Maybe This Chowder Will Bring You Luck
Top o’ the morning to you on this fine day of laughing with leprechauns, searching for shamrocks and celebrating with the Irish.
Donna Hopkins, librarian at Jefferson Elementary School in Spokane, shares some special books with her wee ones this week in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.
So that you don’t miss out on the fun, here’s a synopsis of one of her books, all about that humble vegetable, the potato.
Tomie dePaola’s “Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992) is a humorous Irish folk tale about possibly the laziest - and cleverest - man in all of Ireland.
Jamie is forced to consider alternatives when his wife, Eileen, is laid up in bed. They will starve, he worries, since there is no one to dig up the “praties” (potatoes) all winter.
As luck would have it, Jamie chances upon a leprechaun and captures him. The leprechaun, in order to secure his freedom, convinces Jamie that his best hope is to wish for the biggest pratie in the world instead of settling for a pot of gold. Jamie will have food all winter and will only have to plant the seed, water it and wait.
So Jamie plants the potato seed and it grows to a monstrous size. All the villagers help dig it out of the ground. They end up sawing and chopping off chunks of the potato to take home and eat.
As you can imagine, no one wants to see or hear of a potato again after that winter since there was so much of it.
Come spring, Jamie decides to plant the one potato eye he has saved.
“Oh, no!” the villagers all cried. “If you promise not to plant it, Jamie, we’ll promise before St. Patrick and all the saints to see that you and Eileen always have plenty to cook and eat. We don’t want another giant pratie around here!”
So Jamie agrees and his wife, bless her heart, admits that Jamie was not such a fool with the leprechaun after all.
Potatoes for St. Patrick’s Day dinner? The “eyes” have it!
Corned Beef Chowder
From the March 1999 issue of JoAnna Lund’s Healthy Exchanges Food Newsletter.
1 cup finely chopped onion
1 (15-ounce) can sliced potatoes, drained and diced
2 (2.5-ounce) packages pressed corned beef, shredded
2 (10-3/4-ounce) cans reduced-fat tomato soup
2 cups skim milk
2 teaspoons dried parsley flakes
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
In a medium saucepan sprayed with butter-flavored cooking spray, saute onion, potatoes and corned beef for 8-10 minutes. Stir in tomato soup, skim milk, parsley flakes and peas. Mix well to combine. Lower heat and simmer for 5-8 minutes, stirring often.
Yield: 4 servings.
Nutrition information per serving: 297 calories, 5 grams fat (15 percent fat calories), 46 grams carbohydrate, 17 grams protein, 5 grams dietary fiber, 904 milligrams sodium.