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Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day for less

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By Elaine Morris Roberts Updated 6:55 PM Tuesday, March 9, 2010

With St. Patrick’s Day comes an opportunity to show off your budget savviness and celebrate on the cheap.

It doesn’t cost much to have fun with traditional Irish food or the more playful interpretation — green food and drink.

The standard Irish dinner of corned beef and cabbage is delicious and inexpensive.

An interesting take on the expected is colcannon, a dish in which the potatoes are mashed, then mixed with the chopped, boiled cabbage. Various interpretations contain butter, chives, parsley and chopped ham or Irish bacon.

Irish soda bread, leavened with baking soda instead of yeast, is simple and can be made with ingredients most of us have on-hand.

Check out Irish recipes at foodnetwork.com, bhg.com and allrecipes.com.

With one bottle of green food coloring — available for under $1 — you can have loads of fun.

Add only a couple of drops to turn a glass of milk or clear soda green. For an unexpected treat, pour green milk over your children’s favorite breakfast cereal.

Green frosting can top cakes, cupcakes and cookies while green whipped cream will add some fun to all sorts of desserts.

If you decide to create green foods, remember lighter-colored items work best. Dark liquids and foods will often look muddy and unappetizingly spoiled or moldy.

Yogurt, sour cream and cream cheese work well, too, as do mashed potatoes, rice or pasta. Eggs are a natural (just ask Dr. Seuss).

The shamrock, a ubiquitous symbol of the holiday, has been considered a good luck symbol by the Irish for generations.

According to legend, St. Patrick told his followers a three-leaf clover represented the Christian Trinity. Other legends tell of the four-leaf clover representing hope, faith, love and luck.

To share a little luck with your friends, regardless of their national heritage, make simple shamrock cards using a heart-shaped cookie cutter (about 2 inches in size), a potato (or kitchen sponge), some green paint and white card stock.

Cut pieces of card stock about 4 inches by 6 inches. You can adjust the card size according to the size of your cookie cutter.

Cut the potato in half, then press the cookie cutter into the potato. Use a small knife to carefully carve a raised relief of the heart so it looks like a rubber stamp. If you use a sponge, trace the heart onto the sponge and cut out the shape.

To make a shamrock, you’ll print three or four hearts, joined in the center of the shamrock by the pointed ends with the rounded portions spreading out like leaves.

To print, cover the surface of your stamp with green acrylic paint, then press it onto the paper.

Add a stem using a paintbrush, cotton swab or your finger.

Check out familyfun.go.com for this and other crafty ideas.

Once the cards are dry, write a message — personal, funny, clever — on them and deliver.

Turn them into wearable art by delivering with a large safety pin — your cards might be the most appreciated gift of the day if they keep some from receiving the pinch that comes with forgetting to wear green.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0371 or elroberts@coxohio.com.

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