An Assortment of Green/Irish Foods

I hosted my annual St. Patrick's Day parties this past weekend, yes, parties as in two.  I had one for my friends on Friday night and one for the family (and future in-laws) on Sunday.  The theme was green food and Irish food.  So for appetizers we had green grapes, kiwi, green apples, and Irish fruit dip (vanilla pudding mix, milk, Cool Whip, and Bailey's).  I also bought green veggies (cucumbers, celery, broccoli, and even though they're not green, I included carrots) and dip, Tostitos and Spinach and artichocke dip, and at the friends party potato skins.  Oh, and I almost forgot, I made a cheese ball shaped like a shamrock--at least it was SUPPOSED to be shaped like a shamrock, it was a little deformed (you put scallions on top of the shamrock so it looks more shamrock like).  I made Irish soda bread, crockpot potato soup (which was a hit at both parties), and Irish broccoli pie (I'm not sure what makes it "Irish" I think just because it's green???).  At the family party I also made Irish egg and potato salad.  My homemade desserts included:  cupcakes with green sprinkles (My mom brought green cupcakes to the family party), Irish chocolate balls, Irish cheesecake, shamrock-shaped sugar cookies, and green chocolates shaped like shamrocks.  At the friends party I made St. Patrick's Day punch (lemonade, limeade, rum, sprite, and green sherbert).  In other words this is the reason why I did NOT make any new dishes last week.  Next year I need to remember to take pictures of all this food! 

An Unintentional Cheat and A Semi-Legal Cheat

I didn't do it on purpose, but I had a nibble of chocolate on March 13th or 14th.  I was hosting a St. Patrick's Day party on March 15th and one of the (many) things I made were Irish chocolate balls.  Any time I bake a dessert for a party, I usually sample a small bite to make sure it came out okay.   I know that sounds a little ridiculous and possibly just an excuse to try a dessert and while there is SOME truth in that, I also do worry that things I make might not come out okay so I want to sample them to make sure they taste all right before I subject other people to them.  The exception to this being cake, it's kind of hard to take a bite out of a cake without it looking obvious so I just hope for the best with that.  Anyway, without really thinking too much about it, I cut a small piece off of one of the chocolate balls and started to chew it, when I remembered I wasn't supposed to be eating chocolate.  So I spit most of it out, but I can't guarantee I got it all (talk about a waste of good food).  Fast forward to my St. Patrick's Day party (look for a future blog on that later) and I was very well-behaved, NO chocolate for me.  Fast forward two more days to my family St. Patrick's Day party and I cheated.  Yep, I ate a chocolate ball and had a nibble of the Irish chocolate cheesecake.  I had granted myself an exception AND two people told me you can "cheat" on Sundays during Lent.  I'm not sure if that's true or not so I still felt slightly guilty.  Overall though, this is my best Lent ever.  I've never lasted this long when I tried to give something up for Lent.  I also found out, there are going to be THREE flavors of cake at the upcoming wedding so I may not need to use my third and final cheat that night.  :)  And in my defense when I said I was going to give up chocolate I DID say with three exceptions (food tasting, St. Pat's party, and friend's wedding).  Despite the fact that I've done well, I am kind of looking forward to Easter and being able to eat one of the brownies that are in my freezer, but that's a story for another blog. 

Good Food (a.k.a. More Wedding Stuff)

Wedding plans are coming along. We booked a dj (yay!).  We also got to go to our food tasting (yay!).  I was a little disappointed in one of the dishes we were thinking about ordering, but everything else was good.  I didn't try the prime rib because I don't eat meat, but my fiance said it was great so I think that is going to be one of our dishes.  I did try a lot of the appetizers and the non-chocolate desserts (well, you may remember from a previous blog that I had a bite of my fiance's cake, which had chocolate in it).  Aside from the fact that the cupcakes were ginormous and I could not finish mine, the desserts were delicious!  My favorite appetizer was the coconut chicken--we are so getting that!  When we were at the tasting, we got to tour some of the hotel rooms where guests can stay.  OMG, one of the rooms was nicer than my house.  I think you could fit my whole house in that room.  We still haven't won the lottery yet to afford to pay for all of this wedding stuff, but details details.  :-) 

Dish 26 Carrot Cake

Yes, carrot cake. Can you believe this was the first time I'd ever made carrot cake?  I forget what got me in the mood for carrot cake.  I feel like we were talking about it at work or I saw some somewhere or something.  Anyway, somehow I had carrot cake on the brain.  I had a recipe for it, but someone at work also gave me a recipe for it when I told her I was thinking of making some.  So I made her recipe, which included a recipe for homemade frosting.  It was good!  I had my parents and my fiance's parents over for dinner about a week or so after Christmas and I served it as one of my desserts.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it (myself included). 

How Many Tries Does it Take to Find a Bathroom, A Shamrock Shake, and Slippers

What a random title huh?  Well, I have several ridiculous small things to blog about so I put them all in one blog.  We'll start with the bathroom.  Yes, I'm blogging about bathrooms, I apologize.  If my mother is reading this, she is not proud.  Anyway, Wednesday at work, I had to go the bathroom.  For reasons I won't get into, I couldn't use the one closest to me so I went down the hall where there are two bathrooms.  I went into the first one and it was nearly flooded.  The pants I wore are really meant for heels (a.k.a. they are a little too long for me) and I was wearing flats, which had all ready gotten wet once during unexpected fire alarm (no fire, but still had to go outside and stepped in some WET grass).  So now that I was finally dry, I didn't feel like getting wet again.  So I went to the next bathroom.  Well, apparently, someone didn't get the concept of going the bathroom IN the toilet NOT ON the toilet seat.  So off to the other side of the building, where at last I found a non-flooded, clean, functional bathroom.  yay! 
Each year, I allow myself one shamrock shake.  (And BTW I googled the ingredients and chocolate did NOT come up so if there was chocolate in it, it was not my fault, it really was an accident b/c two websites claimed it was chocolate-free).  So Wednesday night, on the way home from running some errands, my fiance and I stopped at McDonald's for a shamrock shake.  He figured since he was there, he'd get a meal for himself (I almost NEVER get fast food so I think he was secretly happy I wanted a shamrock shake so he could treat himself to something too).  Well, his meal came in no time, but no shake.  So they told us, it'd be out soon and they sent us to another window to wait (we were doing drive through).  A few minutes later someone came to the window and brought us an assortment of food, but no shake.  We explained that none of that food was ours, we were waiting for a shake.  A few minutes later the shake did appear.  And it was good.  And we won't talk about how much sugar is in it and how I'm all ready over my sugar intake for the week and it was only Wednesday. (Can you imagine if I'd gotten a large instead?!)
And lastly, slippers.  My fiance gave me cute slippers for my birthday (they're penguins) and they are so comfy, BUT they have holes in them all ready.  They're not that old.  That happened the last time he bought me cute, comfy slippers.  I don't understand why I can't get them to last longer.  :-(  I don't think I do anything weird with them. I just wear them around the house. 
So there ya go, that's my ridiculously random blog. 

More on Chocolate

When I decided to give up chocolate,  as you may remember I allowed myself three exceptions:  our food tasting, a wedding, and one chocolate ball at one of my St. Patrick's Day parties.  I may be good and not have the chocolate ball on St. Pat's Day--I think I may freeze one for me to enjoy on Easter.  I did technically have chocolate at the food tasting, but it was a TINY bit.  When we tasted cakes, I did NOT pick one with chocolate.  My fiance, however, did and gave me one small bite of his cake.  So technically I had a lick of chocolate.  I did not have the chocolate cake, cupcakes, whoopie pies, peanut butter cups, or other yummy looking things.  So I'd say I'm still doing fairly well.  Also, three times this week people at work offered me cookies that had chocolate in them and I successfully (thought a little sadly) did not have any. 

Halfway There

So I made it successfully to the halfway point in my chocolate free days.  I didn't have a ton of temptations, but there were a couple.  For thing I had ordered Girl Scout cookies from a co-worker before Lent began.  Those went in the freezer the night they arrived.  Several people have offered me cookies with chocolate in them (which I politely declined).  I went out to dinner a couple of times and some of the desserts sounded good, but I managed not to have those either (that could be because I was full from dinner more than because I was behaving though).  My fiance has left chocolate chip cookies on my kitchen table several times (I didn't touch them.)  So we're getting there.  Here's to a successful second half.     :-) 

Dish 25 M&M Holiday Brownies

This is technically a new recipe, but a good chunk of it is an old recipe.  See you basically make brownies, which I've done MANY times, but the toppings are new.  The recipe even says to make your favorite brownie recipe.  Then it has this cream cheese topping (it's NOT just cream cheese, but that is one of the ingredients, there's also sugar and I forget what else, lots of other unhealthy things).  It also has M&Ms (yum!) and cool whip.  They're really good.  You have to refridgerate the leftovers though so let them warm up a second before you eat them so you don't freeze your teeth/gums biting into one as soon as you take them out of the fridge.  :)   Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.   

More Letters

They're baaack.  It's been a while since I've written any letters so here ya go...

Dear Monkey Bread,
   Why do you taste so delicious?  You are NOT helping my diet.


Dear Self,
   All these new exercise you're trying a great, but um, maybe could you take a day off, we're so sore!
Sincerely,
Your Calves and Abs

Dear Cheesy Pop Music Stations,
   I secretly really like Kelly's Clarkson's "Catch My Breath" and the new Pink song, "Try" (I don't know if that's the title, but you know the one I mean). 

Dear People Who Plow the Gym Parking Lot,
  Could you possibly move the snow some place else so it doesn't take up an entire row and a half of parking spaces?  Good thing it's not January when you are super duper busy.


Dear Self,
   How is it you can spend 45 minutes on the ellliptical machine no problem or do Zumba w/o trouble and even do crunches with minimal complaint, but ask you to do a push-up and you think you'd just asked you to jump off a cliff.  You're not completely out of shape, why are push-ups SO hard for you?
Sincerely,
Your Conscious

Dear Target,
   Be proud, I went to your store and ONLY bought what was on my list AND I had a gift card and even managed to leave with $3.00 left on the gift card.  I believe that is a small miracle.  (Sadly I can't say the same thing for my most recent trip to Michael's, but the stuff not on my list was for the wedding so that's semi-okay, right???).

Dear Airlines,
   1).  How can your price increase by nearly double in the course of a couple of weeks?  2).  How can your price increase over $80 in under 24 hours? 

Dear Poinsettia,
  I am impressed that you are still surviving given my luck with plants.  I've never had a poinsettia last this long after Christmas, go you, keep up the good work! 

An Update on Chocolate (or Lack Thereof) and Wedding Stuff

I'm pleased to report that I have good news in both non-chocolate land and wedding land.  Days 7-15 remained chocolate free, though there were some temptations including a cupcake (which I gave to one of my co-workers), cookies that my fiance bought again (grr), which I did NOT eat, AND a baby shower that featured some DELICIOUS LOOKING cupcakes, including chocolate ones.  There was some discussion about whether or not the red velvet ones had chocolate in them (I thought they did, but one of my friends said they don't, does anyone know?).  So I went for the cheesecake-like pie concoction that had fruit on the top and a few strawberries that had a cheese-cake like topping on them.  Fortunately, there was PLENTY of food at the baby shower so not having a cupcake wasn't too bad.  Unfortunately, Wednesday night, I was craving something sweet and I made monkey bread, which doesn't have chocolate in it, but it's so unhealthy, but so yummy.  I had to workout for 20 minutes after I ate it to make up for going over my calorie limit.  I am determined to do better with the calories (mainly because there's money involved; one of my friends organized a biggest loser contest). 
On an unrelated note, in wedding news, we think we've picked a dj.  One more thing to check off the list.  The list by the way makes me cry just a little each time I look at the total cost.  Let's not think about that right now...Focus on the positive.  :-)