A Catholic Girl's St Patrick's Day Dinner

A Catholic Girl's St Patrick's Day Dinner

St Patrick’s Day is coming and making a celebration dinner for this special day can be expensive unless we think ahead what we need to make it special at an inexpensive price.

I will share two dinners with you for this special day. One will be traditional meal we all know is severed on St Patrick’s Day and one will be traditional with me that comes from a memory of the days my brother and I attended Catholic school in a poor neighborhood in Rochester NY.

First let me give you my version of the traditional dinner that can be made at a very affordable price.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

2 lb. corned beef brisket/1lb canned ham

1 bay leaf                             

1 tsp salt and pepper

2 carrots, peeled and quartered (I use baby carrots that are already pealed and are on sale at Wal-Mart this week)

2 potatoes, unpeeled and quartered

1 large onions, quartered

½ head of cabbage, cored and cut into wedges

Place corned beef and cabbage in a slow cooker (crock pot)

Cover with water. Add bay leaves salt and pepper

Cook on high for about four hour then remove the corned beef or ham (If you don’t then the corned beef has a good chance of getting tough and tasteless. The flavor of the corned beef is already part of the broth after four hours so there is no reason to leave the meat in the slow cooker.)

add carrots potatoes and onions. Cook for another couple of hours

When ready to serve

Remove bay leaves

And discard. Slice meat across the grain.

Serves 3

It will simpler and take less time and not to mention less money if you get a small one pound canned ham  to use instead of corned beef. That I what I will be using this year

For the day after St Patrick’s Day. It is only 2.50 at the Dollar General and you only need to use half of the can for this meal. Then you can freeze the rest of the ham for another meal or slice and use the balance for lunch and a couple of ham steaks during the week. This is something that will go far for your money.

Now the Catholic Girls  St Patrick’s Day meal

We were raised in Rochester and our early years my brother and I attended a Catholic School in the inner city.

It was a poor parish and when special events came along the church had to find a way to make a celebration happen at a cost they could afford.

One of those celebrations was for St Patrick’s Day.

On St Patrick’s Day we had a dance. At the dance dinner was served.

It was never corned beef and cabbage the church made a spaghetti dinner.

Odd I know but for the seven years I attended this school this was St Patrick’s Day dinner.

Years later in memory of those days I still make Spaghetti for St Patrick’s Day.

Here is the meal I will make this year.

Spaghetti Dinner

Pasta usually angel hair

Spaghetti sauce. I still have some sauce from Saturday when I made homemade Corsican/Sicilian sauce and will use that if I did not have any homemade I would get some Franco Renalidi or Ragu and add some fennel and red wine to make it taste more homemade.

I like Italian Sausage and will go to the butcher in Price Chopper and buy two links of sausage. It’s better to buy this small amount from the butcher counter because you usually don’t find such small quantity in the meat case.

I will make a small toss salad for my side dish and make Texas Toast in other words I will take a slice or two of white bread coat it with olive oil garlic and Italian seasonings to bake in the over for a few mins.

That will be dinner.

Whatever you make celebrate and enjoy the green beer but please keep it safe for everyone and don’t drive.

Happy St Patrick’s Day!