Food, Birthdays, More Food...

Corned beef and cabbage! This year for St. Patrick's Day I decided to make corned beef and cabbage. I have never made it before but I had a recipe to make it in the crock pot. Bought the corned beef, cabbage, red skin potatoes, onion and carrots at the store. Thankfully corned beef was on sale that week. I started in the morning peeling carrots and cleaning off the potatoes. In the crock pot I put in 2 or 3 cups of water and 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 1/2 tablespoons of cider vinegar. The recipe called for 3 tablespoons of each but I was worried about the taste. I put the corned beef on the bottom and added the spice packet to it, then added the potatoes, carrots and onion. Put the crock pot on high and let it cook from around 9:30am until noon.

At noon I added the cabbage. I sliced it into quarters then cooked it until around 5pm. It all turned out so yummy! I was really proud of that fact! The kids really enjoyed the meat and carrots. The vinegar and sugar really made the flavor in this recipe. The carrots were devoured at dinner so we had none for leftovers the next day. We had a lot of meat which made for a yummy lunch and dinner the next day.

The next day was my birthday. Mark was still on the road so I made my mom's recipe for sour cream coffee cake. We were planning to go to knitting group and taking it with us but just as it was coming out of the oven I got an email that one of the children at the house we were heading to was sick. Soon after I got another email inviting all the healthy knitters to another friend's house. We headed over there but we were the only ones that showed up. My kids had a great time playing there and we all had some coffee cake but I basically ended up taking all of it home.

The next week we were back to our regular knitting spot. Another email was sent out this time asking for someone to bring something yummy to eat. I said I would so I set off to make another coffee cake. This one was easier and was almost like a banana bread. Ingredients included crushed pineapple, smooshed bananas, pecans, vanilla and the usual flour, baking powder, etc.

We had two more knitters that time but only one of them actually tried a full piece. One didn't try any, one had a very small slice. I took home 98% of it even though the lady that actually tried it said it was delicious. I don't mind baking things for knitting group, in fact I kinda like it, but if you're going to request a baked good and then not eat it then I get a little upset. It was, for the most part, a waste of food and money. I was not going to eat all this and neither were the kids. Needless to say, I am not making anything else for knitting group any time soon.

On a funny note, Mark's birthday is ten days before mine. Gifts usually depend on our financial situation. This year Mark and I each got a watch. Granted they were not expensive but we both needed one and we found nice ones that were on sale. At first Mark was looking at Citizen watches. He had one before but it finally died and no one has been able to revive it. When the sales lady starting giving prices for them I started to laugh! Yeah, not this year! Mark did find a nice and less expensive watch. Mine was even less then his and I think it is a good looking one. Of course, no pictures because I can't get my act together. Now on to the actual funny bit...I talked to Mark several times on my birthday. I kept waiting for the "happy birthday, honey." Never got it. I really wasn't upset because I knew he was distracted on the road. The next day when he called I asked him if he knew what the day before had been. "Shit, honey. I'll buy you something!" I swear that is exactly what he said! Made me laugh :-)