Sequestration Meal #556

 

My "St. Patrick's Day meal" at last: Colcannon, Unreal deli plant-based corned beef slices, and steamed carrots.

The colcannon recipe is the one found at Glue and Glitter, although one doesn't really need a recipe for it. It's really just mashed potatoes mixed with cooked cabbage. I love all these things, so this was unquestionably a good meal.

It is, of course, not Irish to have corned beef and cabbage, not even close (the Irish viewed cattle as sacred and didn't eat it, favoring pork if they did eat meat, but their English colonizers made Irish people raise cattle for export). It is instead Irish-American, and so very fascinating to me as a historian, how we made this "Irish," kind of like how we made baked beans and brown bread a meal that came from "Boston," when it's kind of a later anachronistic imposition--it carries signals well beyond the food that is meant to make us feel connected to people it doesn't actually connect us to. But it does connect us to the people trying to forge the connection, and not all of those people meant to oppress anyone.

So. As an American, I have this meal at the end of winter, as the signs of spring emerge, pondering the historical significance of all sorts of things. If the pre-colonial Irish viewed cattle as sacred, perhaps they'd be more amenable to this vegan version of the meal. Colcannon, in any case, is actually Irish.

So happy belated St. Patrick's Day, and here's to all the connections we have, across the world, through flavor and memory and everything in between.