Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day When You’re Not Irish

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!