1 post tagged “st patrick's day”
So about this time last year I was first trimester pregnant. We'd just moved into a new apartment two weeks before and basically I'd spent most of the time wrapped in a comforter sitting on a chair trying not to hurl, weakly telling everyone where to put things in my kitchen. Then we went to a friend's wedding and our flight was delayed so I think our annual corned beef and cabbage dinner wasn't a big deal. I don't even remember if I made it? I know I didn't do it the day of. I didn't care. I felt like crap.
This year I have a six month old baby. You'd think that might curb any plans we'd make for a big St Patrick's Day. Ha! No one ever said I was smart! If I were, that would make these entries a lot less funny to read. Hey, remember when she made the Guinness pie and sprayed beer all over the kitchen? Ha! Awesome! Anyway, this year's preparations have been a lot less disastrous, surprisingly.
First on the menu is the usual corned beef and cabbage, using the Tyler Florence brine and a head of cabbage, a packet of baby carrots and a whole white onion. Putting that together went surprisingly well, other than I discovered someone had put my container of allspice berries away instead of recycling it so I used the ground stuff. Hopefully that won't make much difference. bringing it last night went smoothly and putting it in the crock pot also not a big deal. I had visions of losing a finger while chopping up the veg but thankfully that one didn't happen. When I was home for lunch it smelled lovely.
Next up are the roasted potatoes. This is a Rachael Ray recipe I make where basically you chunk up the potatoes, toss them with olive oil, salt and rosemary, then roast them. I'm a-thinking these won't be a problem. They usually aren't.
It isn't St Pat's if I don't make a Guinness recipe, and this year there are two. First up, Guinness chocolate cupcakes, found here. I did some searching for recipes that didn't include sour cream, because I didn't remember having any, but a quick check of the fridge proved me wrong so all systems go! Things went together without me spraying my kitchen with Guinness- of course, now that my kitchen's got dark wood cabinets, sigh- and they went into the cupcake cups. The recipe said makes two dozen. I figured that mean two dozen if you're stingy and fill the cups halfway so I set out 18 cups. Imagine my surprise when I filled those 18 cups. I mean filled, like when I'd set the cup down- I should probably mention I have silicone cupcake cups here so you're not confused- it would leak a little. Huh. I filled the other six cups and... still had enough to fill two little pot pie tins. Wow. That actually was a blessing in disguise because the recipe calls for cream cheese frosting and last night when the husband was trying to get the baby to sleep we ate one of them and tried to decide how to frost them. Cream cheese was quickly discarded. Just putting whipped cream on them became the decision, but this morning I thought hmmm, what about chocolate whipped cream? That became "How about I make whipped cream with a shot of mint Bailey's?" Ding ding ding! That, I do believe, is our winner. of course, we'll see when I get to that point how tired I am.
Recipe number two is this one for Guinness bread with molasses. It went together easily while I was home, it came out looking nice, we'll see how it tastes. After all, the Irish soda bread looked nice too... Oh well, we have two loaves of rye from a deli here in town in case of epic fail.
This year's fun story was the Protestant orange jello. Since having the baby, my work schedule has changed and the husband finds himself, more often than not, making (or, more to the point, buying) dinner. Because of that, my idea of what's in our pantry is a little fuzzy. That's why I thought we had vodka in the freezer, but when I pulled it out after pouring the hot water in the jello, I discovered we had vanilla vodka. Ah well, it looks like we'll be having Protestant dreamsicle jello.
More details later, after dinner's been eaten.
