st. patrick’s day

8 ways to have an authentic St. Patrick’s Day

Have some Bushmills Irish Whisky. Bushmills is the oldest licensed distillery in the world. Made from malted barley, Bushmills has a lighter character than Scotch whisky and is delicious straight-up.

Source: Phyzome

Don’t knock yourself out looking for a four-leaf clover. Sure, it would be nice, but you’ll have to sift through 10,000 clovers to find your special mutant. And they’re only lucky if you find them by accident. Sounds like time best spent at the pub.

Guinness is good for you. Even if its “Irishness” is a relic of a less cosmopolitan past when all Guinness was brewed in Dublin, Guinness contains antioxidants, plus it’s heart-healthy. New research shows a pint of Guinness a day may be as beneficial as low-dose aspirin for those concerned about arterial plaques. It’s surprisingly low-cal too.

Give the green dye a miss. It already enters our diet in a multitude of insidious ways. You can’t even consume a tin of peas without ingesting green dye. Rest assured, very few people are tinting their beer green in Ireland today.

Do not order an Irish Car Bomb. At least not at a bar in Ireland. The drink is virtually unheard-of there, and those who do know of it find the reference to Ireland’s Troubles shocking and callous. Even worse, the Irish Car Bomb turns three delectable ingredients—Guinness, Irish whisky, and Irish cream—into a fizzing, curdled mess you have to chug quickly before the clots make you throw up. It’s a disgusting stunt drink and it won’t win you any friends at a true Irish bar.

Water your plants. What a nice gift to them for St. Paddy’s Day—at least that’s what I told my mum, who has been abusing the same oxalis plant for 15 years. This poor false shamrock, which probably has Stockholm Syndrome, flourishes despite lack of water and a cramped pot.

Chase some snakes. Round up a bunch of snakes in an enclosure and chase them out. Not that St. Patrick actually did this; in all likelihood snakes have never lived in Ireland—cold, and bounded by water, it doesn’t appeal to heat-seeking reptiles. The snake-chasing myth probably uses snakes as an analogy for pagans, whose way of life he “chased out” with Christianity. And given his family’s slave-trading background, he probably chased more slaves than snakes. Uh, why do we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day again?

Give your animals alcohol. You may have a bear of your own who needs a drink. Be kind.

It’s not easy making green drinks, especially without thumbs

My Fellow Inebriates,

With three days to go until St. Patrick’s Day, I thought we’d better get cracking on the green drinks. We’ll need ingredients, shakers, ice, glassware, and possibly food items.

And look what my first Google search brought me:

 

OMG! What the hell is that?

“Freshness in a glass,” says Oprah.

Holy shit, have you any idea what’s in this?

  • A head of celery
  • ½ bunch kale
  • 3 yellow crookneck squash
  • 1 handful fresh green beans
  • 2 apples
  • 1 grapefruit

You’re supposed to throw all of this into a JUICER and then drink it. OMG!

I was borderline-offended by this. Where is the alcohol?

I know what celery is: the garnish for a nice Bloody Mary or Bloody Caesar. But what is kale, my fellow inebriates? WTF is crookneck squash? Which beans are green and why would I want to ingest them? Are apples the round ones or the oblong ones? And why on earth would you use a grapefruit for anything but a Greyhound?

Nevertheless, I thought I would choke all this shit back with some Big Bacardi Apple in it. That way I wouldn’t need to use real apples. And if I ever met Oprah I could tell her about it. I remembered there was a rotting grapefruit in the fridge fruit drawer, and whatever the hell kale and crookneck squash are, I figured my mum could go and buy them. But it was raining, she said, looking up from her book, and surely I could find something else to do. She said that, with the kids away, she was going to enjoy three days of NOT preparing whimsical food requests and throwing them away. So there it stood.

I said this wasn’t a whim; it was a PROJECT. Something Oprah believed in and endorsed. Something that would save us all from SCURVY.

She said that sometimes, when bears look like they have scurvy, they actually just need to go in the washing machine.

Argghhh!

The unfortunate Wetherby bear, tumbling around

So here are some proper green drinks:

The Real Mojito

You need a muddler to mash up the mint leaves a bit and release their essence. Then it all gets a bit involved. The best thing is probably to mix up a LOT of mojitos and store them in the fridge, because I can’t imagine cutting limes and muddling/mixing/shaking/pouring while drunk.

Margaritas on the Rocks

Okay, so it’s not that green, but it’s green enough for St. Patrick’s Day, and if you drink a whole blender of it you’ll be green too. Yum!

Apple Martini

This is another one requiring a lot of ingredients, a shaker, ice, and probably opposable thumbs. It looks lovely enough to be worth the effort.

Green Lizard Shot

Now we’re talking. Chartreuse and Bacardi 151, and dead simple to make.

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We’re all set! But will my parents do the right thing and go booze shopping?

HERMANN’S DARK LAGER—Don’t dye it green, weirdos

My Fellow Inebriates,

The strike action this week at the kids’ elementary school amped up my daily terrors. Even though the girls prefer ponies to bears, I was often included in their games. Looking back on the week, I’m astonished that I don’t have a new orifice. But, like any good Stockholm Syndrome sufferer, I like the kiddies. They are only the third most terrifying thing of immediate concern, the others being:

  • Fluffy. Whether he’s luring away my girlfriend with his overwhelming fabric-softened fluffiness, radiating a disturbing sense of mental vacancy, or making objects go bump in the night (with his mind!), Fluffy is an eerie reminder that my Granny might still be with us.
  • Leprechauns. Is it just me, or are leprechauns not totally creepy? I’m freaking scared of leprechauns, people; they’re right up there with clowns in the horror hierarchy. And with St. Patrick’s Day looming, these little shoemaking freaks are starting to amass.

Don’t get me wrong. I was crazy about Granny, Ireland is wonderful, and I salivate thinking about drinking Guinness on St. Patrick’s Day. But Fluffy is all wrong on any continent (he made a picture fall down last night with his mind—OMG!), and leprechauns—yikes!

What the hell is a leprechaun anyway?

  • They are Irish Faerie folk—miniature, smart, and mischievous.
  • They like to play tricks.
  • They have wild music and dancing sessions in the woods at night.
  • Each leprechaun has a pot of gold, which it protects with magical powers.
  • They love moonshine (Poitín), but not as much as their sheep- and dog-riding cousins, the cluricauns, who are total drunks.
  • You can’t catch them, their gold, or their moonshine.

Like my fear of clowns, my fear of leprechauns is totally irrational and even less likely to get tested (unlike clowns, who will inevitably appear one day for a birthday party—shudder). But still they give me the willies. Could it be that I’m conflating the idea of leprechauns with…Fluffy?

Wanting a distraction, I started wondering what beer to dye green on March 17. As much as my dad and I like Guinness, it takes a lot of dye to turn it noticeably green—much like the filthy Chicago River—and, not knowing what’s exactly in green dye, I thought a lager would turn green more effectively while involving less chemical roulette.

But the only lager in the house was HERMANN’S DARK LAGER. This certainly wouldn’t do for St. Patrick’s Day, it being a red-tinged cola-black, so I reckoned I’d better finish it pronto lest on March 17 I forget its unsuitability, toss half a cup of dye into it, and need to be hospitalized with tartrazine-related conniptions.

HERMANN’S is perhaps the most acclaimed beer in the Vancouver Island Brewery Pod Pack, with at least ten medals to its credit, including three Silvers in the World Beer Championships. Crafted according to Bavarian tradition, HERMANN’S captures the old-world style yet offers mainstream characteristics. Countless Vancouver Island pubs pour HERMANN’S on tap because of this artful balance.

As mentioned, it would take a considerable amount of green dye to effect a noticeable change in HERMANN’S. It has a lovely ruby cola appearance that hints at its Bavarian heft. The predominant scent is malt—generous and inviting, with toffee, cocoa, and espresso slightly offstage. The taste doesn’t disappoint: toasty malt with some nuts and that oh-so-subtle coffee undernote. The finish is pleasantly drawn-out with just enough bitterness. This is something Vancouver Island Brewery products excel at—producing a wonderfully smooth arc from sweetness to bitterness with some very well harmonized flavors.

As comfortingly heavy as HERMANN’S is, it doesn’t lack refreshment. I could picture myself pounding a six-pack now or in the summer, although it would be a shame to drink it too fast.

But it’s not a candidate for St. Paddy’s Day; turning it green would be a hopeless task. And that’s okay. Perhaps dyeing beer green is on a par with dyeing the Chicago River green—a dipshit idea for nitwits (myself included) who don’t give a crap about consuming extra chemicals.

And, strangely enough, in Ireland they don’t dye beer green for St. Patrick’s Day; it’s a North American practice. (Surprised?) The Irish don’t do half the shit we do for St. Patrick’s Day. They usually just make some cabbage soup or something.

And there are leprechauns there every day, people. OMG! That must be why Fluffy Bear is so freaky; he acquired magical powers living in Ireland and now he’s terrifying everybody here in Canada.