Luck O’ the Irish Meal

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Are you celebrating?

I have no green beer chugging plans, just a quite night at home with some yummy Irish inspired food.

I love holidays like this as they make me think out of my menu box and come up with something I would not normally think of.

Tonight’s menu consisted of a fortified colcannon and a Guinness stew.

I decided to let Adrian indulge in his meaty tendencies and made one portion with meat and the other portion sans meat for me.

For the colcannon I used a couple white and sweet potatoes, garlic, onions, cabbage and spinach. An excellent flavour combination and it fun to look at!

Sweet Potato Colcannon:

• 2 white potatoes
• 1 large sweet potato
• 1 onion chopped
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 small head of white cabbage
• 1 bunch of spinach
• salt and pepper to taste.
• Milk of your choice

Cook potatoes in a pot of boiling water as you normally would to make mashed potatoes.

Heat a tad of oil or butter in a pan and cook onions and garlic.  Add the cabbage and spinach. (you could blanch the cabbage and spinach in the potato pot, but I wanted mine to be garlicy)

Drain potatoes and mash. Add milk of your choice along with the cabbage mixture and salt and pepper.  Mix until smooth and serve. Mmmm!  I could not keep my spoon out of the pot.  I kept testing it and testing it and testing it some more

Guinness Stew: (inspiration)

• 3 celery sticks
• 3 small onions
• mushrooms

Cook these in a pot until softened.

• potatoes
• 3 carrots
• turnip

Chop these into large chunks.

• 1 tbsp. of flour

Add the flour to the pot and coat the onion mixture. Cook for 2 mins. and then pour in the Guinness.

• 1 bottle Guinness

Add the remaining ingredients.  Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 40 mins or so.

• 1 tsp. mustard
• 2 cups veggie stock
• 3 Tbsp. tomato paste
• 1 tsp salt and pepper
• 1/2 tsp. paprika
• 3-4 cups water
• 1 tsp. sugar

Serve with a good Irish soda bread, on top of mashed potatoes or on the side with a big green salad.

Enjoy!

Did you know…

The shamrock was used to represent the Trinity by St. Patrick.  St. Patrick used this to symbolize how The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit can be separate but also part of the same entity.

Who knew?  I didn’t…I love learning new random facts.

Happy Irish Day

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Tags: dinner, Healthy Colcannon with sweet potatoes, Irish, recipe, Vegetarian Guiness Stew, Vegetarian St. Patrick's Day