Tag: St. Patrick’s Day

Holy Mackerel! It’s Saint Paddy’s Day

Clifford A. Brown
Clifford A. Brown
129
 

Atlantic mackerelHow about something different for Saint Patrick’s Day fare? There is plenty of corned beef hash with boiled cabbage and potatoes on offer at public eateries, ready to be washed down with green dyed light beer, or Guinness and Irish whiskey. This is the first holiday with many bars and restaurants fully open to celebrate since last March. This year, I’m trying other Irish fare: mackerel fish patties made with potatoes, served with fresh baked Irish soda bread. Cabbage will come in shredded as a bed for the fish cakes.

Mackerel is traditional Irish fare.

We all have a basic awareness of the deep connection between the Irish and potatoes, see Famine. You should also have a notion that an island nation has a strong sea fishing tradition. Think of Irish or Aran (Island) sweaters, knit originally to keep the fishermen warm on the cold Atlantic waves. You have that image in mind because these simple but elegant home spun sweaters caught the eye of Vogue editors in the late 1950s.

Preview Open

Friday Food and Drink Post: Weirdest Holiday Foods Edition

She
She
1910
 

Well. Lugubrious Joe and Gurning Anthony notwithstanding, 2021 proceeds apace, and we’re on the cusp of closing out its first quarter.** Yikes.

But before we do, along will come St. Patrick’s Day, not a big seller in the land of my birth, but huge in the two areas I’ve lived in, in my adopted country–Boston and Pittsburgh.

It’s the holiday that always “springs” (see what I did there?) to mind when I think of revolting unusual celebratory foodstuffs. Green beer. Virulent green bagels. Green donuts. Artificially colored anything that can pass mustard (ouch, again) with enough FD&C Green No. 3 added to give it that special relevance on the day. Ice cream. Mashed potatoes (a bit of a twofer, there, at least if you’re Irish). Anything.

Preview Open

Member Post

AUMom
AUMom
66
 

I have always loved St. Patrick’s Day. That is really strange because I don’t drink beer. I don’t party. I don’t own much green. I just loved the idea of St. Patrick himself.  Looking through the family genealogy, I found three generations born in County Armagh. I was thrilled. Thrilled, I tell you. I could […]
Join Ricochet!

This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

This Irishman Hates St. Patrick’s Day (well what it has now become sadly I’m sad to say)

Paddy S
Paddy S
4320
 

st paddyToday, on the 17th of March, we celebrate the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. It is, of course, St. Patrick’s day. So how will the Irish of modern Ireland and people of nations around the world — with or without Irish blood or heritage — honor the man who brought Christianity to our shores and changed Ireland and Western Civilization for the better? (The conversion of Ireland rekindled the conversion of Northern Europe after the fall of Rome.)

Will people go to a church, Catholic or Protestant? Will they forego churchgoing but say a prayer, or have a meal, in his honor? Will they embrace Ireland and God with thanks for our liberation from the darkness of evil and ignorance?

I kid, of course. We all know what St. Patrick’s Day has become. (And God help anyone who says “St. Patty’s Day” to me — I will beat them with a Hurley.) Rather than celebrating a religious holiday that enlightened Ireland and Europe, the majority of celebrants around the world, be they Irish or not, will mark this feast with an orgy of unedifying drinking, thus living up to an unfortunate national stereotype and explaining why so many Irish people die from liver disease.

Preview Open