Corned Beef and Cabbage FAIL

I love Saint Patrick's Day. I am pretty heavily Irish, I mean my maiden name begins with O', a dead give away! One of my grandmothers was 100% Irish, and her husband was at least half (my real dad's parents). My mom always went out of her way to make the holiday special for me even though she has no Irish blood. She would make corned beef and cabbage and Irish Soda bread and all sorts of things. Did I mention Ryan and I met for the first time at a Saint Patrick's Day Party???

You catch my drift at this point. It is one of my favorite holidays.

So I was pretty excited to cook my first big Saint Patrick's Day dinner.

I went to Trader Joes after work on Wednesday and got all the essentials. Potatoes, onions, carrots, Irish Soda Bread (aka Blarney Scone! Hahahahaha... sorry) and Irish Butter. I just needed the actual corned beef. After wandering the store a bit I found the meat wall and got my five pound slab. It was already in a marinade with these giant peppercorns and big bay leaves and other things. Here I am thinking, "Sweet! One less thing to do!" So I get my stuff and go home.

After dinner that night I throw it all together in the crock pot. I paused a moment and debated rinsing off the beef and making my own marinade but... nahhhh. It would probably be better! Trader Joe's hasn't failed me yet!

Oh, but it did. Mistake one.

I throw it all in the crock pot and see the cabbage sitting aside. I am not a huge cabbage fan and my crock pot isn't huge, so I thought I would cheat and get shredded cabbage.

Mistake two.

I wake up the next morning, get the crock pot out of the fridge, and turn it on low.

All day I was so excited. Ryan would have his first home made corned beef and cabbage and our friends were coming over, it would be great. Well Lauren and Russ ended up not making it ( :( ) as Lauren got stuck at work, but we did wait til after 8 for them. I figured after nearly 13 hours in the crock pot this meat would be fall apart fantastic.

Oh, so so wrong.

The spices took over! Why did I not listen to my instincts and rinse the darn thing!? It permeated the vegetables and my poor shredded cabbage, mistake number two, was wilted and brown in the rubble. Oh crap. I tried to pour the juices out to reduce it to a sauce and ended up with cornstarch congealed blobs in potpourri water. So we skipped the sauce.

Ryan, bless him, was praising me up and down and eating it and saying it was delicious. As I chewed my Blarney Scone I looked at him and said,

"It's awful. I taste it too you know!"

"No, no it's not!"

Pointed look from me goes here.

"Ok, maybe just the vegetables...."

Ugh.

I felt so bad! The meat for some reason was not fall apart tender. It was rough. The flavor there was ok but the veggies were like cooked potpourri. It was terrible. We ate the meat with spicy mustard and lots of bread and butter, but the veggies were left basically. Anyone ever see Back to the Future 3? Remember when Marty is back in time and his great-great-great grandfather serves him rabbit he just hunted for and he takes a bite and spits little bullets onto his plate? That was us, with peppercorns or whatever the hell they were.

After we felt bad throwing out the veggies but they were inedible! What a waste :( But Ryan opened a bottle of White Zinfindel and I felt better.

And as Ryan put it, "Don't worry my love, you can practice again next year!"