Tradition Vs. Innovation

There is something fun about tradition - the passing along of ideas, recipes, or experiences that make up family memories - but I can also get pretty jazzed about shaking it up a bit. Take our St. Patrick's Day dinner; corned beef, potatoes, and cabbage is about as traditional as it gets for St. Paddy's Day here in America but, this year, I did a couple of new-to-me things.

First, I used my crockpot to cook the dinner. I'm sure you've been doing it this way for years and you are sitting there in front of your screen shaking your head me.  You are thinking, "Where has she been all these years? BFD!"  Well, it is a big deal to me when I can figure out something that makes a tedious meal easier.

You see, boiling the corned beef has always been a bit of a trial for me.  Oh, I get it going fine, then reduce to a simmer, but I always had to check it to make sure it was still simmering and I'm the kind of gal who forgets stuff like that when I have my nose buried in a good book (like, for example, Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood - just sayin'), or when Cora is lobbying for a walk, or I feel a nap coming on. Either it was boiling too fast and all the water boiled away, or it was going too slowly and dinner wasn't ready for hours after we got hungry, or it simmered so long that the meat was nearly mush. Ugh.

So, when I read on the interwebs that I could just peel the carrots, throw in the potatoes, wedge the onions, add the meat, and cover the whole shebang with water before plugging in the crockpot, well, sister, now you're talking!

Six hours later on low, I had traditional dinner ready to roll. I'm not fond of boiled cabbage, even when it is steeped in the cooking liquid with the meat, so the second non-traditional thing I did was I braised it instead, and assembled a lovely plate for our St. Paddy's Day dinner. 

The perfect combination of traditional culture and modern day innovation. Huzzah!