St. Patrick's Day: Corned beef & veggie-o-rama

St. Patrick’s Day may mean green beer for some, but I’m all about the corned beef! I would eat it all year-round, and sometimes I do :P My dear husband has always prepared it for us, but I wanted to give it a try. I’ve been told it’s nearly impossible to screw up, so why not?

We wanted leftovers for the rest of the week, so I had to buy a cut big enough to last a few days. I settled on a 4-pounder. I also bought little red and gold potatoes, carrots and cabbage.

Supermarket shenanigans were still in full effect. I was able to find everything I needed this time, but the checkout area was completely different. A red velvet rope separated the customers from the registers, guarded by an employee who *ushered* me to a cashier’s lane. What? Thankfully, the weirdness got canceled out by the fact that everyone who works there was so gosh darn nice. I just moved here from Long Island, I'm not used to friendly people!

How to prepared corned beef and vegetables
(according to package)

1. Trim fat from corned beef.
   You’re kidding, right? Corned beef by nature is half fat. I hacked off the obvious hunks until I had a baseball-sized pile of fat. That grossed me out enough to stop.
   

   
   

2. Place corned beef in large pot and cover with water. Add spice packet and bring to a boil.
   Ever wonder what’s in those spice packets? Check out the ingredients if you’re curious.
   

3. Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for 2 hours.
   
   
   
4. Add carrots and potatoes, cook for 10 minutes.
   
   
   
5. Add cabbage, cook for 20 minutes.
   
   
   
6. Drain, cut and serve!
   
   Those are my husband’s hands, by the way. Just in case you thought I had man hands.
   
   

   

The meat was delicious! It practically melted in my mouth. The carrots and potatoes were the perfect consistency. Cooked, but not soggy. The cabbage could have cooked longer; some pieces were almost raw. Next time, I’ll buy less vegetables. I still have half a bag each of the potatoes, and one head of cabbage was just way too much.

I bought these two humongous whoopie pies for dessert. Fun fact: Whoopie pies are also known as BFOs, or Big Fat Oreos. I of course automatically assumed the F stood for something else. Whoopie pies are basically two soft chocolate cookies with a creamy filling. This particular filling was cake frosting, and it was waaaaay too sweet for me.