Thursday, March 26, 2009

egg nog and pumpkin pie

I was speaking with a coworker on St. Patrick's day about dinner that evening. She was feeling the pressure from her mother-in-law to prepare corned beef and cabbage, one of the worst meals known to man, but no one in her family could stand it. I can relate. 

With the exception of turkey on Thanksgiving and Octoberfest beer in Spetember I refuse to believe that people really like any of the holiday/season specific foods. This list includes pumpkin pie, egg nog, corned beef and cabbage, and lamb on Easter. I'm sure that other heritages have their own list. If this stuff was so good, you'd eat it year round.

On a related note how is it that an entire civilization couldn't come up with one decent dish?When's the last time you went to that really great Irish place or shopped the Irish section of the market for that final something you needed to make your favorite Irish dinner? Thank goodness for Guinness.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

dude-
1. corned beef is a great dish. it is the best possible way to deliver lots of spicy dijon mustard to your mouth.
2. you need to go to matt murphy's in brookline village. a menu-full of tasty irish meals (for a higher than average price).

matt said...

You're right about corned beef.... the best thing about it is the mustard. I like those huge spiral cut hams for the same reason. The cooked meat under it all isn't that great... it's all about the garnish.

O'connor's in Worcester is pretty good too, but I'm not convinced that it is real Irish food. If it was, there'd be Irish restaurants everywhere.

gewilli said...

whole paycheck in PVD had samples of their instore brined corned beef...

holy sh!t that stuff was tender, flavorfull and tasted awesome... not to mention the cabbage is good too...

Egg Nog? Stuffs killer too, pumpkin pie? You kidding? That is awesome.

Think of the holiday foods like cyclocross. If you ate them year round they wouldn't be special.

what's wrong with Leg of Lamb?

ya save the leg for special occasions (at least you did when you raised your own or you bought the whole animal).

The best meal can be made to taste like crap, there's good pumpkin pie and bad pumpkin pie, there's inedible corned beef and there's killer melt in your mouth corned beef...

amurican's often focus more on the actual dish than how it tastes... ya know?

matt said...

re: lamb... anything that requires mint jelly to get past the gag reflex is not good.

gewilli said...

you kidding?

if it needs Mint jelly then it is mutton, not lamb...

or just not cooked well ;)

ya just helping to make my point!

G-ride said...

i love corned beef and i love cabbage. I especially love mustard. my favorite sandwich is a reuben on sour dough with no russian (french?) dressing. second favorite is a montreal smoked meat with yellow mustard.

so i am probably not objective on this one.

now i am hungry.