrot cake box mix.

Unfortunately, she entrusted it to me.

Seriously, how hard is it to mix a powder with half a cup of oil and an egg, cook it for a half hour, and take it from the pan when it's cool? Is it too much to ask that such a simple task be within my limited domestic scope?

Yes.

I'm through fighting my genes. Dinner, March 17th - pre-packaged cole slaw. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

My mother makes a mean carrot cake. It is seriously the bomb. Excuse me, the bomb.com (I need to move into the 21st century, according to my students). Once in a while I have even accidentally baked it successfully myself. Here is the recipe.