It all began 19 years ago. On St. Patricks Day. We had been married just under a year and I wanted to celebrate, to remember EVERY holiday. I began to wonder - just how do two newly married people celebrate a holiday based on small green leprechauns?
I decided to pick one facet of the holiday and run with it. GREEN. Bob always left for work so early that I did not have even one eyeball peeled open, much less had breakfast made. But dinner. Ahhhh, the first St. patrick's day dinner. Green Lasagne. MMMMMMM good! Fortunately, having come from a large family, I knew the ins and outs of cooking lasagne. Unfortunately, every time I cooked, it was enough to feed a large family. The thought never occured to me that there was any other pan size other than 9X13. Square pan? What is THAT? Fortunately I was creative enough to figure out that if you boil lasagne noodles in a pot of green food colored water, they would turn green. Unfortunately, when you add green food coloring to spaghetti sauce, it turns black. Fortunately, my husband, being the kind, 29 year old, grateful to finally be married sort ate said lasagne with only a minimum of revulsion. Unfortunately, he then had to take said lasagne in his lunch for a week until it was all gone, and endure the jokes of the men he worked with.
One would think that this experience would have turned me off of food coloring forever more. Did I mention that some people experience - umm - aftereffects from too much food coloring? I would have never known, because I am apparently not one of those people. Poor Bob.
And so, over the years, the tradition has continued, as it started. Bob did make me promise never ever to dye chicken green again, but that only lasted 2 years, then he forgot and I went back to chicken every other year. We have had a very wide variety of green food. Mashed potatoes, pancakes, soups, Pizza, rice, you name it, I have probably turned it green at some point. They say some traditions are made to be broken. But not this one. This year, I have created green clam chowder. Yummy!