Green Pot Roast: A St Patrick's Day Failure

On St. Patrick’s Day 2008 I found myself as a new wife living in a new apartment with my new husband. I was doing my best to do accomplish all the things I thought a wife was suppose to do.  A big one was creating our own family traditions by celebrating all the holidays.  I heard about a homeschooling mom of three serving only green food on St Patty’s Day and I thought that sounded so fun.  I have a feeling she planned ahead and made foods that were not only easy to dye green, but were also still appetizing once they were dyed. 

At this point in our marriage, I only made about four meals that Jason would eat: tacos, hot dogs, frozen pizza, and pot roast.  None of these are good candidates for green food coloring, but I didn’t let that stop me. I filled up my new crock pot with carrots, potatoes and beef, added a healthy squirt of green food coloring and let it cook.   

When Jason came home from work, the apartment smelled amazing, as pot roast always does, and I was so excited to show him how creative I had been.  (“Creative” is not a word Jason likes to use to describe his food.)  As I served the meal, Jason caught a glimpse of the green potatoes.  I don’t remember what he said exactly, but if I could, I probably wouldn’t repeat it here.  Then I scooped up a carrot.  Dyed carrots just look like dirty carrots, but they were nothing compared to the meat.  In case you were wondering, beef that has been dyed green looks very strange.  It looks like something you could skim out of a pond.  It looks like pond scum.

Jason still teases me about our pond scum post roast.  So even though my St. Patty’s Day pot roast was a green failure, I created a memory and that’s a success.  (Don’t tell Jason, but I’ve already found the green food coloring for this year’s meal!  Surprise!)