The Catholic Kitchen Practice

- It is not Patty’s Day, it is Paddy’s Day. Patty is short for Patricia, Paddy is short for Pádraig which has been anglicised to Patrick. - It is not Gaelic, it is Irish. In Irish, the language is called Gaelige but that’s pronounced Gwayl-geh. - Literally no one in Ireland has ever eaten corned beef and cabbage - We have also never said top of the morning - If you pinch an Irish person for not wearing green on Paddy’s Day they’re likely to slap you. - Why do you dye your drinks green? - It is not “North Ireland” it is “Northern Ireland”. It is not “South Ireland” it is “The Republic of Ireland” or just “Ireland”. - No, I do not know the Dohertys of Mayo. - Please, if you must, do things for the craic and not the crack. Cocaine is not a great habit lads. - Drinks like the “Irish car bomb” and the “black & tan” are incredibly offensive (you wouldn’t drink a “9/11”)

However

Beef is cheap in America (lots of land, lots of cows, so there’s such a thing as cheap cuts). So a lot of immigrants who could never afford beef in their home country now had access to beef.

(Example spaghetti and meatballs is an Italian-American invention).

Now Americans hated immigrants (plenty stilldo sadly) and hated anyone who wasn’t Protestant so you had segregation. So in New York the Irish Catholic area was next to the Jewish area. There was solidarity between American Irish and American Jewish immigrants. So Irish-Immigrants bought corned-beef from Jewish butchers.

(In Ireland, you may eat bacon or lamb for St Patrick’s Day, but lamb was (and is) expensive in America, and Irish Immigrants got their meat from Kosher butchers - no bacon).

Brisket is a cut of meat from the front of the cow. It’s a very tough cut of meat. The salting process (it’s like soaked in salt for over a week) and cooking for hours and hours (it’s an all day stew) makes it tender.

So corned beef and cabbage is a dish that evolved out of affordable ingredients (tough cut of beef, cabbage and carrots and potatoes are dirt cheap) and proximity to Jewish immigrants.

St. Patrick’s Day Celebrations as we know them now (parades and the like) were started in America by Irish-American immigrants. Because WASP Americans (white, Anglo Saxon, Protestants) hated Catholics and hated the Irish.

And for all immigrants there was a big push to assimilate (give kids English sounding names, forget your language, become Protestant). But people don’t give up religion easily, names and language maybe, but not God.

So still today you have Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics, Mexican Catholics, etc and even Americans who aren’t practicing Catholic or aren’t religious may view being raised Catholic as part of a cultural identity linked to their heretage (the same way someone who doesn’t practice Judaism is still Jewish, some difference since Judaism is a hereditary religion, but for immigrants in a country that hates Catholics, being Catholic, having that tradition was and is part of being an outsider to American, part of an identity those in power hated and tried to erase).

So holding giant Irish pride parade celebrating the Catholic patron Saint of Ireland was sort of a “fuck you” to anti-Catholic anti-Irish sentiment. A “fuck you” to the idea that being an American meant erasing your traditions and history and pretending to be a White Anglo Saxon Protestant.

Look at us being proudly Irish and still Catholic. Obnoxiously, visibly Catholic and acting ways that the puritanical Protestants hate.

So what was a family religious Holiday became a big, visible celebration of heretage and homeland (a shared identity). And since it’s a celebration immigrants splurged by buying a big cut of beef (beef is cheaper in America, but immigrants did not have a lot of money and meat is still more than vegetables, so any cut of beef was still a special occasion thing) and supported their Jewish neighbors who ran the butcher’s shop.

(also, since it’s a St’s Feast, Lent restrictions on meat and drinking alcohol didn’t count, so eat a lot of meat and drink).

St Patrick’s Day in the US has its own history, heretage and ties to religion (and persecution for that religion). Traditions are tied to that history. So Corned Beef and Cabbage may not be a thing in Ireland but it’s a part of Irish-American tradition, history and culture.

If I see one more white gorjer telling me that all fortune tellers and mediums are just sicko scammers who prey on the weak and the grieving and that after the revolution they'd be shot, I will scream.

Because yes, of course there are frauds and predators- just like how there are fraudulent therapists, fraudulent priests, fraudulent grief counsellors.

In plenty of spiritual traditions, including white English-speaking ones, mediums have acted as grief counsellors and therapists and confessors. The woman who goes to the medium to channel the spirit of her dead son, to tell him that she loves him but she's angry that he ignored her and got in the car anyway, and who gets the reply of "I'm sorry Mam, I wish I'd listened, I don't blame you for being angry - Don't worry, it wasn't your fault, I just wasn't thinking" - Is doing the same thing as the one who goes to a therapist who talks her through her feelings and assuages her guilt and 'what ifs' by another route. The wife who goes to channel her husband to be told "I'm happy here now, you should be happy with a good man on Earth, you don't need to live like the dead for my sake" is getting culturally specific permission to move on - again, the equivalent of going to a grief counsellor, or even of just being told "it's time" by your friends.

Conservative US Catholics see fascism as their savior. Trauma is the gospel.

Molesting kids not a problem. Raping kids not a problem. Increasing suicide rates not a problem.

Banning abortion for US Catholics is a forced burden to remove decisions that could empower women. Save women. Protect women.

For power is zero sum for US conservatives: if women are gaining power/autonomy, men must be losing power.

tell me more abt this

Thinking a lot recently about what how a minor war god from the Canaanite pantheon evolved into the one God of all creation.

There is a common misinterpretation of Judaism from Christians and ex-Christians, influenced by their cultural reading of the Old Testament, where our perception of God is seen as uniquely violent when compared to the New Testament merciful one. This interpretation lacks an acknowledgement of historical context, something Judaism encourages investigation into: the roots of the Torah lie in the laws of a persecuted people, written while we were in exile, from the mythology of a god of war.

Chose to depict the proto-Semetic war god as humanoid since the Canaanite religion didn't have the same aniconist tradition as judaism today. there are actually a few depictions in art believed to be early forms of the Hebrew God or the gods that would eventually merge into his mythology (Ba'al and El)

The second time I quilted Joan of Ark.

One of the venues I reached out to replied that they were "capable of providing for our dietary needs." Now, since I'd asked about several possible catering options, and since they'd only replied generally and without actually specifying which they were saying they could do, I was a bit suspicious. So I followed up, and asked what exactly they meant by that: did they allow outside caterers in general? or did they have a specific kosher catering partner? or could they actually cater kosher food themselves? what?

Their answer was – and I swear I'm not making this up – that they didn't allow any outside caterers, and couldn't cater any food which was actually kosher, but that they could provide us with a menu that included "knishes" and "potato, pancakes" [sic], and so hey, that was basically the same as providing for our dietary needs, wasn't it?

Now here's the thing:

The dietary restriction shared by the most people at this event is keeping kosher, but one of the attendees, who doesn't keep kosher, has a severe peanut allergy. If we had done what we were planning to do and simply specified "peanut free", and if the venue had decided, like they were apparently willing to do for the kosher food, "well ok, it's not actually peanut free, but it's mostly peanut free, and that's basically the same thing"? They could have literally killed her. And if I hadn't specifically asked, in detail, about kosher catering first, I might never have known about how lax they were about providing for dietary restrictions in general.

Now could we have explained the nuances of kosher restrictions to this venue and tried again? Yes, possibly. But their unwillingness to even try on the first pass made it abundantly clear that they were not a safe venue to work with on allergy grounds. We crossed the venue off our list immediately, and I reached out to other people in the area who I knew might be planning similar events in the future, and warned them to never use this venue, either.

Accommodations like this are instances of the curb cut effect. If you don't personally have a diet or a family obligation or clothing needs that need accommodating, it's easy to get annoyed at the people you see who are loudest about asking for those accommodations. But having those options available helps everyone, and the fact that some workplaces and and businesses and event vendors refuse to accommodate these needs should be a red flag to everyone.

explanations under the cut