Corned beef hash, pasties and history

Corned beef hash (yum!)

Corned beef Pasty (yum!)

This week Emma decided that she fancied some corned beef hash. To those that don't know what that is, this is a mixture of corned beef , fried onion and mashed potato, and its very tasty. It is sometimes used as the filling in a pasty (pasty: a filled pastry case, associated with Cornwall, in the south west of England, UK, made by placing the uncooked filling on a flat pastry circle, and folding it to wrap the filling, crimping the edge to form a seal. The result is a raised semicircular package....thank you wikipedia).  


So we bought a bag of potatoes, some onions and looked for corned  beef. Do you think we could find any? We looked in all the local supermarkets, plus Walmart and Target. Not a can to be found on any shelf. Whats going on?. Is there a world shortage of corned beef or a ban on this product? Then we realized that St Patrick's day is in a few days time (March 17th). This means that Americans who aspire to be Irish, and even those that don't, eat a strange mixture of corned beef and cabbage, believing this to be a traditional Irish dish. Maybe it is, all I can say is that I have never seen it on a pub or restaurant menu in Ireland. I think its a load of old blarney...

Corned Beef and Cabbage (yuk!)

 St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland (although he was born in Wales...). The patron saint of Wales is St David, and St David's day is March 1st (oops! I missed it). So what is a patron saint? I hear you ask. Its a saint who is considered to be a defender of some group or nation apparently. So there you have it. Recipes and general knowledge all in one blog post. It does not get any better than that, so it doesn't...