St. Patrick's Day 2010

We're not big celebraters of St. Patrick's day. I was aware of the day, but forgot and dressed both John and myself in orange. We certainly don't go out drinking or party. But this year I did cook a somewhat traditional meal of corned beef and roasted vegetables (and macaroni and cheese to be child-friendly) and we told John the adventures of the bishop of Ireland. I was to myself that, as much as I dislike that secular society has distorted St. Patrick's feast day, I am grateful that secular society still celebrates the day at all. There are few Catholic holidays still celebrated: Easter, Christmas, St. Patrick's day, St. Valentine's day. Any others?

John wasn't being a pest. Mary was simply crying because she was really hungry and I was delaying feeding her by taking a photo and saying grace.

I tried to make a neat recipe in honor of the green day: brownies, with a layer of mint frosting, then a layer of chocolate. The original recipe called for creme de menthe frosting, but many commenters to the online recipe said that they simply used peppermint extract. I didn't want to waste money on a whole bottle of liqueur, so I looked for peppermint extract. I couldn't find it, but did find mint extract--and that's probably the same, right? So, St. Patrick's day was the day I got to learn that "mint" means spearmint! And spearmint tastes like toothpaste! Plus it is not green, which is the whole fun point of this dessert. So I served the dessert with a forewarning, then I peeled off the frosting layer, reapplied the chocolate layer, and ate the mangled brownies like that. Meanwhile, John was too young to know that spearmint wasn't the right flavor, so he scarfed down three brownies happily!