St. Patrick's Day!

I love St. Patrick's Day, if only because I use it as an excuse to eat one of my favorite things: Corned beef. There were years (those when I worked in a bar), when I despised St. Patrick's Day. The reasons for this I think must be obvious. But now that I no longer work in a bar, St. Patrick's Day has become, for me, the time to celebrate corned beef and cabbage, Irish soda bread and Guinness chocolate cake (picture below. I can only show you one side because the other has already been eaten).



This cake is, I must tell you, VERY VERY GOOD. Even for someone who does not LOVE chocolate.

I make this meal every year, in spite of the fact that my Jewish husband never fails to whine, "Why do the Irish get their own day?" I keep telling him the Irish are the lost tribe of Israel. He has never bought it.

So while the meal itself has always been enough of a reason to celebrate the Irish (and yes, in case you're asking, I do have a bit of Scots/Irish blood running through my veins), this year I have an even better reason to celebrate St. Patrick's Day: the sale of my young-adult Fianna Trilogy to Amazon Skyscape. Set in the Irish slums of New York City in the 1870s, with Irish legends coming alive ... well, yes, I think I deserve to wear a little green. And I'll have another slice of that cake, thank you, and a pint of Guinness please.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!