Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day | 119

While not a landmark holiday, I love St. Patrick’s Day! In this episode, I’m going to run through a quick roundup of silly traditions you can carry out in addition to a roundup of fun recipes you can make on or leading up to the holiday. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi everybody. I'm Kelsey Nixon and this is Kitchen Prescription,
the podcast you listen to when you don't know what
to make for dinner. Today is episode one hundred and nineteen,
celebrating Saint Patrick's Day. We're officially in mid March, and
I don't know what it is, but this week has
felt like spring with a big dose of summer planning
mixed in. If you have young kids, you know that

(00:27):
like now is the time to begin booking summer camps
and activities and junior guard programs. In fact, I'm realizing
that it's almost as if I'm too late to the
game here mid March. It seems like it moves up
every single year. So if you're in spring but actual
summer planning mode and might even feel like you're still

(00:47):
in winter, it's a little bit of a conundrum. Anyways.
This month also is feeling a bit like the calm
before the storm. For the remainder of March, we operate
at our normal routine. April, we've got spring break and Easter,
and then we all know that May, which is often
known as May Somber, is one of the busiest months

(01:08):
of the year, with end of school performances and wrapping
up of spring sports and preparing to kick off summer.
So as a scheduled lover, I am relishing the final
two weeks of March before our schedule starts to jump
around again. Another's somewhat random thing I like about March
is Saint Patrick's Day. I'm not even Irish. I don't
think I'm Irish, but I think I like it because

(01:30):
it's a low key, low lift holiday that my kids
actually have a blast with. I especially think there's some
really fun food traditions surrounding this holiday that are easy
to kind of look forward to every year. So we're
gonna chat a bit about those. But first let's get
into a few recipe ideas you could throw on your
meal plan for the week. So I went a little

(01:51):
heavy on the green recipe planning, so bear with me.
Broccoli pesto pasta. I almost did not include broccoli in
the time. I don't have this recipe because I know
that we have some strong reactions to broccoli, But what's
awesome is it has broccoli in it, but you can't
taste the broccoli, and it is the most delicious pesto.

(02:12):
It's my favorite way to make pesto now because I
kind of sneak that added veggie element in it makes
it even greener, even brighter, and I really love the texture.
So broccoli pesta pasta, it's got a little lemon in it.
I top it with some crisp preshuto that I've tossed
with pasta, and it is just it's so delicious. So
that's on an our meal plan for this week. We

(02:34):
are also doing, along with our Irish theme, a baked
potato snackboard supper. So I'm going to bake up a
bunch of potatoes and almost do like a baked potato bar.
So I'm gonna do chili, I'm gonna have cheese, I'm
gonna have butter, I'm gonna have chives. I might even
throw some broccoli on that as well. Just however, you

(02:55):
could build your own baked potato. My kids are getting
a little bit more in to like build your own caesadilla,
build your own grain bowl. And I think this will
be fun and we can talk about Irish and potatoes
and anyways, I don't know, we don't even have to
talk about that, but it's a good excuse to pull
this recipe out of the archives into make a good

(03:15):
old fashioned baked potato snackboard. And then our final recipe
is the green chili chicken enchiladas. We have done the
taketos lately. We have done a skillet Nacho's lately, and
my family likes Mexican food enough that I like to
always try and schedule least one Mexican recipe in there.
And these ones are really good, so I make them

(03:35):
in a big skillet. But if you had a larger family,
you could take this exact same recipe and method and
do it on a big sheet pan. But they're really good,
really delicious, all right. They are your recipes for the week.
You can find and print them all in Recipe Club
individually or in our weekly meal plan with an easy
to follow shopping list where we break each recipe down
for you so that if you're only making two recipes

(03:56):
that week, you can quickly reference the shopping list. You
guys know, the Recipe Club is a resource that allows
you to access family tested recipes that are quick and simple,
and you don't have to be bombarded with banner ads,
long blog posts, or drawn out stories. I found accessing
recipes on the internet to be super frustrating, so I
intentionally created a space where I try and make it easier.

(04:19):
I tried to create the thing that I wish existed.
And we just got our wildly popular recipe binders back
in stock after them being out of stock for three months,
which means it's a great time to bundle a binder
with an annual membership because you saved twenty dollars. So
if you are looking for a simple dinner system to
put in place, especially before the months like may arrive

(04:42):
where things get extra crazy, now is a great time
to do that. All right, let's jump into the back
half of the podcast and discuss all of the things
I like to do for Saint Patrick's Day, landmark holiday.
I love Saint Patrick's Day. It is a low key,

(05:04):
low lift holiday for parents, and my kids actually love
dressing and green, avoiding pinchers, indulging in bowls of lucky charms,
and making leprechron traps. So, if you're listening to this
and thinking, all right, I don't have a ton of
bandwidth to throw at this holiday, but I can do
a few fun things today, I'm gonna run through just
a quick roundup of silly traditions you can carry out

(05:25):
in addition to a roundup of fun recipes you could
make on or leading up to the holiday. So let's
run through a quick list of very manageable silly traditions,
keeping in the mind that you certainly do not need
to do all of these. Pick one or two and
your kids will be thrilled. One thing I pretty consistently
do is I buy some gold coins, some chocolate gold coins.

(05:48):
I usually get my Net Trader Joe's. They're cheap, They're
like a dollar for a little set of them. But
when I actually asked my daughter Nora this morning, what
do what happens on Saint Patrick's say, I can't remember,
just like, oh, the gold coins, that was the first
thing she said. They're everywhere. I don't know that they're
going to be everywhere, but I am going to get
some of those. I'll probably throw one in their lunch,

(06:10):
But that is that's something that's an easy thing to
get to add to your grocery order for the week.
I will occasionally dye the milk and the toilet water
green with just a drop of green food coloring. And
that is particularly fun if you are going to have
lucky charms for breakfast. So you may have little's in
your house who you don't believe the Leprechaunts are real,

(06:33):
or you may have slightly older kids, but regardless, it's
still just kind of fun. Like I think even my
almost thirteen year old would be disappointed if he woke
up and there was white milk in the fridge on
Saint Patrick's Day. I think you still gets a kick
out of having the green milk and that box of
lucky charms to have a perfectly festive Saint Patrick's Day breakfast.

(06:54):
I have not always done this, but I think I
actually did it one year and they still remember, so
maybe I will do it. Is leaving little leprechawn footprints
with little green washable paint. I might even use a
Barbie shoe to do this, But whether that's in the
fridge next to the milk or on the toilet seat
next to the green toilet water, I know my four

(07:18):
year old almost five year old would particularly be thrilled
with this, so I will probably do that this year.
Of course, you got to pick out something green to
wear make a lepre con trap, and if you've got
artistic kids. I had to learn this the hard way,
I spent a lot of years buying lepre con trap kits,
and I'd spend ten fifteen bucks. Don't do that. Just

(07:39):
find a shoe box, some papers, some markers and let
them have at it. In fact, my girls work a
couple days out and my girls have already started on
the leprechaun trap, so that that is a fun activity.
And we have a book we always pull out called
how to Catch a Leprechaun, and usually we will read

(08:00):
the book right before we start the whole let's make
a leper contrap activity. So if you got little kids,
it might be worth getting a book like that where
you have the tradition of pulling it out and reading
every year. And sometimes the gold coins end up in
the leper contrap a lot. There's usually lots of rainbows involved.
The older they get, the more they actually want to

(08:21):
have little functions where if they step on this we
could catch them anyways. Green fingernails. This is inspired by
a bottle of Alphaba nail polish we have from all
of the Wicked Madness in the Fall, and it was
my daughter in Norse Ida's said we gotta do green
fingernails and toenails for Saint Patrick's Day, so we're going

(08:42):
to do that a few days in advance Saint Patrick's Day. Mischief.
This seems to be something that's always done in my
kids classrooms. They show up and the chairs are upside
down and the room kind of looks topsy turvy. That
is certainly something you could do in your own home
as well, or just leave it to the teachers, because
I that seems to be a go to for them.

(09:03):
Shamrock slime not in my house, but maybe in your house.
My kids would love it if I did shamrock slime,
but we kind of have a funny joke that I
am allergic to slime. My husband's allergic to glitter, so
they're not our favorite things. But you could even put
glitter in your shamrock slime. But don't tell my kids
because they'll feel left out. Okay, this is something I

(09:24):
think I'm gonna do this year. It feels a little extra,
but I just know my kids would love it, especially
my Penny, who's almost five. She's in a big rainbow face.
And so I am thinking that I'm going to do
colored ice cube, So like a standard ice cube tray,
fill it with water and then I will take food
coloring and do rainbow colored ice little individual ice cubes

(09:50):
so red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and so forth. Freeze
those and then for dinner or yeah, probably for dinner
on Saint Patrick's Day, you will hake those cubes, put
them in a big glass and they're gonna be all
the different colors and pour sprite over the top. And
I think they will think that is the coolest thing ever.

(10:10):
So that is an idea. I have a rainbow drink
with the colored ice cubes. And then I do try
and pack a greenish lunch. So I pull out all
our green stuff, green grapes at a mommy if we've
got snap peas or kiwi. Sometimes I'll take like a
shamrock cookie cutter and make their lunch sandwich in the
shape of a shamrock. Or I'll do vegetables or fruit

(10:33):
and rainbow order. But my girls in particular really like that.
All right, now, let's chat about a few more specific
food options you could carry out from our Holiday Hub
and Recipe Club. So I love food around the holidays,
and so in Recipe Club, I build something called the
Holiday Hub, and for every month of the year, we

(10:53):
focus on a holiday and do a set holiday menu.
So in our Saint Patrick's Day category, we've got a
couple of different recipes, some that we've already talked about
because they're on my meal plan for the week. But
I've got the broccoli pesta pasta. If you are just
going for I just want to make something green for
dinner on Saint Patrick's Day or the day before, that
one would be great. Especially you could serve it with

(11:15):
grilled chicken or even a rotisserie chicken to make things simple.
A classic beef stew. We actually had this last night.
It's the perfect meat and potatoes winter meal, and so
if you were just looking to lean into potatoes, this
would be great. Now you could use corn beef in
this recipe too. I do not love corn beef, and

(11:38):
occasionally over the years I've been tempted to buy the
corn beef dinner at Trader Joe's just for the sake of,
I don't know, celebrating. I don't like it. So classic
beef stew is good enough for me when it comes
to meat and potatoes. Another potato idea is I have
a loaded baked potato chowder in recipe Club that is
so delicious. It is an awesome, awesome bas of a

(12:01):
potato soup and you just loaded up like you would
loaded baked potato. It's really good. We've talked about the
baked potato board, which we're doing this week. Roasted rainbow
vegie bowles. So these if you like a warm bowl
or like a warm salad, this recipe is delicious. It
it uses potatoes, it uses a bunch of different root vegetables,

(12:24):
and it's got a base of greens and some grains.
And then the real star of the show though, is
this green dressing. It's bright green, and it's citrusy, and
it is got cilantro in it and is so so good.
So roasted rainbow vegeta bowls. If you're wanting something more traditional,
like a traditional salad, make our rainbow bootables. Don't confuse

(12:48):
the two. Basically, the roasted rainbow vege balls are warm,
and I would say a little hardier and more maybe
appropriate for dinner. But the rainbow bootables are like a
great thing to meal prep and have throughout the week.
Lots of veggies, a citrus cilantro of vinagrettes, and it
just looks as good as it tastes. It's so pretty.

(13:08):
For some sweeter things, a rainbow fruit board where you
take a bunch of different fruit, everything from strawberries to pineapple, grapes, clementines,
and then I make this caramel yogurt dip that's a
Greek yogurt base, and then you make almost like a
faux caramel. It's got brown sugar, a little maple syrup
in it's some vanilla, and you swirl it into the

(13:30):
yogurt and it becomes a nice sweet dip for dipping fruit.
And that is just especially if you're doing any hosting.
It's a really fun thing to pull together. And then
this past weekend we did rainbow waffles. And I will
take a traditional round Belgian waffle maker and just use
half of it so that it's in the shape of
a rainbow one side of the waffle, and then chop

(13:53):
up fruit in the different colors, and then add the
fruit on top of the waffle and do big round
clouds on each end so that it looks like a rainbow.
And then you can drizzle that golden maple syrup over
the top and you have got a very festive breakfast
or dessert waffle to do with your kids. So there
you have it. A few very simple ideas. Like I said,

(14:16):
it's a long lift holiday, it's not you know, it's
it's not one that we particularly focus on, but I
do seem to have fun with it every year. It's
not that stressful. But if you especially if you've got
like elementary aged kids, this is one. This is one
to just do a few things and it really pays off.
All right. Finally, let's finish with a weekly guinea five.

(14:38):
These are five things that made my life easier or
more enjoyable this week. The first being one of the
more indulgent things I have bought from my kitchen. I'm
a little embarrassed, but if I'm being honest, it's a
kitchen splurge I'm glad I made. And it is called
the Ionic Brush Set, and it is a set of

(14:59):
three dishwashing brushes like brushes that use to wash your
dishes on this magnetic kind of platform. They are so sleek,
they look so good, they look like they're supposed to
be in your kitchen. They function so well, but it
is expensive. I spend one hundred dollars on it, and
I thought about it. I bought this singular one that

(15:19):
was like thirty dollars and really loved it, and I
kept replacing the brushead and ultimately I was like, I
want the full set. I want the full set. So
I treated myself for as many dishes as I do
as a professional recipe developer, I was like, you know what,
this is a business expense? Is what this is. For
as many dishes as I do, I deserve the Ionic

(15:40):
brush set. But if you're looking for anything to make
dishes feel a bit more enjoyable, check out this company.
They're called Curioc and they have really smart, well designed,
cool products for the kitchen. To go along with that,
I also re ordered my favorite foaming dish shop now

(16:01):
a couple years ago. You guys know, I think it's
called the Powerwash, the down the Dawn Powerwash, and I
swear revolutionized dish soap. It's so much easier. The ergonomics
of pulling the trigger and having that foam spray out,
My goodness, that's a nice experience. But if I'm being honest,
the Dawn brand, which tends to be the most popular

(16:24):
and probably the one you're seeing the most, I do
not love the sense and they have one that is
free and clear, but I swear it's still assistant that
I am just not a fan of. And so in fact,
that's what's downstairs, and it's what I've been using because
they sell it at Costco and I can get it,
you know, for a pretty good deal. But I with
the arrival of my new dishbrushes, I was like, you

(16:45):
know what, I don't know what that soap? I really like.
The brand is nine Elements and it's a natural dish soap.
It I saw it works. Every bit is good when
it comes to cutting grease, but it's got kind of
a very mild lemon smells as to what feels I
don't know, just like more artificial with the don kind.
And it comes in a bottle that is not bright blue.

(17:08):
And you know that would not be important to some people,
but I am not embarrassed or ashamed to admit that
it matters. To me. It looks a bit more chic.
Dare I say so? Nine Elements natural Dishope, I've gotten
at a Target, I've gotten a Walmart. Get it on Amazon.
But I really like it. Next because we made those
rainbow waffles and I had such a good time. Penny

(17:30):
did it with me in fact, I made a little
real about it if you want to go watch on Instagram.
But I added my queensin Art Belgian waffle maker. So
I have two waffle makers now, once again necessary, I
don't know, but that's who I am. I'm a two
waffle maker kind of girl. This is the one that
I've had the longest, and it's got over ten thousand
positive five star reviews on Amazon and it's really good.

(17:53):
The other one I have is a bit fancier. It's brevel.
It's really like really deep, and that feels like more
special occasion if you're looking for like weekend waffle staple.
This Queasinart Belgian waffle maker is awesome. My sister bought
the same one and she will off a note to me.
I love that waffle maker. Sometimes you know you've got it,

(18:15):
like what five ten years with the waffle maker, and
then it just needs to be refreshed. But these make
those darling rainbow waffles. That's what we did, and this
weekend would be a perfect time to do that. Along
the rainbow theme, I found a set of new highlighters
that I'm using at my desk. I use highlighters every
day because it is not probably not surprising to you

(18:37):
that I'm a list maker and I often have a
list for personal family stuff and professional stuff or work stuff.
And so every day I pick two colors and as
I check things off the list, rather than just doing
a check mark, it gets a brush of the highlighter.
And I have a personal color and work color every day.
And these my families a Target. They're just very pretty

(19:01):
colors and to see them stacked up at my desk
really does just thrill me, so I included them. They're
rainbow and they are could be a fun thing to
pick up the next thing you go to Target. And
then finally, because we're mid March, it is a bit
of spring cleaning season, and this is another thing I
reordered this week is my Force of Nature cleaning pods.

(19:22):
So you've probably heard me talk about this. It's a
favorite product of mind. But Force of Nature is it's
a cleaning it's a multipurpose cleaner. It is electrilized water.
It kind of sounds like snake oil, but it's not.
It's amazing. The thing I love about it is it
doesn't really have a strong fragrance. It kind of smells
like bleach, which to me just smells clean. But you

(19:45):
just regular tap water and then you add these little capsules.
It's like a salt vinegar mixture. And then you use
this little device and electrilyizes the water and it turns
it into this cleaning solution that is super safe, super effective.
And I use it everywhere in my kitchen. I use
it inside my refrigerator. I use it inside my kids lunchboxes.

(20:07):
I wiped down my counters with it every night. I
clean my sink with it. I spray it in my dishwasher.
I sprayed in my garbage cans. It is. I love it.
I love it, LEVEL love it. So I just had
to reorder some pods, but it's way less expensive than
like buying traditional countertop spray, and I just feel like
I can use it for so many different things. All Right,
that's it for today. Make sure you subscribe to the

(20:28):
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meant to be just quick, twenty to thirty minute listen
while you map out your own wheels for the week,
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If you are finally looking to get that system in
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(20:52):
you can save twenty dollars doing that, and we would
love to have you come cook in the club with us.
Thanks so much for listening today. I'm so glad you're here,
and hell next time, happy cooking. I'm Kelsey and look
forward to chatting with you all next week.