The Irish Part of Eastern Europe

First of all, a very warm welcome to all my new readers! Please feel free to de-lurk and leave me comments! I love them!

As a little kid, I used to get really annoyed when people would misspell or mispronounce my first or last name. Like, REALLY annoyed. I never understood why my first name would be mispronounced. M-A-R-A is not THAT hard to say! When I got older, I understood why people would pronounce it with “air” in the middle, like Sarah instead of with “are” in the middle (the correct way), but still don’t understand the Myra, Moira, Marla, Maria, and even Mario (once). My last name though, I understood.

For privacy reasons, I don’t think I’ll give you my full maiden name here… but let’s just say it started with an “O” and ended with a “sky” and was almost always mispronounced. Often, it was misspelled with an apostrophe after the “O” like in “O’Connor” or “O’Malley”. It wasn’t until I took a job in the heart of Chicago’s Irish community that I got the joke. Sure, my family tree had deep roots in Russia and Poland (hence the “sky” at the end), but the O tended to throw people off, and the joke became that I was from the Irish part of Eastern Europe! I have fairly fair skin, freckles, a natural hair color with a tinge of red, and sure do love my potatoes… so now I’m in on it, and joke that I am, indeed, from the Irish part of Eastern Europe. Ok, maybe it’s not that funny.

I wanted to make something special for St. Patrick’s Day today, and was really undecided as to what I wanted to make. Then, I happened to look at one of my very favorite drool-worthy blogs, Eat a Duck I Must. I met Alice and Jared at the FoodBuzz Community Table event, and have loved their blog ever since. They posted a recipe for an updated Corned Beef and Cabbage that I decided right then and there I absolutely HAD to make.

So, from Alice and Jared, to me, to you… a fantastic and simple procedure for the best corned beef I’ve had since my mom made it for my 10th birthday!

Just look at my pictures before you look at theirs. Mine are not nearly as gorgeous!

The process is simple: buy a 3 lb. corned beef, rinse, place in a covered oven-safe pot (like a Dutch oven) and pour in 2 cans of Guinness. Cook, covered, at 350 for about 3 hours, then reduce the cooking juices with 2 Tbsp. sugar. That’s it… and it was wonderful! Alice and Jared gave a much better description of the http://eataduckimust.blogspot.com/2010/03/dressing-up-st-patricks-day-guinness.html”>procedure.

Tagged as: beef, family, food, friends, holiday, recipe, red meat, simple recipe, vegetables