Well, I am part Irish--I was a Murphy before I was a Ross. So we had corned beef with cabbage and Irish soda bread for dinner tonight. I'm sure you're wondering what is blog-worthy about such a dinner. After all, you need only throw the corned beef in a crock pot and buy a loaf of good soda bread. Ha ha. Remember that part in the previous paragraph where I was reading the Martha Stewart magazine? Yeah. Crock pot? Fat chance. Crock pot occurred to me only after I had been boiling the corned beef on the stove for over an hour. And, might I add, this was a 5-lb. corned beef brisket that I had cured myself.
That's right. I cured it myself.I started having second thoughts about the home-curing only after I had put the brisket in the curing solution (two weeks ago). It was only then that it occurred to me that I have never actually liked a single Martha Stewart recipe that I had tried. The curing solution smelled suspiciously like cinnamon. That was the only odor emanating from the brine. That was scary to me. (FYI, we Japanese don't usually dig on cinnamon in general.)
I was very skeptical. Then things got even scarier. Jake is very confident of my culinary skills. He invited his parents, two sisters, and brother-in-law to share in the Irish feast. That is fine, except that I have never made corned beef before, let alone having cured my own meat. I was really just hoping to not poison anyone.
Fortunately, things turned out fine. Corned beef tasted like corned beef. Cabbage tasted like cabbage. Irish soda bread tasted like Irish soda bread (actually, I can't really say this honestly because I don't really know what Irish soda bread tastes like).
Ellie was very helpful. She set the table all by herself. Amazing, I know, considering that she is still 2 years old. Here is her handiwork:
Then she got creative with the tuna. Imagine this on a larger scale, and you can imagine the state of my entire house on any given day.
She really thought she was doing me a favor, bless her heart.
Oh, yeah. She would also like you to know that she poopooed in the potty today and so she got some new Littlest Pet Shop bunnies. We're all quite pleased with her.
All in all, it was a pretty good St. Partick's Day. Don't hate me because I'm Irish.
2 comments:
I'm so impressed! (And, come to think of it, I've never been overly wow-ed by Martha's recipes either... yet I keep trying them....) Way to celebrate your Irish heritage!
Wow you cured your OWN corned beef! Wow, Jeff is always telling me he wants to and I just wonder why when you can just buy it that way! haha, it is his favorite meal, I made it for St. Patrick's day too, I thought about the soda bread but I decided I was being domestic enough. I won't tell Jeff you did all of that, he may just want to move in!
Post a Comment