St Patrick’s day is just around the corner. It’s
always something of a problem when it falls midweek. Will you celebrate the
weekend before? Or the weekend after? Or just on the day?
I’m going with yes. I
started the festivities last Sunday with my mother, my sister and her husband.
I made Irish stew. This is not something we had growing up, certainly never
with lamb. We may have had stew and my mother called it Irish stew but that’s about as far as it got. St Patrick’s Day was serious business.
My
mother, who is not Irish but Slovakian and German, when I informed her of what
we were having for dinner, groused that we never celebrate her heritage, which
is not true. I’ve made zellevaslesia
and I love German food but truthfully, there are not special saints days for
celebration. We were never slamming a glass of Slivovica in honor of Sts Cyril and Methodius.
(Actually, the patron saint of Slovakia is Our Lady of Sorrows but that doesn’t
exactly rouse me to celebrate in the same way that St Patrick with his green and
white socks, red beard and pot o’ gold does.)
The stew was good. But it was just stew. Irish or not.
