Corned Beef and Cabbage

There are those who can trace their ancestry back hundreds and hundreds of years.  I am not among them.  Yes, my maternal Grandmother’s father came over from Ireland when he was a child, but that’s all I’ve got beyond stories and jumbled memories from a childhood filled with a storyteller’s stories…you know, a mind that takes facts and turns them into fiction, and makes fiction seem as though it just might have actually happened?  Yes, my Grandmother was a storyteller, and a good one at that.  There were many times in my teens that I asked her outright about our ancestry and while she would start out on the right path, it would quickly turn into something else and never quite make it’s way back around to the actual branches on our family tree.

So, like many, many others in this fine Melting Pot of ours, I consider myself to be a mutt (according to my mom we are Irish,English, Scottish, Dutch – in that order – plus who knows what else is thrown in there), though I still hope to find actual, traceable ancestry at some point in my life.

Given all of this, it seems only fitting that my excitement about making Corned Beef and Cabbage for St. Patty’s Day is also a bit muddy.  See, the actual Corned Beef and Cabbage meal is only partially Irish.  The meal itself evolved from the items that were available to immigrants once here in the US instead of being something that was brought directly from the Emerald Isle.  Easy to cook and quite cheap, pork and potatoes (the meal of choice in Ireland in the 18th Century) became beef and cabbage (equally easy and cheap at the time) which evolved into a new tradition of sorts.

The History channel does an excellent job of tracing the evolution as well as giving me a tiny piece of my own personal history.

So, regardless of whether or not Corned Beef and Cabbage is indeed an authentic Irish meal, it has become a St. Patty’s Day tradition and I have been very excited to create it from scratch!

The corned beef brine, made last weekend, happily corned some fabulous, organic, grass-finished beef for the past week, gave me quite the experience and a little bit of pride to boot.  Add to all this the  new-found knowledge that the pink color of corned beef we’ve all come to know so well is the product of a chemical I can’t imagine wanting in my food and it’s been quite a whirlwind in from-scratch cooking and learning as I go!

The meal itself (inspired by this recipe but with some extra veggies thrown in) was delicious (and perfectly paired with this Irish Soda Bread) and will provide many meals over the next few days.

Will I make Corned Beef and Cabbage again next year in celebration of St. Patty’s Day and the little bit of Irish left in me?  Absolutely.  Which is why I love this statement about Corned Beef and Cabbage so much…

“Far from being as Irish as a shamrock field, this St. Patrick’s Day classic is as American as apple pie.”

~Stephanie Butler

I hope that, no matter what your history says about you, you’re enjoying today (and all of it’s evolutions) and finding joy in the unexpected and unexplained.

xoxo,
M