Category: Holiday Recipes

St Patrick’s Day Dinner– Lite Version

I like doing Holiday dinners for my family just to make things a little more fun and breaking up the meal monotony.  For St. Patrick’s Day, I always do some kind of a “green” dinner.  I have done the traditional corned beef and cabbage.  The kids don’t like it too well, but I think it’s pretty good if you cook it right.  Here are some “green” things I do to go along with it:

Green jello

Green Veggie Tray

Green kool-aid OR

Green sherbet with Sprite

Green Salad

Last year I did a “lite” dinner because we didn’t want the corned beef and cabbage thing.  So here is what I did:

This included Zucchini Bisque Soup (it’s YUMMY!), Green Salad, Green Veggie Tray,

Shamrock Corned Beef Sandwiches (recipe to follow) and

Green Koolaid.

It was a fun, lite meal that we could all enjoy!

If you are looking for cute breakfast ideas, I found these two:

This one.  Click HERE for link.

And THIS one.  Aren’t they darling?  I may try one of these this year.  I really like the rainbow fruit idea!  Usually it is best for me to do a dinner, though, so I have a little more time to prepare it.

Here is the recipe for the cute Shamrock Corned Beef Sandwiches:

The first thing you need to do is to remember to order green bread from your grocery store bakery the day before you make them.  Then you can pick up your fresh green bread on St. Patty’s Day.

You’ll also need some shaved corned beef from the deli, cream cheese, mayo, and an onion.

First, put your softened cream cheese and some mayo into a bowl with about 1-2 teaspoons of grated onion.  I can’t remember if I put any other seasonings in here.  I think the corned beef is quite salty, so I didn’t.  But if you taste it and it seems a little bland, then add a little bit of seasoned salt to it.

Stir it until it is blended.

Next, take your shaved corned beef

And chop it up.  Add it to the cream cheese mixture and your filling is ready.

Then take your shamrock cookie cutter and cut them out of your green bread.  I also did white, too, for some color variety.

Spread your filling on your shamrock and top  with another slice of shamrock bread.

And there you have these cute little shamrock sandwiches!

And your nice light St. Patty’s Day Meal is complete!  Soup, Salad, Sandwich and some side veggies and fruit!

Have a great St. Patty’s Day dinner!

Halloween Dinner Ideas

It’s that time of year when I have to figure out what we are having for Halloween dinner. Do I do the “orange” theme, the “pumpkin” theme, or that whole “gory fun food” thing?

In case you are looking for some ideas, here’s what the Webster’s had last year. We had a body.
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Starting at the top, but hard to see is the hair. That was made of salad.

Deviled Egg Eyeballs. Use an olive in the center and dip a toothpick in red food coloring to make veins on it, if you want.

The lips were wax lips. Throat was a cucumber sliced but not quite all the way through.

We had real ribs this year and a nice intestine. (I’ll have to post the rib recipe soon.) The intestine is a pie crust that is stuffed with anything you like. You can do a meatloaf, potatoes, or veggies. Just pinch the pie dough together in a tube and lay it in a 9 x 13 pan. After it’s cooked, put some red food coloring in some water and brush it on. Add veins by dipping a toothpick or fine paintbrush in blue and red food coloring and drawing veins. Looks good, huh?? (I think mine is stuff with seasoned mashed potatoes. Since I have some children who will die if they don’t eat mashed potatoes with their Sunday meal.) Just to make you feel a little better, I bought these pie crusts. Not enough time to make my own. Here’s the link if you want the original recipe.
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The legs are made with breadsticks. I think I bought this dough, too. Depending on how long you want your bones, you can either tie a knot on the end of each strip or you can use a separate piece and just attach it to the long length of dough.

I used cauliflower for the wrist and ankle joints and turnip halves for the knee caps.

Toes are vienna sausages and fingers are baby carrots. I did find this cool gummy hand so used it.

My favorite attraction this year was the homemade jello heart, complete with gushing blood. I thought it looked pretty cool. Here’s the link for the original recipe. Since I didn’t know what grenadine was, I tweaked the recipe. And I didn’t have a mold, so I made one out of a bread bag or sandwich bag. I’ll have to post my made up instructions.

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It appears from the background of this picture that I did throw in the traditional drink of orange sherbet with orange soda over the top. (Orange float if you will.)

I’ll have to post pictures of the cool Halloween dinner we did when Wes cut his finger off. We had all “finger foods” that year! It was pretty cool!

So what are you all having this year? Give me some ideas!