After meeting Christy Tate and finding out that chili could be made from something other than browning hamburger meat and warming it up in canned tomato soup, I began questioning my mom’s cooking skills.

But, then I thought about it.

She was born in Brooklyn to an Irish family, lived in an Irish neighborhood, had gone to Catholic schools taught by Irish nuns, and the Irish, with the exception of baking scones, were not known for their culinary skill.

Or, weren’t prior to the Irish Tiger of the 1990s when the flood of money changed Ireland forever.