St. Patrick's Day 帕特里克的天

It’s St. Patrick’s Day! Well, at least it’s a traditional American-style St. Patrick’s Day dinner. We went over to my parents for dinner. As you can see there in the photos ( left click to enlarge), there was cabbage, small red potatoes, corned beef and crème brulee. No shamrocks 三葉草. All were very good tasting to me and fit well together as a traditional American dinner.

Corned beef 作醃牛肉火腿 (along with its close cousin pastrami) is actually a traditionally American Jewish dish, but the Irish 來自美國東海岸的愛爾蘭人who came by way of the East Coast borrowed it for their holiday. Nothing wrong with that though. Something tells me ham was not a traditional Easter dish, perhaps leg of lamb??, and does anyone really know what figgy pudding is that we are supposed to request in one of the Christmas songs?

From the historical end, St. Patrick was not even Irish. He was an Englishman who was kidnapped by the Irish and later after he had escaped back to England, felt a calling by God to go back to Ireland and spread the gospel 傳福音. Needless to say, he was incredibly successful at his calling and so became St. Patrick by the Catholic church later. Just something to think about while we swig down those green beers and Shamrock shakes.

The Chinese side of my family knows and cares the most about the Christian aspects and culinary aspects of the holiday, but probably less so about the cultural aspects since no one on either side is Irish. They had fun playing with grandpa and grandma. Our smallest one tipped over a table, set an alarm for 12:15 at night and almost fell rear end first behind the chairs….all-in-all a normal evening for us.