By Lori Perkins

I grew up in New York City, so there has never been a time when I was not aware of St. Patrick’s Day, but I have not a drop of Irish blood in my veins (I’m a Greek-Russian, French Canadian). I’ve always been aware of the big parade downtown, and as I was growing up the controversy of banning gay people from marching in the parade.
But I did not grow up eating the celebratory meal of corned beef and cabbage.
After I became a mother, I moved to an apartment building where I adopted my older neighbor, who LOVED St. Patrick’s Day and would take my son and me out for corned beef and cabbage every year. A few years later, I had a boyfriend who was rather frugal, and after going out for dinner with my neighbor for the holiday, he asked me why I didn’t make the meal myself. I thought preparing the meal was more complicated than it was, but I soon learned otherwise. You literally just buy a package of meet with seasonings, dump it in boiling water with sliced up cabbage and boil for hours.
I also LOVE a good bargain, so when I realized the prepackaged corned beef with seasoning at the local supermarket was always on super sale this one week only - $1.69 a lb. instead of $7.99- I would buy multiple packages and make corned beef hash with the leftovers.
So I LOVE St. Patrick’s Day.
I usually have a bunch of friends over, many of whom do not celebrate the holiday, because they too don’t have a drop of Irish blood in them. But we all love the food.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
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