Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with our family’s Irish Supper recipes, and learn why we began celebrating our heritage this way.
I’m half Irish. We Irish are a proud bunch. We may have been in the States for hundreds of years, but still our idea of a dream vacation is to head to the “Mother Country.” And we very much like the fact that we have our very own holiday.
Growing up, my family didn’t have the traditional Irish supper. We’d often have a green cake or some such thing and of course, the traditional wearin’ o’ the green, but I didn’t start celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with a specific meal until 2008.
That year, St. Patrick’s Day was rather bittersweet for me. My dad (where my Irish blood comes from) had passed away the year before, and on February 10 of 2008, our daughter, Emily passed away.
St. Patrick’s Day 2008 was the first real meal I cooked following her death.
picture from our 2008 Green Supper
You might ask why I would choose to make my first meal back in the kitchen following Emmy’s death a celebratory Irish Supper?
For the same reason we started a Jesse Tree that year.
We needed new memories and new traditions. So much of what we celebrated before was edged in pain because “last time” Emmy was with us. (this fact is precisely the reason I encourage friends of grieving parents to offer memberships to museums and such after a child’s death–it is something new and different and the pain isn’t as acute in those places.)
That said, our supper was still painful, just not *as* painful as it would have been had it been something we did *before* Emmy died.
That first supper was prepared using an e-book from Urban Homemaker. However, over the years we adjusted and changed things until we came up with our own version.
Previously, I have offered our Irish Supper recipe booklet as a Subscriber Freebie, but now you can download this St. Patrick’s Day feast without signing up! It is my gift to you to begin your own St. Patrick’s Day traditions – even if you aren’t Irish!
These are the recipes we use every year to celebrate our Irish heritage on March 17th! Included in this ebooklet are recipes for:
Crockpot Corned Beef & Cabbage
Colcannon
Irish Soda Bread
Dessert ideas
Won’t you join us this year?
elizabeth says
We skip the corned beef. we go for more traditional Irish dishes instead of Irish-American dishes. Colcannon definitely. Corned beef was simply cheap meat for new immigrants. I will be making a corned beef and cabbage meal for a meeting my husband has (apparently it is what was requested).
Kimberly says
Thank you! My husband will love this.
Jennifer says
Yummy! Thanks for sharing … quick question on the colcannon … do the mashed potatoes and the cabbage get mixed together at some point?