A Sustainable St. Patrick's Day

by Jill Richardson · 2009-03-17 14:00:00 UTC
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Irish beerI'm a fan of being green every day of the year, and on St. Patrick's day, for once, I'm actually joined by the rest of the world. Of course they mean green in a different way than I do. But how about doing both? What's the key to celebrating in our most Irish and perhaps drunk fashion, and loving the earth at the same time?

Mother Nature News provides a slow cooker corned beef and cabbage recipe - along with a recipe for Irish brown bread. But why not lower your carbon footprint by trying out this version of seitan "corned beef" instead?

I'm not a fan of seitan, so I decided to skip that and attempt making the bread. In my opinion, the recipe called for WAY too much water - I ended up with a sticky mess in my bowl that was near impossible to knead (I realize the recipe said "no knead" but I just couldn't bring myself to believe that so I kneaded it anyway). I didn't even add all of the water the recipe called for, and I added extra flour. While I kneaded it, I turned the oven on at the lowest setting. Then I turned the oven off and put the dough in the warm oven to rise. And then I washed my very sticky hands!

And then there's the OTHER essential part of St. Patty's day. Drinking! Grist offers tips on getting wasted while wasting less. My own green drinking strategy is drinking only locally microbrewed beer and only on tap, never in bottles. But that's because I'm a beer snob, and I'm just not that interested in being drunk. I'd rather have good beer or no beer at all. Bad beer or even mediocre beer is no substitute. But I suppose my local-only and no-bottle rule saves fossil fuels, right?

One last bit of St. Patty's day reading I recommend is a blog post about the Irish and their potatoes. I learned all sorts of things I never knew about potatoes from it... and I got hungry.

(Photo credit: apesara on Flickr)

Jill Richardson
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