Happy St. Patrick's Day

I just started my corned beef in the crock pot. It's a tradition to have corned beef on St. Patrick's Day. But since my children have gotten older and married, I am finding that you either like corned beef or you can't stand it. Brooke said eating it is like licking a salt block, and Spencer just made a face and shook his head. So I will be cooking some chicken or something else for those who detest corned beef.

Summer is cooking corned beef for the first time today. They went to an Irish restaurant the other day and had corned beef and she really liked it. I hope that she likes her home cooked version too.

Today I have been thinking back to a few memories that happened around St. Patrick's day, or are somehow related to St. Patrick's day.

Ok-here is a memory. I used to color everything green. Green milk in the carton not just in the glasses, so for breakfast we had green milk on cereal. Corned beef for dinner, I made Irish soda bread, green vegs, green jell-O. If it was green we ate it, if it wasn't green I colored it green. I thought that it was fun. I hope that you kids remember it as fun.

This year I am of course making corned beef, and I found this recipe for a chocolate and green bundt cake-she put a flower in my bundt cake!!???!!! Ha Ha-what movie (I don't know if I even said it right, the movie is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding") Anyway I will add some pictures of the cake later. It looks really good.

This memory happened about 3 years ago, I think. I had taken Northridge High School Choir to New York, New York! It was a great trip. We went China Town on St. Patrick's day. I wanted to keep the students away from all of the rowdiness that happens up-town. With the parade and all of the craziness that goes on.

The day before that we were on Broadway and went to Carnegie Deli. While waiting in line to get into the deli I got a phone call from Summer. This day was also Match day for Bryan(Match Day is the day when all of the hospitals that a person has applied to matches up with the person 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices of where they would like to go for their residency-did I get that sort of right Bryan?). Anyway we are all standing outside of Carnegie Deli when Summer calls. I was having so much fun, that when she called I didn't even think about what that day was for them. Summer then dropped the bomb that they were going to be moving to Cleveland, Ohio! I burst into tears. That was so hard for me to hear. Even now writing about this makes me cry. I just knew how hard it was going to be having them gone, and be so far away (I thought I knew how hard it was going to be, but I was wrong. It is so much worse than I had imagined!).

So standing there on Broadway in New York, waiting to get into Carnegie Deli crying my eyes out, freezing, it was cold the whole time we were in NY, we finally go into the deli.

They packed us in like sardines. We all looked at the menu and couldn't believe the prices for a sandwich. We asked about sharing, and they charge for sharing. Wow! It was crazy, but I had a great corned beef sandwich-I knew that I wouldn't get any corned beef in China Town so I had to have some then.

This is Milton Parker. He is the Owner of Carnegie Deli. We met him and the students that were with us sang for him and the other guest at the restaurant. Finding this picture on-line it said that he passed away on Jan. 30th. That is to bad. He and his deli were/are famous!

My sandwich was just corned beef, this sandwich above has pastrami on it. But my sandwich was just as big, and it tasted sooooo good. We also got a few pieces of New York cheesecake to go.

To end this story, they made all of us put all of the orders from our table on one tab and then gave it to Kevin-he is popular like that. Anyway the kids gave Kevin what they thought they owed, but in the end he end up paying a HUGE amount of extra money. Needless to say he wasn't so happy about that.

Another memory that comes to mind every St. Patrick's day is about Danny and a jade heart necklace that I used to have (this isn't the necklace but it looks just like it).

One of my old boyfriends gave me this jade heart necklace. The only time that I wore it was on St. Patrick's day because it was green, and I didn't have any green clothes.

When Danny was little, she was a mama's girl. I loved it! But it was hard on Danny when I went to things like Yong Women's camp. She didn't want me to go( I did take her with me a few times, and that was fun). So I would try to think of ways to help her not miss me so much.

So this one time I gave her my jade necklace to wear, so that she would have my heart with her while I was gone.

When I came back from camp, and I don't remember how this came up, but she finally told me that she had lost the necklace in the sand box at school. They had look all through the sand, but couldn't find it. She was very sad about this. But I was ok with it because the necklace didn't mean anything to me, except now what was I going to wear on St. Patrick's day????

So today, that is what I am thinking-what am I going to wear-not the jade necklace. It is buried in the sand box at Adams Elementary.

Well, that is my ramblings for St. Patrick's day. I hope that you all have a fun day-be sure to wear green so that you don't get pinched!