Simply Green St. Patrick's Day Meal

St. Patrick's Day is a fun holiday for food. I always enjoy making new St. Patrick's Day recipes. It's a lot easier that you may think. You can find lots of traditional Irish food recipes on the Internet. I don't typically make traditional Irish food. I like to go with the green theme more than anything else.

It's really easy to make food green. A little creativity and some green food coloring can make a really fun meal. All you have to do is think outside the box. For example, try adding green food coloring to your sweet or savory dishes, such as mashed potatoes or sugar cookies.

Appetizers and snacks are a cinch! Just think of finger foods that are green or that you can easily make green. Create a relish tray with pickles, celery, broccoli, green olives and dill dip. Or create a fruit tray full of green grapes, honeydew, kiwi, green apples and add fruit dip.

Here are some ideas for beverages:

Add a slice of lime, kiwi or green grapes to each well of an ice cube tray and then fill with water and freeze. You will have beautiful fruit embellished ice cubes in a few hours.

Fix a green drink mix such as tropical punch or lime Kool-Aid. Garnish the glasses with kiwi or lime slices or float green fruit pieces in a serving pitcher or glasses.

Here is a delicious and simple Irish inspired main dish:

Cabbage, Bacon and Potatoes

Ingredients:

1 head of cabbage

6-8 stripes of thick bacon

4 large potatoes

White pepper

Salt

1. Core cabbage and cut into quarters. Cook in boiling water for about 5 minutes to soften. Drain and set aside.

2. Wash 4 large potatoes and slice into ¼ inch pieces.

3. Cook 6-8 stripes of thick bacon in frying pan. Drain on paper towel.

4. Use the same pan you used to cook the bacon, add potatoes, white pepper and salt. Fry the potatoes slices in the bacon grease until golden brown and tender. (If there is a lot of bacon grease, take some out before adding the potatoes. You can add it back in later if you need too.)

5. While the potatoes are cooking, cut the cabbage into bit size pieces. When potatoes are fork tender, add the cabbage. Stir and cook for an additional minute or two to heat the cabbage back up. Put on serving platter.

6. Crumble the fried bacon and garnish potato and cabbage mixture.

A super simple dessert:

Green Jell-O with Fruit (make day before)

2 cups of boiling water

1 cup of cold water

1 pkg (8-serving size) lime flavored Jell-O gelatin

1 can (20 oz.) pineapple chunks, drained

1 tub (8 oz) Cool Whip whipped topping, thawed

Green food coloring

Stir 2 cups of boiling water into lime-flavored gelatin. Stir until gelatin is dissolved. Stir in 1 cup of cold water into gelatin mixture. Refrigerate for 1½ hours or until thickened. Add pineapple chunks to gelatin. Refrigerate until firm.

Add a few drops of green food coloring to thawed cool whip to turn it green. Serve up the Jell-O dessert with a dollop of green cool whip.