A Swanky St. Pat's!

[Alex]

Originally Posted by wendybeth

We had corned beef and cabbage last night- Tori had mac-n-cheese, of course.

There was a short story on NPR last Friday about an Irish immigrant that opened an Irish bakery in San Francisco a couple years ago. He said that until he came to America he'd never had corned beef and cabbage before and it came as a surprise to him that people apparently considered it a staple of his diet.

That the American idea of Irish culture seems to have been frozen into our national psyche about 100 years ago.

The pressure is such to provide "authentic" foods that this year he added corned beef and cabbage to the menu for the month and it has been hugely popular.

Not that this is any reason to not eat corned beef, I just found it amusing. An object lesson in how you get what most people think of as "Chinese food" or the Taco Bell line-up or people not believing Lani when she says that sushi isn't really eaten at home in Japan.