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.

Lowfat Spinach Dip: Strong til the finish, 'cause I eats me spinach.

"One man's poison ivy is another man's spinach." -George Ade

My in-laws came to visit a few weeks ago. Since I don’t work Fridays, I was charged with the grocery shopping. It took FOREVER. The local supermarket has been remodeling since we moved here, so every time we go, everything’s in a different place. I got so frustrated, I just started throwing things in my cart until I had enough food to feed the Duggars on Thanksgiving.

I had some time to kill before The Husband got home from work and his parents arrived, so I got started on the spinach dip.

Light Spinach Dip
Makes 3 cups

• 12 oz lowfat cottage cheese
• 10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
• 1/2 cup lowfat or nonfat sour cream
• 1/4 cup dry vegetable soup mix (Works out to 1/2 a packet, I used the whole thing because… what else do you do with 1/2 a packet of soup mix?)
• 2 tsp grated fresh onion (Unless you have need for the rest of the onion, feel free to substitute with dried.)
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 12 oz water chestnuts, drained and chopped

1. Process cottage cheese in food processor or blender until smooth. Place in bowl and set aside.
   
   I’m not embarrassed to admit it took me 10 minutes to figure out I had to lock the bowl of the food processor bowl before it would work.

   

   Don’t you hate when you need X amount of something but it only comes in Y size? What do you do with 2 extra ounces of cottage cheese? You eat it. Or at least try to. While my tastes have matured and I now like foods I hated as a kid (asparagus! beets! sweet potatoes!), cottage cheese? Still nasty. Its vomit-like consistency makes me gag. Blech.

2. Press spinach between paper towels until barely moist.

   

   I wasn’t sure if I dried it enough, but it didn’t impact the consistency of the dip much.

3. Add spinach and remaining to cheese mixture; stir well.
   
   
4. Cover and refrigerate three hours.

The recipe says to serve with store brand Triscuits (guess where I got the recipe?), but I prefer lightly salted pita chips.

Guess how much we ate during their visit? NONE. But I ate it after they left. It was fantastic and not at all reminiscent of vomit. I’m glad I used the whole packet of vegetable dip because otherwise I think it would’ve been bland.