Corn Beef and Garbage....

So, I just finished reading Denis Leary's book Why We Suck, and I thought it mildly ironic and appropriate that I finished it on St. Patrick's Day, since a lot of the humor in the book tended to circle back to him being Irish and loving the Red Sox. Once I got past his "I am trying to be an asshole, so I'm going to just say whatever I want, and not care who I offend, so I can get a rise out of you" attitude, I kind of enjoyed this book. It was refreshing not to have political correctness being thrust at me every few pages. Telling it like it is, the only thing that I found offensive was the fact that he was such an avid Sox fan. Honestly, I'm not even a huge baseball fan or anything, but going to college in Boston for four years, really puts a bad taste in your mouth when it comes to the Boston Red Sox, especially if you are from New York. But I digress.....I enjoyed his rants about unfit parenting, "celebutards" and his overall take on what he thinks is wrong with our society.

Anyway.......back to it being St. Patty's Day. While I was in Boston, this holiday was what New Year's Eve in Times Square is in New York City. Annoying and loud, with obnoxious drunks wandering around the crowded streets looking for the next best party. So I braced myself when I walked out of my apartment on Wednesday morning, hoping that since I live in Astoria, the Irish would not stumble across my commute route, until I was already in Manhattan closer to my office....Well, I was pleasantly and eerily surprised when I exited Grand Central and the streets were not overcrowded with green-clad idiots, sloshing around their green beer, throwing up their green vomit on the green streets -- then again, my office is on 3rd, and not 5th where the annual parade was taking place, so for all I know, I could have been just avenues away from our very own Emerald City.

Please, don't get my wrong, I didn't always have this aversion to this viridian holiday.To tell you the truth, even with all my complaining, I was kind of disappointed that I didn't see more people wearing green and handing out "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" pins at every street corner.

I mean, ever since I was little, my Dad tried to make every holiday special. $$$$ for Christmas to get whatever you wanted (paying your bills not included...you had to show him all the receipts and presents and wrap them up to open then on Christmas morning); Roses and chocolates for Valentine's Day; Dyed-eggs and lamb-on-a-spit for Easter; and corn-beef and cabbage on St. Patty's Day.

For those of you who don't know, my dad is a super friendly, will-over-feed-you-'til-you-are-rolled-out-of-our-house, jokester straight of the boat from Greece. So when I was younger, coming home from a long day at school and finding a boiling pot of colorless meat and floating wilted cabbage was not usually expected. But I knew once March 17th rolled around, Dad would be rummaging around in his office closet looking for his big pot and calling over his shoulder for me to "be ready to eat 'garbage', tonight for dinner".

Now that I think about it, maybe it's because of him that I love to wear ridiculous fake eyelashes to work on Halloween and make home-made Valentine's Day cards for all my friends? And he probably has something to do with my penchant to make holiday-themed goodies -- I mean, I really don't need that much of an excuse to hunker down in the kitchen to bake in the first place, but this new revelation sure does explain a few restless holiday Eves, where I have spent many hours well in-to the next morning finishing up a self-inflicted project.
And it probably explains why I felt the sudden urge on March 16th to make these:

Made-from-scratch cream-cheese frosting, on a made-from scratch red-velvet cupcake

Dyed green instead of red in honor of St. Patty's Day! 

I found the recipe on bakerella.com thanks to the link to her website on my roommate's blog. I cut the cake and frosting recipes in half (to make a dozen cupcakes). The recipe called for 3/4 cup of oil, so I put in 1/2 cup of apple sauce, and only 1/4 cup of oil; and I only put 2 cups of confectioner's sugar in the cream-cheese frosting (instead of 3) -- clearly I was proud of myself for being so calorie conscious....

If I do say so myself, they came out pretty well....but, maybe I should have substituted beer for the buttermilk asked for in the recipe...No, no -- that definitely would have been taking it a bit overboard....