St. Patrick's Day Style - Celebrating the Green

Lots of places have St. Patrick's Day (Yes, it was yesterday, but TPP was busy.) celebrations, but this one almost has to be seen to be believed.  No photoshopping here.  This is a view along the Chicago river in the center of downtown Chicago just  a bit upstream from where the river enters Lake Michigan.  Yes, the river is actually that green.  Do they grind up Irishmen, who have been drinking green beer, and then slosh them around to get the color?  TPP actually watched them dye the river one year and met the short-straw fireman who was standing ready in his yellow wet suit should they have to rescue anyone from the green depths, anyone who might have had to much to drink.  Also saw a toy poodle who had fallen in, and then been pulled back out, no worse for wear, but definitely a tad greenish, and more than a little bit cold.  So if you think you celebrate the Irish, top this.

St. Patrick's Day review

Here are links to past posts to celebrate the wee bit o' Irish in all of us. A bit much of Irish in TPP if truth be told.
What is a shamrock?
Flaunt the green!  What's not Irish about this?
A St. Patrick's Day botanical question and the greening of the Chicago River.  Yeah, and we ain't talking about conservation!
Green powered woo! OK nothing actually about St. Patrick's day except this popped up in a search and it is sort of weird enough to revisit. 
Be happy! Drink some whiskey and toast the day! Later, right now TPP has 15 lbs. of corned beef to get out of the brine and begin cooking. 

Corned beef tomorrow

It's just about time, no, not for St. Patrick's Day, which TPP missed, but for his annual corned beef brisket for which St. Patrick's Day is just an excuse. This year's brisket got started about 4 weeks ago when TPP happened upon a huge brisket and having determined that the necessary ingredients were on hand proceded to begin curing this brisket. It isn't really necessary to cure the brisket this long, but larger briskets do take longer, and this is not a process to be hurried. There is really no comparison between this home-cured brisket and what you buy in the stores, and the curing time is clearly one of the variables. Although it doesn't really need a lot of dressing up, a glaze is nice to finish the brisket during it's brief baking. Found a really nice sounding glaze made of orange marmalade, Irish whiskey, mustard, and nutmeg, however a field trip is necessary to get the marmalade. Also need some carrots for a veg on the side. For a nice change of pace a bottle of 2 Gingers Irish whiskey is on hand offering a considerable difference from the standard Irish whiskeys; it has a bit sweeter taste, a touch of tartness, and is somewhat lighter and smoother, and much to the liking of my Irish wife (their target market) in a not at all blind taste test. Hope Beam doesn't ruin Kilbeggan, but for now it seems OK.  Now to go and find some grasshoppers for the pie, although dessert is not TPP's responsibility.  Clearly a few friends will assist with the consumption of assorted foods and drinks.

Flaunt the green!

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my readers, Irish or not. Whether you know this or not, ChiTown has a big Irish population and a correspondingly big St. Patrick's Day celebration and parade, although for most of the party animals, it's just one more excuse to start drinking early and often. One of the funnier things is that they dye the ChiTown River green for the occasion, which raises an interesting botanical question (answered previously). So here's a picture of a drum majorette from a recent ChiTown St. Patrick's Day parade, at least TPP thinks this was from ChiTown, and if not then maybe Rio?  But it sure looks Irish!  And if it's the wrong color, then just dunk it in the river for a color correction.

Planning ahead - corned beef version

Home-made, home-cured corned beef is a wonderful thing. It's another one of those things that TPP just does once a year in the third week of February. There are two reasons why. One, without a whole lot else to do, it keeps you busy for about an hour, that is if you have secured all the necessary ingredients.  If you should decide to try this, the recipe is at that link, and hopefully you'll be able to purchase some saltpeter. With everything on hand, and having acquired a great big old brisket (on sale no less), the brine was mixed up and spiced, now you just have to wait a couple of weeks (although you can get away with 10-12 days in a pinch). Two, if you look ahead on the calendar you'll see this means the corned beef will be ready for St. Patrick's Day to satisfy some deep seated genetic urge. This is one of the ways you get through February; you have something special to look forward to. Next weekend is the local Texas Independence Day chili cook-off, and another good excuse to make a huge batch of some authentic chili (no beans, no ground beef, no corn, no macaroni, or other things that don't belong in chili).  Now to check the chili pepper supply!

Here's a local tribute to the Irish - weird, but a tribute

St. Patrick's day celebrations here about has a lot to do with cabin fever. Here in the upper Midwest, people get a bit crazy after a couple of months of winter, and as a result do some pretty weird stuff. Generally this cooped up craziness surfaces just about on the 17th of March, so people do things like this.  What you are looking at is the Chi-town river just a few hundred yards before it flows into Lake Michigan. What the hell is everyone thinking? Who thinks it's a great idea to dye a whole river green? What about the whitefish? TPP must report a chat with a Chi-town fireman whose job, duty perhaps, short straw more likely, was to be prepared to jump into the green river, not just green, but cold and icy too, to rescue any drunken revelers who might fall in. No question about it, he was more worried about the color of the water than its temperature. So what can TPP tell you? People get crazy, and it's just the Irish that deserve the blame, maybe a little, but not the total blame. But at least none of the drinkers who surrounded us fell in, so our loyal public servant did not have to worry about his skin color for the rest of the week. BTW, we Irish prefer a darker shade. 

Someone's Irish will be up

Oh, gee!  TPP really messed up this time!  Some things take time; they can't be done over night or even in a week.  Somehow February just disappeared before doing all the things you're supposed to do in that month, and what's really strange about this is that the Phactors did a lot of cooking, but somehow this just escaped my notice.  But now St. Patrick's Day is looming and TPP did not corn a brisket!  It's terrible when you cannot follow your own advice!  This is not a process to be rushed; the results would be disappointing, so it's truly too late.  You have no idea how annoying this is because this recipe makes damned good corned beef.  The dreams of sandwiches piled high with corned beef and sauerkraut will remain unfulfilled.  And of course the ladies in TPP's life are all Irish so perhaps you can imagine their disappointment/wrath (a reaction somewhere on that scale). Even more annoying, having gotten a supply of saltpeter, there wasn't going to be any battle with Homeland Security.  Well, maybe the turkey that didn't get eaten for Thanksgiving can be fried (an appeasement) and the corned beef done for Memorial Day! 

Display of the green aqua

Without planning to do so, the Phactor found himself in the middle of Chi-town's St. Patrick's Day celebration some five days early. Although nothing like NY and Boston, Chi-town has a lot of people with Irish heritage, and even more people who are looking for any excuse at all to dress funny, drink, and act foolishly, more or less in that order. So the city goes all out. Here's the Chi-town river, or one very large green beverage, stirred, or more like Evenrude blenderized, not shaken. Drinking this would probably do you less harm than the beverages of about equal volumes that people were actually pouring into themselves. And of course about 1 km from this scene, the river empties into Lake Michigan thus greatly diluting this beverage, just like waiting for the ice to melt in your drink. Somehow this didn't stir the spirit of my Irish heritage hardly at all.