What, if anything, will you do for St. Patrick's Day?

[Piratelvr1121]

I had a good one and the corned beef turned out fine even though I realized at noon that the outlet the crock pot was plugged into wasn't working and the pot was cold!  I plugged it into another outlet and put it on high for a couple hours then turned it on low and thankfully it was still done by supper time and was delicious.

I make it with about a spoonful of brown sugar spread over the top and with cubed potatoes under the brisket, and with a bottle of Guinness poured over top.  DH likes it cause the brown sugar cuts the saltiness a bit, and the Guinness gives it some good flavor! I had to run out and get more Guinness yesterday (ended up using the last bottle over the brisket and needed to have some to drink too!) and was grinning to think of how my bff will get to see where it's all made in a few days.

And I had a nice time chatting with her all day.

[Venus193]

Eunice's party was quieter than usual but there were at least 40 people in and out.  Most of the food was consume but there was enough left for Eunice and Steve to not have to cook for a few days.

[Thipu1]

The corned beef dinner at Chip Shop was delicious.  It was served with Colcannon instead of cabbage and that was wonderful too.  We have plenty of left-over meat to make Reuben sandwiches for tomorrow.

The parade was nice enough but a bit disappointing.  It was shorter than usual and included neither horses nor Irish Setters.  We also didn't see the Boro President (In NYC, this is roughly the equivalent of mayor for the outer boroughs) and Marty never passes up the chance for public appearances.  he enjoys doing something slightly outrageous so we hope all is well with him and his family.

Tonight, we'll have pea soup we made and froze a few weeks ago with a lovely loaf of onion bread and the remains of a bottle of wine we opened on Friday.  It may not be Irish but it's tasty and it's naturally green. 

[EmmaJ.]

Eunice's party was quieter than usual but there were at least 40 people in and out.  Most of the food was consume but there was enough left for Eunice and Steve to not have to cook for a few days.

If there was an update on Mrs. Double-Dipper, I missed it. 

Was she invited?  If so, were her manners any better?

[TheaterDiva1]

We'll be going to lunch at Chip Shop for the best corned beef and cabbage in the world. 

On the 18th, we'll be going to the local parade.  This year it should be especially nice because there will be marching units from Ireland that participated in the big parade in Manhattan the day before. 

The day after that is our 29th Wedding Anniversary. 

It will be a very pleasant and festive weekend.

Just found this thread - you went to the parade?  Me too neighbor!  We went to the Dram Shop last night and I had a couple pints of Guinness (and I don't usually drink beer, period - let alone dark beers like that).

[Venus193]

Ms Double Dipper was not invited.  I had advised Eunice of the contents of the other thread, but she so dislikes confrontation that both she and her husband relied on Caller ID as a warning.   They did not return her calls and she seemed to give up because there were no calls for three days prior.   However....

Ms Double Dipper called four times during the party itself.  On the fourth call another guest picked up the phone so Eunice was stuck having to talk to her.  I don't know the whole conversation but Ms Double Dipper had said "I heard you're having a party" and Eunice said "I'm having a few people over and I'm rather busy at the moment."  I was busy enough not to remember anything else said about the conversation.  We did wonder whether she would attempt to crash the party (she lives in the neighborhood) and what we would do.  Fortunately, that did not happen.

Since there are people they have in common, this will not be the end of the story.  Details of the evening will make their way back to Ms Double Dipper and/or her husband so we can anticipate a confrontation.  I will X-post this to the other thread and when the next update happens I will post it there.

[caz]

Tonight, we'll have pea soup we made and froze a few weeks ago with a lovely loaf of onion bread and the remains of a bottle of wine we opened on Friday.  It may not be Irish but it's tasty and it's naturally green. 

The Irish of course invented alcohol, so it's Irish enough :p

[Thipu1]

A bit OT but I hope it will be fun. 

Some years ago an Egyptologist of Irish heritage said this --

'We know that the Egyptian deity Osiris was Irish.  First of all his name is really O' Siris.  He's often shown with green skin and offerings to him include copious amounts of beer'.

There's also the joke about the Japanese Irishman, Mr. Ohara. 

[jmarvellous]

After all my advice in this thread for someone visiting my city and looking for St. Pat's events, I ended up pretty pointedly avoiding all such stuff in favor of lots of non-Irish live music (Ben Kweller's a redhead, so there's that) and normal brown-to-yellow shades of beer.

It was a great day!

[hobish]

I'm going to a wedding!  It will be a hoot.  I can't wait to see the shamrock decorations, the green bridemaid's dresses, and taste their signature green cocktail!   

Well, I'm back from the wedding.  What a perfect day!  They were married at a beachside hotel - on the beach in a pavilion.  It was just lovely.  The bride was stunning, the groom handsome and happy, food was delicious, green beer and key lime vodkas were served, and best of all - they had a green velvet wedding cake!   

I was going to ask how that went It sounds great!


I took niece horseback riding and she ended up hanging out at our place for a few hours, which was so nice. She is 19 and Gish & i just love her to death. I also did shots over the phone with my brother, who moved down south recently.

[Outdoor Girl]

I ended up going to a house party at a friend's place.  The weather was so nice that we were able to hang around outside around a fire for quite a while before it got cold enough to send a bunch of us inside.  Some people stayed out around the fire all night!

The hostess provided a bottle of green food colouring so you could colour whatever beverage you were drinking.  I was drinking white wine so it worked really well.  I brought pumpkin tarts and tinted the whipped cream green.

Thipu, you reminded me of this funny story:  One of the friends attending this party used to work in IT and was the one responsible for giving passwords to new employees to access the computer network.  A request came across her desk for a John O'Smith (not the real name, of course).  She was *this close* to making his password leprechaun but decided at the last minute not to.  She was quite relieved when she was later introduced to a very nice Asian man.  Quite some time later, after she got to know him, she told him this story and he was highly amused.

[Luci]

I corn my own beef, so I have to start marinating 3 weeks early. This year we had fewer people than usual, so I have lots of beef leftover. Yea! We had 16, and we've had as many as 30. (Sit-down dinner or buffet, china, silver, linen napkins - then we get casual.)

Lucas built a new firepit last summer, so we had a campfire and the kids made som'mores. Blech! but they like them and it was pretty exciting to have a campfire on St. Pat's Day as opposed to snow on the ground.

A couple of disasters, though. I had bought chicken noodle soup instead of cream of chicken, so I ended up using some frozen half and half with chicken boullion crystals for the potatoes. Now that I think about it, I could have pureed the noodle soup. H-m-m-m-m. One guest said it seemed different and when I told her about it, she thought maybe I should do that from now on. The onion and the cheese carry the flavor anyway. Then the next morning, I had no milk so had to use Redi-whip for the hash - not whipping cream, the stuff that foams out of a can. It was really pretty good; just a little sweet. I guess I'm not the worst cook in America yet, but I do keep trying.

[Talley]

I made Guinness stew (for the first time, and it turned out to be really good - even DD ate seconds) and we drank the "left-over" bottles of Guinness 

Where we live now (in Germany), there was nothing whatsoever going on regarding Paddy's Day. My Dad, who lives in Munich, told me about the big Paddy's Day parade they had there (a week earlier, actually), but in our town we don't even have an Irish pub or anything... Having lived in Ireland for 12 years, where I usually did my best to avoid the parades and the subsequent chaos, not to mention the pubs that were as packed as a can of sardines, I suddenly find myself missing all that... 

[Venus193]

The main drag down near Eunice and Steve's place boasts of three bars on one block (with other businesses in between them) and all had lines of people waiting outside to get in when I passed them at 2:30.

At least a third of people in NYC were wearing green, including people who were obviously not Irish.

Many bars served green beer.

My fingernails are painted metallic green (left hand) and frosted orange (right hand).  I'm stripping it off tomorrow.

[Luci]

I got criticized as a hostess for not wearing green until we pointed out that my necklace and earrings were the Claddagh with 'emerald' hearts that our son had brought back from Ireland and I was wearing an orange shirt because we are Protestants. I am 1/4 Irish but don't really have any traditions that I was raised with.