Saturday, March 17, 2012

St. Patrick's Day

I'm part Irish...admittedly a very small part, but it's there. I'm also part Italian. That part is quite a bit bigger. So any traditional cooking from "the old country" was done by my Italian grandma. We've never been big on corned beef and cabbage. In fact, they never made it until after I grew up ad could cook my own meals. The only time I ever had it was as a child at a dinner with my Dad's family. I did not like it. So I never ate it after that.

My mother in law has a dinner every year, but we haven't attended. Either because we lived out of state or my husband was working and we only had one running car or, like last year, she decided to just make a small dinner and we could skip it if we wanted to. This year, the Husband was working the close shift and MIL asked me if DD could come to the dinner even if I wanted to skip it. So I figured I'd go rather than stay by myself at home.

Now, I am a rather picky eater, and I do the very best I can to expose DD to lots of things and make her give them a fair try. If she doesn't like it, that's fine. We'll reopen it in a few months or a year. I get it, tastes change. So tonight I gave corned beef another try. It's been nearly 20 years since I've had it anyway. It was very good. The whole meal was good, but I ate around the cabbage. It's probably not something I will ever cook though. Brisket is one of my least favorite cuts of beef. But I will be a lot more open to going to St. Patrick's day parties and trying the food again.

Thank you, Mom, for not pushing me to eat it when I didn't like it as a child. And thank you, MIL, for giving me the time to try it again without pushing.

4 comments:

  1. This is funny...we made my son try corned beef for the first time...After about 20 minutes of why for all the reasons he didn't want to even try, he finally gave in and said, "mmmm this is good"...you never know until you try.

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  2. My husband cooked up the works yesterday afternoon. It was delicious! I like it a few times per year but would not like it often. Glad you gave it another try...I do think it is a food people acquire a taste for.

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  3. We like it, but chose to have bar-b-que instead, just because we like it better. It's neat you connected with the permission of your mother & your mother-in-law to like what you like & dislike what you like, no problem. I'm for that; everyone is different. Nicely said!

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  4. Sounds like you're glad that you and DD were able to partake in the tradition. I like your philosophy about exposing and giving a fair try and letting it go for now. ~Theresa

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