St Patricks Day Food Roundup!

St. Patricks day is tomorrow!

So its time to pull out your green items of clothing, smother everything with green food dye, and pretend to be Irish.
I myself am exactly 24.8 percent Irish/British, so feel free to give me a kiss!

But I'm also allergic to green dye, and gelatin so there will be no Patty's day jello jigglers happening this year.
Here are some things that may happen in celebration:

{click on the photos to see post}

(red velvet cake can be made into green velvet, by replacing the dye!)

Dairy Free Irish Colcannon // Food for St. Patricks Day

We are already a third of the way into March. How did that happen?! Sheesh.

The day for Saint Patrick is fast approaching, and a Irish feast must be held!

I have shared the main dish, an appetizer, and today a side.

The side I bring to the table, is Colcannon. Made gluten and dairy free, of course! Colcannon is a traditional Irish dish, made out of potatoes and cabbage. It is very similar to the Dutch dish we frequently have over here, Stamppot.

Along with potatoes and cabbage, you can add any other vegetables in that you'd like. For stamppot, we traditionally use carrots and onions--but we're being Irish this week, not Dutch.

So this dish, I used green cabbage, kale (kale is actually a cabbage, did you know that?) and green onions. All green veggies for the day of green. I was also going to put leeks in the mix, but after an unsuccessful trip to TJs, and an equally disappointing shop at another grocery store, I decided to omit them. Apparently leeks are not a hot commodity around here. Better move to Ireland.

My other TJ, of the Maxx variety did not disappoint though. Did you notice me new little pot? Adorbs, right? and only three smackeroos. Happy early Birthday to me, from myself.

Heres the recipe for you fine folks:

 Enjoy!

Gluten Free Pesto & Goat Cheese Crostini // Food for St. Patricks day

Last week I started my St. Patricks day menu off with some home made Corned beef, which you should all have marinating in your fridges right now. right ? ;)

This week, I will have some more items to add to your march 17th menu, starting today with the appetizer. 

Obviously, there needs to be some green things done on St. Patties day, and what better way to do it than with my favorite saucy bizness ever. 

And by that I mean Pesto of course.

So for the starting course, I made these gluten free/dairy free pesto goat cheese crostini's.

This is a super easy snack to whip up, but its packed full of deliciousness. So delicious in fact, that it took me quite a few days to be able to look through these pictures. Every time I tried to bring them up, I just wanted to eat more of these little toasts. I wish I had some right now.

Since going dairy free, I have tried really hard to get myself to like goat cheese. My taste buds however. are just not having it. I've tried several different kinds of goat cheese, and none have them have worked out for me. I was just about to give up on said brand of cheese, until now.

 Paired with some lovely basil pesto, and a toasted gluten free baguette, the creamy goat cheese doesn't bother me one bit. I maybe, might have even liked it.

So heres the recipe my friends:

 You can find my pesto recipe here.

Like I said, I used Udi's new gluten free baguette. They are pretty small, (but really yummy) so it makes about 10 toasts, excluding the two ends.

You can also eat these little crostini's, without cooking the cheese and pesto. Just toast the bread, top and serve!

 Enjoy!

Corned Beef // Food for St. Patricks Day

Soooo... St. Patricks day is almost here. I'm sure you are all blissfully aware. This coming holiday is really not a big whoop on my list of important days; but I do celebrate it by wearing green, and pretending I am Irish. I like to eat mostly green foods, and authentic Ireland cuisine while talking in an Irish accent. and maybe do a little Irish jig too, why not-thats what the days for, right?

This year, I wanted to step it up a notch.

I've never been a real big fan of corned beef, but thats kinda a big deal to eat on St. Patties day-so I felt it must be done. Hoping to have a scrumptious piece of meat, I decided to season it myself.

You know me, just corning my own beef 'cause I can.

It was really pretty simple to do, it just requires A LOT of patience. Patience while it brines and more patience while it cooks. But if you can plan in advance, and get it in the fridge on time-you'll have yourself a nice piece of salted beef.

Corned beef, is not meat made in corn, despite how it sounds. Its actually just salt brined beef. Back in the day, they used salt corns, which is how it got its name.

To make it, you first create a brine which is made with water, salt, and various seasonings. One of the recipes I was going off of to create this little guy, called for a saltpeter to put in the brine. First of all, what the heck is a saltpeter, and second, where on this planet would I find one. Certainly not areound these parts. So I replaced it with pink salt, which I saw used on a different recipe, and I did have that in my kitchen.

Once your brine is cooled off, you add your brisket and plop in the fridge for 10 days. But I only did mine for 9 and it was just fine. (starting RIGHT NOW, is 10 days until the 17th. get it goin'!)

After a couple days, the meat became a funny color. I was slightly worried about it, but it was just fine. No food poisoning over here.

See? It looks a bit gross.

After the 10 days (or however many you choose to do) you pull it out of the brine and boil it for a few hours. Boiled meat. I know. Not my first choice either, but being authentic remember?

Heres the recipe for ya folks:

Recipe adapted from Alton Browns Corned beef recipe for Food Network

 Enjoy!

More St. Patricks day food items to come!

Rainbow Krispies

  One of the easiest gluten/dairy free to make are krispy rice treats. Even though regular rice krispy cereal is not gluten free,(they do now make a GF variety) there are numerous other cereal brands that taste very similar and are gluten free. Some of the tastiest cereal treats come from using Posts' pebble cereals.
  Since St. Patricks day is coming up, I decided to make this simple treat using Fruity Pebbles. Since the holiday involves rainbows, this colorful cereal was the perfect ingredient. As I was thinking about this treat, and how easy krispy rice treats are to make, I decided to go the extra mile to give it a little more pizzazz. Thats when this simple treat became a lot less simple. I decided to separate the fruity pebbles into individual colors, and layer them in rainbow order. Seems cool right? Well, Hours later, I had barely made a dent in the bag.Therefore, I would not recommend this method.
  Rather than spending so much time separating colors to make a rainbow, you can make the treats with all the colors mixed together-or use food dye to color regular krispy rice.

Krispy Rice Treats

3 tbsp butter or margarine

1 package (10 oz.) Marshmallows

6 cups Krispy Rice cereal of choice

• In saucepan melt butter over low heat, add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. (can heat in microwave as well)
• Stir in cereal until well coated.
• Using buttered spatula, press evenly into 13x9 pan.

* For rainbow treats, separate mixture evenly into 6 bowls. Add food coloring to each bowl. Layer each color in pan
~or~be ridiculous like me, and spend hours upon hours separating fruity pebbles.
Oh yes I did.
It was not one of my brightest ideas although, it seemed like a good idea at the time.