WEARING OF THE GREEN

Growing up we always celebrated St. Patrick's Day by wearing green (after all who wanted to get pinched) and by eating corned beef and cabbage.   I liked wearing green but the truth be told I never much cared for corned been or cabbage (unless it is raw).  As the years went by, I thought perhaps if I cooked it like a roast vs. boiling it, I would like it better.  Well, there was an improvement but not enough.  Then I thought perhaps I could just cook a roast (not corned beef) and my sister gave me a recipe for fried cabbage.  Again some improvement but not quite what I wanted.

In 2012 I visited Ireland and learned a few things.  First, I saw Crough Patrick where St. Patrick supposedly chased the snakes out of Ireland.  I was thrilled to see this mountain from my Great Grandmother Bridget Chamber's town of her birth, Islandeady.  Second, I ate in restaurants for an entire week and didn't run across any corned beef.  Who started this tradition?  Well probably someone in America!  I decided I would start my own tradition for St. Patrick's Day that didn't include corned beef or cabbage.  So, at my house we now have Guinness Stew (I think yesterday's recipe was the perfect one -- of course, most things taste better with bacon) with Guinness bread (also very tasty) and then for dessert we have banofee pie.  Banofee pie has a shortbread or sugar cookie crust and is filled with bananas, caramel syrup or dulce las leche and whipped cream.  What is not to like about it?

I have been thinking that perhaps I ought to celebrate St. Patrick's Day or at least my Irish heritage for more than one day.  A few weeks ago, I happened to be in a real life bookstore (I say that because I now tend to get most of my books through Kindle but still love bookstores!) and saw that they had a table set up with Irish books. The fact that they had marked them down in price only made me want them more!  So, I bought a book titled "The Secrets of Ireland" by Kevin Eyres that contains gorgeous photos of Ireland.  While my daughter was picking out a book about Irish Scary Stories (I hate scary stories) for me, there was another book that caught my eye -- "Ireland's Pirate Queen: The True Story of Grace O'Malley" by Anne Chambers.  Now, this sounds like a very interesting book (and I guess I am way behind since the original was printed in 1979) and perhaps, Anne Chambers and I even share some common Chambers ancestors!

I have just started reading about the Pirate Queen and will talk more about it in a later post.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!

Yesterday (March 2nd) would have been my Dad's 85th birthday had he still been alive.  Donald Joseph Sherlock was born on 2 March 1929 in Chicago, Illinois and died 16 May 2001 in Chatsworth.  At my genealogy class on Tuesday night, we learned that the emphasis now on genealogy is not to collect just the dates of births, deaths, etc but to collect the stories of what happened in between the birth and death.  There is a saying that what matters most is the dash between the birth year and death year.

So, with that in mind, I wanted to talk about my Dad and the things that he enjoyed doing.  My dad was an avid Notre Dame fan -- about as avid as I have ever seen.   In the days before the internet (my childhood), my Dad would subscribe to the South Bend Tribune and have it delivered to our home in Van Nuys, California.  Of course, this would require it going through the US Mail and our poor postman O'del having to walk the route during football season and spring practice with Dad's large newspapers in his bag. Of course, the Sunday paper was quite large!

My Dad was the one who planned where we would go on our summer vacation.  Typically, we would take our small trailer and go to one of the State Parks in California -- Carpinteria, Pismo and Sea Cliff were our usual destinations.  One year, though, Dad came up with the idea to go to San Felipe, a small fishing village in eastern Baja California.  I am not sure where he got the idea from but he told us all that all we needed were our swim suits.  Of course, my Mom knew better and so we packed other items of clothes in addition to our swimsuits.  Well, it was a good thing that we did -- because as our car was driving through Beaumont, California, the engine blew out and we spent the next 2 days in Beaumont while another one was installed.  It was also a good thing that my grandparents had accompanied us on that trip with their own car.  At least now we had some transportation except that all 9 of us couldn't fit into it at one time.

We did finally get to San Felipe and it was amazing -- water that was 80 some degrees and was so clear that you could see the fish swimming around and then jumping out of the water.  At low tide, the entire bay had no water and the boats were stuck in the sand and at the highest tide, the water came into the streets of the town and the little children played in it.  But Dad was right, when we were in San Felipe, we only needed our swimsuits with the 100 degree temps!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD -- We love you and we miss you!