Crock Pot Corned Beef and Cabbage

Happy St. Paddy's Day!!!  So for St. Paddy's Day I made Corned Beef and Cabbage, I had been wanting to make it for years and figured now that I'm cooking a bit more why not?  Other then it's a bit more points then I normally have at a sitting. But the extra points are worth it because this was tasty, very very tasty, and it has made quite a few tasty lunches for me since then as well.  I found quite a few recipes for this and mixed them all together.  I read some recipes that said to use water, some said apple juice, while others said beer.  I ended up using Cider which wasn't on any of the recipes I found but it seemed like a good mixture of apple juice and a beer like substance.  It was very very good, so I think I'll always make it with that.  Plus then we have five more bottles to drink (but it is 3 points a bottle)!

________________________

Crock Pot Corned Beef and Cabbage

Ingredients:

2 onions, chopped

2 lb. corned beef brisket with seasoning packet
12 oz. bottle of apple cider
2 Tbsp. yellow mustard
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup water
1/2 head of cabbage

Preparation:

In 4-6 quart crockpot, place in onions. Rinse corned beef under cold running water and pat dry with paper towels. Place in crockpot and sprinkle with contents of seasoning mix (I bought the kind that had the seasoning already with the corned beef so I just plopped the whole thing in on top of the onions). Pour cider over brisket and spread mustard on brisket. In small bowl mix brown sugar with water and pour over brisket. Cover crockpot and cook on high setting for 6-8 hours.

Remove corned beef from crockpot and cover with foil to keep warm. Add cabbage wedges to vegetables and liquid in crockpot. Cover crockpot and cook on high for additional hour or until cabbage is crisp tender.

To serve, cut corned beef across grain into thin slices. Remove vegetables from slow cooker with slotted spoon and serve with corned beef. Serve cooking juices over the food, if desired. Offer additional mustard on the side. 8 servings, 7 pts per serving.

To add to the meal I also pealed potatoes and steamed them in the microwave and then put them in the juices for about 20 minutes to soak up the flavors after I took the cabbage out.  After taking the potatoes out I boiled the juices to thicken the sauce for left overs.  Adding the potatoes adds 2 pts per cup of potatoes.  So all in all it was a 9 pt dinner for me.

Baked Cauliflower... Yummy!

Dinner consisted of left over Apricot chicken from Olive Garden stir fried with broccolli and served with baked cauliflower sprinkled with garlic power and cheese.  The full serving of Apricot Chicken is 7 pts and I always eat one piece of chicken one day and then cut up and stir fry the other peice with some broccolli for dinner so it's only 3.5 pts.   

I've never been a huge fan of cauliflower, but then I suppose I've only really had it raw in party trays for the most part.  Or from time to time I had it steamed or boiled when I was younger which I didn't really enjoy either.  Turns out if you bake it at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes they get a nice flavor and are pretty tasty.  I sprayed the cookie sheet with olive oil cooking spray, cut up the cauliflower and then sprayed them with the olive oil cooking spray as well.  Sprinkled some garlic power on top and then cooked for 20 minutes.  After they were soft but crisp when poked with a fork I added a little mexican shredded cheese to the top and let it melt.  It was very very tasty.   Maybe it's just my taste buds changing, who knows, but they were good and they made great left overs for lunch the next day.

My weight watchers leader says you can bake any vegetable at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes and it will turn out tasty.  I'm not sure that will fix some of the vegetables I really can't stand (like bell peppers), but it did seem to work well for cauliflower.