How To Eat Greener: Healthy Food Tips For Saint Patrick's Day

Millions of Irishmen and women from all over the world will be marking Saint Patrick's Day in the coming week. Whether you are hosting a huge party for Saint Patrick's Day, or are simply going to mark the Irish holiday within your own family, remember that you'll need healthy dishes and treats to offset all that Guinness beer!

You would be surprised how many wonderfully green options you have to choose from. We'll cover everything from lunch to dinner, and from snacks to desert and drinks. There is no question that you will have ideas on what treats to serve. The only question you'll have is what not to make for this beautifully green holiday.

Saint Patty's Smoothie

There's no better way to start the day than with a smoothie! Take a cup of milk, two cups of vanilla ice cream, and add a bunch of kiwis and fresh mint to the mix. Use your blender to complete the magic, and you've got a real vitamin bomb that is relatively healthy, despite the ice cream. Did I mention that this surprising combination is rather tasty, too? You'll find vitamins C, K, A and folate in kiwis, as well as potassium, magnesium and calcium. Mint is rich in vitamin C and carotenes.

Shamrock Pizzas

For lunch, Shamrock pizzas will get everyone into the spirit of Saint Patrick's Day. Making your own pizza dough is the healthiest option, and it really isn't hard to do or even very time-consuming. You will need four cups of the flour of your choice (you can go wholemeal if you really like it healthy!), as well as fresh yeast, sugar, salt and olive oil.

To start off with, mix your fresh yeast into a bowl of lukewarm water with a teaspoon of sugar. Let it stand for about 10 minutes, until you see that the mixture is starting to froth, and is therefore active. Then, pour the mixture into a standing mixer with dough hooks, add in three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and start adding your flour little by little — using your mixer's lowest setting. If you prefer, you can obviously choose to kneed the dough by hand instead.

After you get a nice, smooth dough mixture (add more flour or water as needed, you'll see when the dough is right), gently shape your dough into a round shape. Let rise for an hour, covered with a damp cloth.

While your dough is rising, you can start working on the tomato sauce. You can use canned tomatoes. Start with a little bit of olive oil and finely chopped garlic. Then add the canned tomatoes, and some salt and pepper to taste. Wait for most of the fluids to evaporate so that you have a nice, solid tomato sauce for your pizza. Once your pizza dough has risen to twice its size, you are ready to add the tomato sauce and grate a hard cheese of your choice on top.

Done? Now, it is time for the “shamrocks” — green bell peppers thinly sliced into rings. For the stem of the shamrock, cut a bit of the bell pepper into a rectangle. If you would like to create a bigger feast, fresh rocket is always great on top of a pizza. You can actually find types of rocket that vaguely resemble a shamrock too. Do remember not to place rocket in the oven. Instead, add it once your pizza is done.

Saint Patrick's Day Recipes: Green Or Truly Irish

Snacks For Big And Little Folks

Are you going to have kids at your Saint Patrick's Day do? 

While green food coloring isn't exactly the most healthy thing around, it is probably inevitable if you want to make cookies or cakes. I like green chocolate chip cookies with some mint extract. You can also try meringues, or cupcakes in rainbow colors to represent the rainbows, to remind everyone of leprechauns and the coins they hide near those.

For grown-ups and those who have issues with food coloring, you may prefer to stick to a display of fresh fruits in many colors, arranged in the shape of a rainbow and with chocolate coins in a pot at one end.

Savory snacks could include crackers with cream cheese, with slices of cucumber shaped into shamrocks on top. Stuffed boiled eggs with guacamole add another piece of green food to your party, and go well with any type of beer or Irish whiskey — which you will definitely be enjoying on Saint Patrick's day!

Dinner — Colcannon, Of course!

Colcannon is a truly delicious Irish take on mashed potatoes. What's more, there is plenty of green there too. While anyone celebrating Saint Patrick's Day has a huge array of dishes to choose from, I really think you should make colcannon for dinner.

Use eight large potatoes, about four lbs, as your base to serve four to five people. You will also need a lovely green kale cabbage along with a bunch of scallions, milk, an egg, butter (real butter, not margarine!) and salt and pepper. Follow these steps:

• Peel and boil your potatoes. They'll boil faster if you chop them into smaller parts.

• Chop a head of kale into strips and boil, until they are a little softer than they were. Don't deadboil your kale, or it will lose some of its taste and nutrients. Kale is naturally a powerful antioxidant that is rich in vitamins C, K, A, B6 and E. It also has some great minerals: calcium, iron and magnesium among others. Let's leave that goodness in and keep the kale a bit crunchy.

• Mash your potatoes. Add in butter, a bit of milk, and a raw egg. All these things will make your colcannon more creamy.

• Stir your kale into the mashed potatoes, and add rings of chopped scallions as well. Your colcannon will look beautiful! Some people choose to put chives or parsley on top, but this is optional.

Are you a real carnivore? Bacon or ham apparently go well with colcannon. I haven't tried this myself since I am a vegetarian, but I do know that you should prepare your meat before you start boiling the potatoes.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to you all!