St. Patrick's Day Irish food extravaganza

Every year at this time, to my delight, my mom gets the urge to make an Irish dinner. This year's St. Patrick's feast happened last night with my parents, some friends of my parents, me, and three of my friends. Here follows documentation of various dishes we were pleased to call Irish.

Since I knew I'd be feasting later, my breakfast was a simple meal of plain Irish style steel cut oatmeal.



Guests arrived and we sat on the front patio for appetizers, among which was green split pea soup topped with mint and Parmesan. (We also had goat cheese from France with cherry preserves in the French style, but I did not choose to photograph that bit of delicious inappropriateness.)



It was corned beef and cabbage and potatoes for dinner, in savory peppercorn gravy. The corned beef was reallly tasty and tender.



It was accompanied by a salad of various greens. Mom grows her own Swiss chard.



Also, Irish soda bread.



I'd inhaled half my plate of food before I got a picture of it.



For dessert we served flowers potted in lovely rich soil (a few worms had taken up residence.)



And truffles that evoked the green hills of Ireland and were flavored with Irish cream liqueur



I made the desserts and shall blog more details later-- oh my goodness, I enjoyed those truffles.

Thanks to my darling mother for putting on the feast and inviting everyone!

Funniest line of the night was when one of my friends explained to George, a friend of my parents', that there used to be a singles group at our church, but that it dissolved when the members all married each other. "Well, that was a failure!" exclaimed George. "Don't try that again!"