Corned Beef and Cabbage

We in the U. S. and Canda think corned beef and cabbage is a traditional Irish meal. It isn't. In the Ould Sod, our Irish ancestors ate a lot of cabbage (and carrots and potatoes), but I'm pretty sure our immigrant ancestors bought their corned beef from their Jewish neighbors and liked the flavor its pot liquor gave to their vegetables so well they adopted it as their own.

In our house on this St. Patrick's Day, we have two people with delicate stomachs--Mother because she's almost 82 and Linus from all the drugs she has to take--so corned beef and cabbage wasn't an option. We had the truly traditional potato soup and soda bread and topped the meal off with green mint ice cream.