Broke Kitchen: Holiday Edition

I love holidays.  Growing up, my mom always made every holiday special, and that is something I have carried on into my adult life.  Since I recently moved into a new house, I decided to have a dinner party for St. Patrick's day.  Normally my mother would make a nice Irish stew for St. Patty's, and I was planning on doing the same.  But hosting a dinner party on a budget is no easy task.  Luckily, if there is one thing the Irish know how to do, it's feed a crowd on a shoestring.  While at the store, I noticed how cheap corned beef and cabbage were!  Partially it was because they were on sale for the holiday, but it was still a better bargain than buying all the ingredients for stew.  So, corned beef and cabbage it was.  Although I AM a good Irish girl, I have actually never made, or maybe even eaten corned beef and cabbage.  Weird, right?  Well, Wikipedia told me that corned beef and cabbage is a distinctly Irish-American dish, so I guess my Irish-American family missed out on that memo, who knows?

Anyway, I had to go searching for a recipe, and I found one that sounded pretty good HERE.  Later I realized that I probably hadn't gotten enough meat, so I ran back to the store to pick up some more.  I decided to make the dish both ways, traditional and non traditional.  Traditional is basically simmering the roast for 2 hours, then boiling the cabbage in the same water.  However, everyone agreed that the non-traditional way was more delicious, hands down. 

Stick about 12 cloves into the meat, then slather with hot honey mustard and sprinkle with brown sugar.  Wrap in foil and bake at 350 for about 2 hours.   Take off the foil and broil for about 15 minutes so that the roast gets nice and brown on top.

Chop up the cabbage into strips and then heat up some olive oil with chopped garlic and onions.  Throw in the cabbage and saute it until it gets nice and brown.  Waaay better than boiled.

Total for this meal:

Corned Beef - $5.47

Cabbage: $1.08

Sweet Honey Mustard: $1.50

Cloves: .10 cents ( bulk spices are your friends!)

Olive oil, onions and garlic from stockpile

Total meal cost under $10!  Not bad for a dinner party! :)

Now dessert was a different story...but that's another post.

Happy St. Patty's everyone!