Recipe: Copycat Shamrock Shakes

Copycat McDonald’s Shamrock Shakes

2 Cups of Vanilla Ice cream (or your dairy free alternative)

1 ½ Cups of Milk (or your dairy free alternative)

¼ tsp peppermint extract (or a shot of some leftover peppermint alcohol from Christmas)

Green food colouring

Whipped cream (or topping alternative)

Cherries and sprinkles for garnish

1.       Blend the ice cream, milk and extract in a blender until smooth;

2.       Add food colouring and pulse until it’s mixed in;

3.       Pour into your glass of choice;

4.       Top with the whipped cream, sprinkles and cherry.

5.       Enjoy!

Few additional tip:

-          When choosing your ice cream, choose a brand that specifically calls itself ICE CREAM. If it is not called ice cream, the ingredient list is going to be LONG, hard to pronounce and may not have ANY cream in it. (This tip does not apply clearly if you are using a dairy alternative)

-          Gradually add the food colouring in until you are happy with the colour.

-          Use real cherries not the maraschino ones- my chef instructor in college HATED maraschino cherries with an undying passion and that’s always stuck with me. Plus now it’s healthy!

Sustainability: Making your meat go further

I’m sure you’ve also noticed the price of meat has gone up quite substantially in the last year or so.

There’s a few reasons for that, mainly a lot of meat processing plants are getting hit with COVID-19 and a lot of the workforce is of course getting sick.

A little while ago, in an effort to make the household more sustainable along with the plastic elimination, moved to purchasing meat from local sources only- this has also proven to be expensive but ironically not nearly as bad with the rise of grocery store prices. That’s made me feel a lot better financially about my choices- if I’m going to spend $10/ LB on ground beef I’d rather give that $10 to the farm down the road.

Nonetheless it’s still a lot to dish out for one meal when you have a family - I’ve started experimenting with different ways to make the meat we do purchase go a little further.

For Taco’s, it’s been the easiest, along with a pound of beef I’ll fry up a few cups of black beans. You can also put them through a meat grinder to match the consistency- but my partner isn’t a fan of the texture so I keep them whole.

Another great filler is zucchini chopped up- this fries up beautifully and will add diversity to the flavor of your tacos.

Together we have a full pan that’s ready to feed the family! I finished off my taco with a double shell (soft and hard) sour cream, cheese, cut up kale and tomatoes from the garden and Homemade salsa.

This may be an unpopular opinion but I actually enjoyed this taco more than others because there was more flavor along with the meat! Even of we get to a point where affordability isn’t an issue anymore I still want to cut my beef with vegetables.

Let me know in the comments what you do to make your meat go a little further! Not exclusive to taco fillings! I want to hear them all.