Kiss Me, I'm Irish

Los Angeles, California

Actually, I'm not Irish. Not a drop of it. But, it is St. Patrick's Day, and when you are married to an Irish-American, St. Paddy's Day is one big deal. You don't have to remember why we celebrate him (something about snakes), you just have to fall in line. And best without the green beer, I would add.

And, here comes the disclaimer about alcohol abuse: There is a lot of booze to come in this post. So I guess I'm supposed to say something like, don't try this at home, kids. But truth is, I'm not going to say that. It's St. Patrick's Day, for the love of heaven. It's a holiday about drinking. You wouldn't tell people not to eat on Thanksgiving. And, anyway, is it my job to advise people to drink and eat responsibly? I don't think so. Regarding both the holidays mentioned above, I suppose if you dig deep enough you might find some other meaning besides drinking and eating. But . . . don't bother looking here! So, get over it, and let's go on.

St. Patrick's Day always falls into some portion of another more reverent observance. We are currently at the beginning of Lent, and it has become our tradition, in recent years, to abstain from all hard liquor during those forty days. Or thirty-nine, as we take a dispensation on March 17th and knock back some Bushmills both in honor of St. Patrick, and to celebrate Billy's Irish heritage. I suppose this could be viewed as a form of flexitarianism, if you wanted to take the secular view. Truthfully, it's a little bit of both. Since attending Mass in Carmel, the meaning of these holidays increasingly matter to me. But, even without that, it's not a bad idea to take a month off from the hard stuff (even if only one drink is imbibed daily, for as the old saying goes, we spill more than we drink).

Someone (you know who you are) said that giving up only the hard stuff throughout Lent was sort of skirting the issue. After all, she pointed out, you give something up for the forty days of Lent to be observant and to mindfully keep the meaning of this period of time that leads up to Easter. So you need it to be a hardship. She pointed out that by still drinking wine (and beer and sake) we were allowing ourselves a loophole. But I disagree. I can easily forego wine for forty days, and during this period of time there are many days when I don't have anything to drink at all. I mean, I like wine, especially wine paired with food. But I can easily adios it for a month and a half. Same with beer, unless I am going to a Dodger game. But cocktails . . . that's a tough one. It's not because of the kick (though I like the kick well enough, and, contrary to what Cole Porter wrote, trust me, you can get that kick from champagne). But, foregoing the social part, which is the best part (and, frankly, what I think is the whole point) of having a cocktail, does keep the forty days up front and personal for me. As it is the culture of cocktails I am hooked on. And that's what we abstain from (as well as the 80 proof) during Lent.

When I was in high school I had a friend whose parents always observed the cocktail hour when her dad got home from work. In the late afternoon, Debbie Clevenger's mom, Ginny, would go back to their master bedroom suite to bathe, dress, and apply make up. Unlike my mom, she always kept her nails manicured, and wore red lipstick in an era that, for us, was all about clear gloss. I thought she was glamorous, and thought this ritual was dandy.

When Debbie's dad, Chuck, got home from work, he and Ginny would take their places on opposite sides of the bar, and Chuck would shake up cocktails. Usually they drank gin martinis. But sometimes they drank Manhattans, or Rob Roys. I was impressed that they had all of the bar accoutrements -- hobnailed leather bar stools, a shaker and strainer, real martini glasses, and cool little glass sidecars. They were like Nick and Nora Charles. They even had a little dog, though her name was Variety, not Asta. And I was swept up by seeing this ritualistic cocktail culture that seemed to be left over from the old movies I watched. Even if they couldn't dance like Fred and Ginger, nor capture the witty banter of Hepburn and Tracy, when I saw them at their bar, they seemed awfully sophisticated to me.

Don't get me wrong, my parents also enjoyed cocktails. Each Christmas they bought a bottle of blended scotch -- J&B was my dad's favorite brand. They also bought a bottle of Bacardi rum. Mom drank daiquiris. And those bottles lasted most, if not all, of the year. But they did have cocktails more often than that would indicate. They went out to restaurants a lot, and had their cocktails there. My sister and I came along a good deal of the time. I well remember sitting in the bar section of restaurants where my mom and dad would have one cocktail each while we waited for a table. I miss this ritual, as there seem to be less and less bars which have tables in today's restaurants (though I also enjoy sitting at the bar, so what am I crabbing about?). I remember going to the old Luau in Beverly Hills when I was very young, as well as to The Sea Lion out at the beach. Later my parents moved down PCH to the Chart House at Malibu. I remember Lawry's Prime Rib, where we often went to celebrate birthdays. These were all favorites of my parents, and growing up I spent a lot of time in those bars. Once I got through my Shirley Temple phase, and realized, with some disappointment, that the paper umbrellas didn't hold up once you got them home, my older sister taught me to order a ginger ale. She said it looked more like a "real drink."

I still remember the first "real drink" I ever ordered. I was fifteen years old, and it was in Montego Bay, Jamaica. It was, of course, rum and coke, mon. During the week we were there, I ran through a litany of seven rum drinks including a Bacardi which was pink and pretty. It was a letdown to go home to those ginger ales after that. Luckily I went with my parents to Europe at seventeen, and got to order out again, though we mostly drank wine there, as I recall.

Once my sister and I were adults we began having cocktails with my parents, and/or wine with dinner. And as a result they seemed to drink more -- as if we had driven them to drink. You would have thought I would have accomplished this when I was a teenager, but that's a different post altogether. By this time, I had adopted a drink of choice. I was introduced to vodka martinis by my cousin, Lauren, when I was twenty. That year I got a fake I.D., courtesy of my old friend, Debbie, who turned twenty-one six months before me. She gave me her temporary I.D., and it worked beautifully for me for the six months until I turned twenty-one. At lunch one day with Debbie and my two cousins, Lauren ordered a vodka martini on the rocks with an olive. I took a sip and was smitten. It's been my go-to cocktail ever since, though it has evolved to stem up with a twist, rather than on the rocks with an olive. I look at this two ways: the olive causes displacement, and, the martini, with a twist instead of an olive, is a non-fat one. A skim martini! Anyway, my mom started drinking martinis shortly after I did. Dad went on to drink Chivas, and later, Bushmills. That may have been Billy's influence.

When I met Billy, he drank tequila and orange juice. Wait, I have to write that again, it seems so odd to me. Yep, tequila and orange juice. He didn't like martinis, though he learned to make them for me early on. He didn't like the taste of hard liquor, really. He liked beer, but wasn't big on wine (which he now collects -- who is this guy?). Somewhere along the line he began drinking gin and tonics. When we would go out, he would order a gin and tonic, and I would order my vodka martini. When they brought the drinks, they always put the gin and tonic in front of me. Why was that, I wonder?

Sometime in the late 80s, Billy began drinking vodka martinis when we were in Kona. Why it happened there, I don't know. I was drinking mai tais! I'm a firm believer that when in Rome . . . But, Billy's a true iconoclast when it comes to cocktails. Except on St. Patrick's Day when we drink Bushmills Irish whiskey. Maybe it's just that excuse to fall off of the Lent wagon -- hard to justify if you're having a Beefeater's martini on that day . . .

Meanwhile, I am not unaware that a whole post about cocktails may be outside of some people's comfort zone, even if the post is about St. Patrick's Day. No problem, that. Here's what you can do with your whiskey that will get around the drinking whiskey thing (should that be something which you need to avoid). And (adapted from March 2006 Bon Appetit), no surprise, it is:


Corned Beef with Irish-Whiskey Glaze

Vegetable oil spray
1/2      cup sweet orange marmalade
1/4      cup Irish whiskey
a pinch of ground nutmeg
1 1/2   teaspoons Dijon mustard plus more for serving
1           2 to 2 1/4-pound piece lean fully cooked corned beef
Fresh parsley sprigs

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Coat a small roasting pan with nonstick spray. Boil next three ingredients in small saucepan until reduced to about one-third of a cup, stirring often. This will take about seven minutes. Mix in one and one-half teaspoons of dijon mustard.

Generously brush corned beef all over with glaze; place in center of roaster. Roast, brushing occasionally with more glaze, about 35 minutes. Transfer to platter, garnish with parsley and serve with the mustard.

About six servings


We will enjoy this, with roasted potatoes and a cabbage-based salad this evening. But before that, we will belly up to the bar and hoist a glass of Irish whiskey. We do have the barstools, and the glasses, and all of the bells and whistles that go along with the cocktail culture, as I learned it. Though Chuck and Ginny are both gone, and I've lost touch with my friend, Debbie, their image remains in my mind. So, I'll take time that evening to dress nicely with at least a touch of green, and I will generally fix myself up. Billy will tend bar, measuring and pouring the whiskey into crystal glasses. We know how to pull this off. After all, I learned it from the best. Erin Go Bragh, and thank you for reading my blog.