Tasty Tuesdays–Corned Beef from Sloane Taylor

Tags

Corned Beef, dinner, entree, food blog, recipe, Sloane Taylor, St. Patrick's Day, Tasty Tuesdays

Many Americans cook this meal as a traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal, which is only a St. Paddy’s Day tradition in the good old USA. You’ll never find corned beef served anyway on the Old Sod. That’s right. Our Irish brethren look at us in amazement, but that’s never stopped us Yanks from creating traditions. Here’s another news flash. You don’t have to reserved Corned Beef for the wearing o’ the green. So get out your pots and enjoy this non-traditional non-Irish meal from cookbook author Slaone Taylor anytime of the year.

MENU
Corned Beef
Cabbage
Carrots
Potatoes
Bakery Rye Bread
Horseradish Sauce
Mustard
Irish Beer and plenty of it

Corned Beef

1 5lb. corned beef brisket*
2 med. onions, peeled and quartered
4 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
3 bottles of beer, not Lite
water to cover

Preheat oven to 300 F°.

Place beef in a Dutch oven. Add remaining ingredients, including spice packet that comes with the beef.

Bring to a boil on stovetop. Place in oven and roast for 3 hours or until meat is fork tender.

*Don’t stint on the beef. It cooks down to approximately half. I learned this lesson the hard way.

Here’s a tip from my butcher Raoul. Always buy corned beef flat cut. It has less fat than the point. Therefore you get more meat for your money.

Vegetables
6 med. red potatoes, peeled and quartered
6 carrots, scraped and cut into 2″ pieces
1 celery stalk, cut into 2″ pieces
1 med. green cabbage, cut into 8 wedges
1 cup corned beef cooking liquid
water

You can prep all the veggies and store in a large container covered by cold water until you’re ready to cook them. Refrigerate so vegetables remain crisp.

Place veggies in a large pot. Stir in corned beef cooking liquid. Add water to cover vegetables by 2 inches. Cover pot. Set cooking temp at medium. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat so the pot doesn’t cook over, but maintain a soft boil. Cook about 30 minutes or until veggies are fork tender.

Horseradish Sauce

1 cup sour cream
2 tbsp. prepared horseradish
1 tsp. fresh chives, snipped short

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir well.

Transfer to a serving dish, cover, and refrigerate until ready to serve.

May you enjoy all the days of your life filled with good friends, laughter, and seated around a well-laden table!

Sloane

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sloane Taylor is an Award-Winning romance author with a passion that consumes her day and night. She is an avid cook and posts new recipes on her blog every Wednesday. The recipes are user friendly, meaning easy.

Learn more about Taylor’s cookbooks, Date Night Dinners and Recipes to Create Holidays Extraordinaire on Amazon.

Connect with Sloane on her website, blog, on Facebook and Twitter.

Musings from a Writer’s Brain—I’m Looking Over My Four-leaf Clovers by Catherine Castle

Tags

award-winning books, Catherine Castle, five-leaf clover, four-leaf clover lore, four-leaf clovers, lucky clovers, Musings from a Writer's Brain, St. Patrick's Day, The Nun and the Narc

St. Patrick’s Day is coming up in 2 days, March 17. Do you have your lucky four-leaf clover yet?

I’ve got mine.

In fact, I have thirty-five four-leaf clovers, several which were found in one day. I’ve probably found more than thirty-five since I only began pressing my finds between mailing tape in 1987.

I’ve been looking for these lucky charms all my life. Hunting four-leaf clovers was a pastime of my mother, who searched most of her live and rarely found one. As a teenager, I often gave my finds to her or gave them away to other people who couldn’t find them as easily as I could.

I also have three five-leaf clovers, which appeared after we fertilized our yard one year. I also found several of them on the same day. They were gigantic compared to the run-of-the-mill clovers that inhabited our weedy yard. I thought the fertilizer put the regular clovers on steroids. I later learned that five-leaf clovers are believed to be even luckier than their four-leaved counterparts. If I’d have known that I’d have purchased a lottery ticket or three the day I found those babies!

I remember one time, after showing my daughter and her friend a few of my mounted clovers, the two of them decided to search in our yard for their own lucky clover. After a while they came in, disappointed because they hadn’t found anything. I took them outside, looked down at a couple of dense clover patches and then pointed to one of them.

“Search here,” I said. Within a few minutes each of them had discovered a four-leaf clover.

“How did you know where to look?” my daughter asked.

“I didn’t,” I replied. “I just looked down and I saw them.” They left clutching their clovers in awe of me.

Irish tradition says three-leaf clovers are associated with St Patrick’s use of the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish; three leaves for the three persons of the Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Celts thought four-leaf clovers would ward off bad luck. In the Middle Ages, children who carried a four-leaf clover in their pockets believed they could see fairies.

Other traditions tell us that those who find a four-leaf clover are destined for good luck. Three of the leaves in the clover represent good omens for faith, hope, and love. The fourth leaf means luck for the finder, a fifth leaf even more luck.  If you should find a six-leaf clover you can add fame to the mix, and a seventh leaf adds longevity, according to Wikipedia. Considering there are 10,000 of the three leafed varieties for each lucky four-leafed clover (or 5,000 to one, depending on whose research you believe), I feel blessed to have found as many four-leafed clovers as I have.

My husband just thinks I’ve found so many because I’m good at recognizing patterns in the clover, but I’m not so sure. I’ve searched on occasions and not found a single lucky clover.

I do think I’ve had a blessed life, but I don’t believe I can attribute it to those thirty-five clovers. I would say, however, that the three main leaves of the four-leaf clover that represent faith, hope and love are the drivers for my blessings. If you have those three things in your life, you’ll feel lucky no matter what life throws at you.

May you have the Blessings of Life that faith, hope and love bring you,

and the luck of the Irish today and always.

Catherine’s published books have also been lucky. Her debut novel, The Nun and the Narc is an ACFW Genesis Finalist, a 2014 EPIC finalist, and the winner of the 2014 Beverly Hills Book Award and the 2014 RONE award, as well as placing in several other contests.  Her sweet romantic comedy/drama A Groom for Mama, is the recipient of the 2018 Raven Award.

Check out this blurb from The Nun and the Narc.

The Nun and the Narc

by Catherine Castle

Where novice Sister Margaret Mary goes, trouble follows. When she barges into a drug deal the local Mexican drug lord captures her. To escape she must depend on undercover DEA agent Jed Bond. Jed’s attitude toward her is exasperating, but when she finds herself inexplicable attracted to him he becomes more dangerous than the men who have captured them, because he is making her doubt her decision to take her final vows. Escape back to the nunnery is imperative, but life at the convent, if she can still take her final vows, will never be the same.

Nuns shouldn’t look, talk, act, or kiss like Sister Margaret Mary O’Connor—at least that’s what Jed Bond thinks. She hampers his escape plans with her compulsiveness and compassion and in the process makes Jed question his own beliefs. After years of walling up his emotions in an attempt to become the best agent possible, Sister Margaret is crumbling Jed’s defenses and opening his heart. To lure her away from the church would be unforgivable—to lose her unbearable.

About the Author:

Multi-award winning author Catherine Castle loves writing. Before beginning her career as a romance writer she worked part-time as a freelance writer. She has over 600 articles and photographs to her credit, under her real name, in the Christian and secular market. She also lays claim to over 300 internet articles written on a variety of subjects and several hundred poems. In addition to writing she loves reading, traveling, singing, theatre, quilting and gardening. She’s a passionate gardener whose garden won a “Best Hillside Garden” award from the local gardening club. She writes sweet and inspirational romances. You can find her award-winning Soul Mate books The Nun and the Narc and A Groom for Mama, on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Follow her on Twitter @AuthorCCastle, FB or her blog.

Looking Over Four-leafed Clovers

Tags

blog, Catherine Castle, four-leaf clovers, romance author, shamrocks, St. Patrick's Day, St. Patrick's Day quiz, St. Patrick's Day trivia

Beannacht na feile Padrig oraibh

(May the Blessings of St. Patrick be with you)

Today I looked out my office window upon hearing the raucous voices of children and saw two young girls sitting in the boulevard between the sidewalk and the street plucking clover from my easement.  Each of them had a handful of greenery as big as a nosegay. They reminded me of a ritual I do every time I see a patch of clover—I look for the lucky four-leafed ones.

Considering there are 10,000 of the three leafed varieties for each lucky four-leafed clover I feel blessed to have found as many four-leafed clovers as I have. The pictures you see on the blog are part of my collection. Since 1987, when I began mounting my finds, I have found 35 four-leaf clovers (several of them in one day) and three five-leaf clovers, which appeared after we fertilized our yard one year. They were gigantic compared to the run-of-the-mill clovers that inhabited our weedy yard.

Seeing the girls rooting through my clover patch makes me want to search tomorrow, on St. Patrick’s Day, to see if luck is still with me.  I haven’t had much clover in my yards since 2003. So it’s time I looked again for some additions to my collection.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a fun quiz about St. Patrick’s Day. Answers are at the bottom of the blog, so don’t cheat!

1. Was the first St. Patrick’s Day parade held in …

• a. Ireland or
• b. Boston?

2. Is the tradition of Drowning the Shamrock …

• a. dunking the first Irishman you see on St. Paddy’s day in the river to ensure good luck or
• b. floating a shamrock on top of whiskey and drinking it down in order to ensure a prosperous year?

3. Was the first St. Patrick’s Day parade held …

• a. in 1737 or
• b. right after Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland as a celebration for the feat?

4. Do the Irish (in Ireland) celebrate the holiday by …

•  a. drinking green beer or
• b. wearing carnations on their lapels?

5. Is the shamrock customarily worn …

• a. on a hat or in the hair or
• b. pinned on the lapel?

6. Do the four parts of the lucky shamrock stand for …

• a.  hope, faith, love and luck, or
•  b. attraction, lust, love and marriage?

7. Is St. Patrick’s Day really all about  …

• a.  drinking green beer, eating green iced treats and pinching anyone who doesn’t wear green or
• b. celebrating the feast day of the patron saint of Ireland?

And a final question that I’ve always wondered about and hope someone can answer for me—why does everyone claim to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day? If you know the answer please tell me.

Go mbeannai Dia duit (May God Bless You)

and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Answers to the quiz:

1. b
2. b
3. a
4. b
5. b
6. a
7. b