Happy St. Patrick's Day!

What's Irish and sits in the back yard?

Pati O'Furniture!

We are getting set to celebrate the big holiday tomorrow.  If you don't know what I am talking about, you don't live in Chicago.  Tomorrow is one of the holy days, a serious celebration. 

St. Patrick's Day.

It is the first amateur night of 2012.  What?  Amateur night?  Yes, it is one of the two nights of the year to absolutely stay off the roads.  It is a night, along with New Year's Eve, that everyone thinks they should drink.  There is a tidal wave of inexperienced drinkers.   The green beer flows and the throats open.  The bars are crowded and hot which produces a thirst somehow quenched best by green beer.

So with our new lifestyle, how will we celebrate?  Each year, starting on March 1st, Silent Sam will ask if I have started boiling that "stuff" yet.  This is an indication of his feelings toward the very special corned beef and red potato dinner I used to make.  Needless to say, the kids found it easy to incorporate his feelings into their feelings on the matter.  

Corned beef has been dropped from the menu. 

It hit me a few years ago that lamb is also an Irish favorite and since lamb is also a favorite in this house that we could celebrate St. Patty's Day with a lamb dinner.  This is much more to everyone's liking.  I did try one year to make Irish Soda Bread but I was not successful.  So tomorrow we will search for a good loaf of Irish Soda Bread.  Not sure where to find it but it may involve some taste tests. 

One of the first things that we learned when we had to change our habits was that Guinness is the lowest calorie regular beer.  Well, faith and begora, we have a winner!  Guinness it is for the gent tomorrow.

So there is our St. Patrick's day - a little lamb, a little soda bread, lots of green (vegetables) and a wee dram of Guinness.

How are you going to celebrate?  What is your perfect St. Patty's day?  Suggestions for where I get a good loaf of Irish Soda Bread?

Thanks for reading!