When the folks at 23andMe give you permission to be more Irish than you thought

For many years, St. Patrick's Day never seemed especially relevant to me. I know it's the day when we're all supposed to be Irish, but biologically speaking, I figured I was English, Scottish, German, and not much else.

Wearing green and walking around with a shillelagh in one hand and a Guinness in the other seemed a tad inauthentic.

Then, a couple of years ago, at my request, Terry got me a 23andMe genetic testing kit for Christmas. I sent off a dollop of spit to their labs and eagerly opened my ancestry report weeks later when it arrived via email.

I am no geneticist, so I can't speak to the accuracy of these mass-market, saliva-based tests. I hear and read good things, but the results are sometimes so precise as to evoke a level of skepticism.

I choose to believe the 23andMe test is reliable, though, if only because I like what the results had to say.

Yes, I am mostly English. And yes, there's indubitably some German blood in me, thanks to my maternal grandmother, one Ms. Bertha Spitznogel.

I was surprised to have Swiss and French roots, as well.

What really caught my eye, though, is that I'm 47.9% "British & Irish." When you break that down further by region, I'm classified as a "Highly Likely Match" for both "Galway and Central Ireland" and "Central and Southern Ireland," not to mention being a "Likely Match" for "Central and Northern Ireland" and "Northern Ireland and Central Scottish Lowlands."

Well, top of the mornin', kiss the Blarney Stone, and keep your hands off me Lucky Charms! Who knew?

Of course, I don't know exactly how much of my ancestry is Irish, but it's apparently more than the <0.1% I originally assumed. And that whole thing about me being of Scottish origin? Maybe not so much.

With St. Patrick's Day now just 48 hours away, I feel much more justified laying some small claim to the holiday. Maybe I'll sip a green beer on Sunday and listen to Irish pipe bands.

The English side of me will hate it, of course, but I can shut down that part of my brain for one day, at least.

I'm not kidding, breakfast is one of the highlights of my day

About five years ago, I took a business trip to Europe. My daughter Elissa, being the adventurous traveler she is, decided to tag along (and paid her own way, to her credit).

That trip took us to some very fun places, including London, Frankfurt, Southern Bavaria, and Barcelona.

The food was all around very good, but we had a special culinary fondness for the two German destinations.

Actually, what we had was a fondness for was German breakfasts. The morning spreads at our hotels were full of delicious, carb-laden treats, fruits, outstanding coffee, and even various meats. We always walked away from breakfast feeling satisfied.

The German word for breakfast is "Frühstück." It's pronounced with that semi-breathy 'r' that comes from the back of the throat, and of course the 's' sound is pronounced as 'sh."

We never bothered saying the 'r' correctly, but the 'sh' part was easy enough, so we always referred to it as "froo-shtuck."

One evening when we were in our room, Elissa sighed and said, "I wish it was froo-shtuck now." And I did, too. That's how much we looked forward to those breakfasts.

Breakfast remains my favorite meal by a wide margin. And as I have recounted here before, I eat the same thing every day, virtually without exception: A cup of cooked plain oats, a banana, and coffee with half and half.

Somehow I never get bored of this breakfast. If I happen to be having breakfast in a restaurant and/or am traveling, I order the closest equivalent off the menu.

I know it sounds bland, but it's what I like. And it makes me happy.

Which in large part is the point of food, right? Many of us develop unhealthy relationships between food and comfort, but seeing it merely as fuel doesn't feel like the right approach, either.

Somewhere in between is a fulfilling mental, physical, and even emotional connection between what we eat and the happiness it gives us.

My non-descript little breakfast routine never fails to make me happy, so I stick with it. Even today, thousands of miles away from the ancestral home of my German grandma Bertha Spitznogel, I still sometimes find myself wishing it was Frühstück in the middle of the afternoon.