I mean offense to no one. Looking through my emails for the past year I have received a fair amount of inquiries about Irish cooking. Go figure. I love the Irish. Married one in fact. But the cuisine of Ireland is in desperate need of a 'Movement' so to speak.

"Have you seen anything new in Irish cuisine?" was one of my favorite emails. To which I replied, "Anyone ever hear about a Nuevo Irish restaurant opening up in a strip mall in Reston any time soon?"

Most people are proud, and should be, of their heritage and like to cook ancestral cuisine. But in terms of need for a gastronomic renaissance, the Irish are ready. Today's Irish are looking for something different, something unique and something other than corned beef, cabbage and soda bread.

So I dug deep into the recesses of my recipe files. Turns out I had to go way back to find something new. I'm talking 3" floppies people! Old family recipes from our Dibble's Inn in New York.

At Dibble's, St. Patty's week was worked as a major business event. We would mix up gallons of "Biddy Whyte Lennon".

What it is you ask? It's a simple lamb stew. My Dad got it from his corpsman in the Army who could cook it in the field if he had to! Other than the recipe and that my Dad could spell it, that's all we knew.

Along with the traditional staple foods offered most often on these days, my brothers and I were in charge of preparing the stew. As simple as it is to make, we managed to screw it up one year. One of my big brothers (still unknown, each blames the other) whisked in green food coloring into a 6 gallon batch for a bus luncheon on St. Patty's Day. That, in turn, whipped a Greyhound load of 80 Bluehairs, out on a Friday afternoon outlet run, into a lather.

Those is charge demanded the "green be taken out!" How do you take the green out? We added blue and sent it back out. Insulted, they stormed the kitchen. No survivors. It wasn't pretty.

The great Greyhound Mutton Revolt of '77.

Good times.