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Bring back the Old School, even if school’s long been out, summer read. But just how bookish are you, to banish the newfound boredom? And what prevails in those pages? Want to cook up some excitement, and kick up some dust from what had been shelved in these stay-at-home times, giving your kitchen appliances, rather than your abs, a workout? And why do I sense a silly Weezer reference here?

With very few entertainment options currently, read a book? Or a cookbook? During times when docs say even your local, low-grade newsprint daily, after being handled by dozens of people before it gets to you, can carry a virus much worse than an annoying stomach bug?
So what to do, when even your vaunted asparagus in the freezer could start getting a little vile, stemming from the very day the virus itself took your appetite from you and kept you from kicking your Irish up, for maybe the first March in time? Always wanted to unlock your true culinary self, and get healthy to boot, and certainly not give in to the desire to binge on ice cream during Dairy Month, and too much German chocolate cake as a dessert during its dedicated week? Whip through a Fresh and Natural store flyer, ready for your taking right when you walk in the door of what is a spacious foyer for social dining considerations, that cuts to the chase and doesn’t give you loads of of unnecessary verbage to sift through. After all, these days we seem to be having more and more constraints on our time, and at Fresh and Natural there’s a store design that smacks of functionality, not being a monument for some architects to themselves. The aisles are well arranged, little wasted space, although social distancing will always be respected here, and unlike the big box stores you don’t have to cover an area the size of a football field to pick up what you need. And the food is healthy for all sorts of reasons, and today more than ever we all need to be watchguards of that for ourselves on various fronts, and its great to get a little help to steer you the right way, and that also includes but is not limited to the Stairmaster, if you are going stir crazy.
So when did all this extra need get going?
Just a wee bit ago on St. Patrick’s Day proper, and quickly into the early evening, reams of stores of all types were told they must shut down pronto, as in the usual start of places having half-price appetizers. (See an inside column for a coming out and/or going away party, using an “arrangement” that’s not half bad. Across departments there are many more tips to not only entertain, we hope, but be recipe and cost-cutting bonanzas for all different ethnic varieties of food). So why not get much healthier food to boot, and at the same time take an absolute, total pass for that day on the chance to unveil your Irish? Go home and go to bed before any of the cool Irish musicians even start setting up their stages, for naught. Your full 24 hours of Erin simply has to wait for another day and might be quite off into the future. So how did and does the green go forward from here and triumph?
It thus starts with food, and enter the picture the Fresh and Natural locations in Hudson and Shoreview. Like birthday parties that become lengthy observances, like a virtual fulltime job, and I know this from some friends who seriously do want it to be all that, things extend with regular ongoing celebrations in what becomes an — official they’ll tell you — bonafide birthday month. The Irish emulate that when their favorite holiday is on a Monday and thus into Tuesday morning, and St. Patrick’s Day actually starts for them with corned beef and cabbage — or a host of lesser hyped meals that I myself will hype in a minute via Fresh and Natural — on the previous Thursday or early Friday for sure, with dinner, lunch or even breakfast, (and yes Virginia, of the dozens of intriguing Irish eats you can easily make yourself, there are even quite a few for when you rise in the morning and need a boost to hit the very ground running as to dodge all those newly enabled leprechauns who don’t ever seem to be more than knee-high. Plenty more such yarns of leprechauns acting up in future posts).
Local nightclubs have followed suit with their St. Patrick’s Day revisited drink specials, hardly any need to dig into your pockets for anything but a wee bit of change on your dollar — and each and every O’Donnell loves that — where even the most stout beer cost is slashed on the 17th of each and every month. So everyone is Irish an additional 12 days a year. And add another such food date when Paddy Ryan’s, not far down the highway from Fresh and Natural, pulls out all the stops not only in March, but also exactly six months later for a half-St. Patrick’s Day. And the food is bountiful, never a “half paddy.”

<<And if you can’t tell just why you couldn’t make it then, and now to finally cut to the chase of cheddar and chowder for chow, here’s how that Fresh and Natural flyer saved that day, through extending the window to the time it will need a bug screen, and then be by all means Irish.>>
— Colcannon is a long-back traditional dish made with mashed potatoes and cabbage, milk and butter, and sometimes with leeks and bacon added for flavor and just for fun, or a primer for cooks who shop then chop for a veganized version. It is called just as delicious as the meatier version above, including the middle two items of the six, which is expected to be central to cooking plans for June Dairy Month. And come that time, you can even find a whole boatload of filed-card recipes range of things, some of which I had not heard of before, and smack dab in the middle of that in a veritable laundry list of how you can use the aforementioned leeks. But as far as the colcannon, the whole recipe is featured in the March version of the Fresh and Natural newsletter, and even now that its summer there is the option of 10 percent off on certain days — which could get you an extra quaff of kiefer (a full quart?) Colcannon is said to make great comfort food, now and later. Options are to use tempeh bacon, and coconut butter for a creamy consistency, according to Fresh and Natural, for a great plant based dish.
— Now is the time for homemade sauerkraut with garlic dill, as the Irish meet the Germans — they had their food week too — as my family used to say and ponder. Not only is it called nice and easy, it is filled with probiotics, which are vital to keeping everyone’s bodies healthy, as the immune system is in our gut, and healthy bacteria from those probiotics is an aid to keep the good flora of bacteria in the stomach area at a good count. Uhm, probiotics in the form of pills? It’s also beneficial to add them to diet in the form of fermented foods. Homemade sauerkraut keeps well in the fridge for a few months. Add it to salads as a tangy topper, (and then can do without too much cheese, or heavy sauces), or use it in various sandwiches (don’t rely, again, too heavily on cold cuts).

At Fresh and Natural, assorted ice teas based on green bring on-board raspberry in healthy recipe and also cool style, to pair with so many others, and rest assured its indeed organic and dairy free, (HudsonWiNightLife uses two different verbal enhancers).

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