“St. Patrick’s Day is an enchanted time — a day to begin transforming winter’s dreams into summer’s magic.”
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
My family always celebrates St. Patrick’s Day. My mother made corned beef and cabbage. She often threw a party which inevitably ended in the kitchen with the crowd singing St. Patrick’s Day songs. That’s how I learned all the words to the songs. I remember my dog Shauna’s first St. Patrick’s Day at my parents. My father gave her a dish of corned beef and cabbage. She ate all of it. She belonged to the clean plate club. She did better than my father who never ate the turnip.
My sister has already started her dinner. She did the corned beef yesterday. I’ll be enjoying my St. Patrick’s Day dinner this evening, and I’ll eat the turnips.
I spent yesterday afternoon in Elysium. The day was pretty with a bright sun which shined from window to window, from the east to the west. I noshed on Effie’s cocoa biscuits and cheddar cheese. They were a perfect combination. On TV I watched old black and white movies which were so bad I loved them. The first was The Earth Dies Screaming with killer robots and resurrected human beings with popped out eyes. Now I’m watching The Hideous Sun Demon in which a scientist exposed to radiation turns into a lizard every time he is in the sun. I’m in heaven with bad actors and cheesy effects. “His appearance has turned into something scaly. He is not taking it too well.”
In Ghana, the two foods I missed the most were coleslaw and root beer. (For convenience sake please just go with root beer as a food.) Cole slaw made sense as I liked cole slaw, but the root beer stymied me. I seldom drank it. That I was missed it was odd.
Ghana had Coke and Fanta. What kind of Fanta you ask? If a Ghanaian ordered a Fanta, he’d get orange, only orange. Coke was just Coke, no lite, no Tab, just Coke, usually warm, except we found a store in town with a fridge and cold Cokes. It was at the end of a row of stores which started on ground level then the row of stores got higher so the last store was reached by climbing steps or walking the whole length of stores. We chose the steps every time. There was an outside table, and we were sitting there the day of the incident, I think it was Bill and me, when we were approached by a white guy or maybe two. I’m not sure. I remember one white guy stopped at our table to talk to us, not unusual in Bolga with few whites. He wanted to know where the bare breasted women were. He had heard they were around Bolga. We were horrified by his question. Why would you even ask that question? We told him there were no bare-breasted women. We lied. He deserved a lie. He also deserved a punch, but we exercised restraint.
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March 17, 2022 at 2:35 pm
Hi Kat,
Happy St. Patrick Day! Today is partly cloudy with a high temperature projected to reach 75°.
Last year I was surprised to learn that the Irish in this country copied corned beef from the Jewish delicatessens when they arrived on these shores. Corned beef was unknown among the Irish in Ireland. Regardless, at least St. Patrick Day was not created by Hallmark. 🙂
Of course that tourist in Bolga was looking for bare breasted naive woman, he was a subscriber to the National Geographic Magazine. All through the 50s they photographed black African woman not wearing tops. 🙂
It’s interesting that outside North America they call Diet Coke, Coke Light. It has something to do with a European interpretation that the word diet can’t be used because Coke is not a diet medication. When you were in Africa in the Peace Corps, I don’t think Coke came in any other flavors or styles than plain Coca Cola.
March 17, 2022 at 9:14 pm
Hi Bob,
Happy St. Paddy’s Day!
We had rain starting around 2. It wasn’t unexpected, but it wasted the day as it was warm despite the rain. I did one errand and then stayed home.
My mother actually cooked a smoked shoulder every St. Patrick’s Day, a boiled dinner not corned beef and cabbage. She did switch over to corned beef. I just don’t remember when. I have always used corned beef.
My father used to tell us that it was mostly cabbage with some bacon in Ireland. In America corned beef was cheap, a poor man’s meat unlike in Ireland where it was quite expensive. The Jewish delis were great spots to buy corned beef and learn how to cook it.
That guy was just being perverted. Who asks for bare breasted women? National Geographic got hidden, like a sexy magazine, by boys ogling over the women over the years, but this was an adult male.
Tab was what I drank back then. I wasn’t fond of sugar Coke, but I had no choice in Ghana.
March 17, 2022 at 9:56 pm
Your dad was correct. I was just watching Andrew Zimmer on TV with Bizzare Foods in Dublin. He said the same thing but with potatoes along with the bacon and cabbage.
Today was the twentieth anniversary of my father’s passing. The time has flown by at supersonic speed.
March 17, 2022 at 11:07 pm
Absolutely, there had to be potatoes.
That’s amazing as it is past twenty years since my father passed. He passed away on March 14th.
March 17, 2022 at 4:44 pm
Fanta was as popular as Coke when I was young and coke was often Afri-Cola, a local brand. Fanta is still available and popular but mostly for kids now. I don’t think that we had root beer and I’m not even sure you can get it now. Needless to say that the land of sourkraut also has coleslaw.
Unfortunately I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that tourist was from my homecountry. These kind of men are still around and still disgusting.
Happy St.Patrick’s Day!
No Irish beer at home to celebrate this day, sorry, I’ll have to stick with Belgium beer. Cheers!
March 17, 2022 at 9:22 pm
Hi Birgit,
Fanta wasn’t so popular here. Coke was supreme. We could buy all different flavors of Fanta. I guess if you bought Coke, you had to buy Fanta too. Orange was the only flavor in Ghana.
A&W Root Beer is my favorite though Hires Root Beer is a close second in flavor. Hires is the longest continuously made soft drink in the United States.
That man was a disgusting pig. He was so offensive.
Belgian beer?
March 17, 2022 at 5:16 pm
Hi Kat,
This year St. Patrick’s Day falls on the same day as Purim. I don’t know if as a child I celebrated either of them, except by wearing green to school.
It’s 2pm here and I just woke up. Wanted to wish you a happy day.
I put a scary movie on F.B. thinking of you– enjoy if you see it there.
Cheers ( it was kind of you not to punch that man in the face).
Take Care,
Lori and Cookie
March 17, 2022 at 9:39 pm
Hi Lori,
I always wear the green in keeping with the day. When I went to do my errands today, I was decked in green.
The old science fiction I watch is seldom scary. The effects are a bit cheesy as there was CGI back then. THat’s what I enjoy the most.