Well hey there, Four Leaf Clover! Believe it or not, I’m sort of a St. Patty’s Day Scrooge. I’ve had the great misfortune of being woefully sober for the past several March seventeenths in a row… I always have a rehearsal or a work event or some sort of grandiose plan in store, and I ALWAYS find my abstemious self trapped on public transit at 5:00 p.m. when all my fellow CTA passengers start tossing their cookies/green beer/lucky charms. Plus last year, as I innocently made my way home from the grocery store with a ten pound pot of gold sack of organic produce, I momentarily found myself the victim of an especially handsy drunk. He grabbed my butt: I punched him in the face and was applauded by the entire outdoor seating section of a local bar.

It’s a shame, because I love festivity! I love day drinking! At least I love the idea of day drinking… but when grope comes to slug, I generally prefer that my days be reserved for… you know… accomplishing stuff. You know what part of St. Patrick’s Day I am down for, though? Green food! The kind of green food that’s green because it came out of the ground that way. Rather than focus all my inherent enthusiasm on downing pints of Guinness, I have very deliberately ensured that everything I’ve eaten so far today is green. As such, I bring you:

Leprechaun Juice (One Juiced Leprechaun)
Tons. of. kale (I used about half a bundle curly kale, and several leaves lacinato kale)
1 bunch green grapes
1 cucumber
1/4 stalk celery
1/2 large lime
1/2 green apple
1/2 cup packed basil

This makes about 1.5 liquid pounds of green goodness. It will make your insides so much happier than corned beef and cabbage. But because no girl can live on juice alone (for real, you can’t), you oughta chow down on this 100% green salad! Observe:

This puppy is spinach and baby kale, sunflower sprouts, chiffonaded basil, green grapes, edamame, pistachios, hemp seeds, lime juice, grapeseed oil, s + p. And hot damn! It was delicious!

The vast majority of my meals are salads: enormous, mixing bowl sized salads. The beauty of a salad is that, by its very definition, it’s an artful mess of different foods. I live and die by artful messes, and as such, I adore the endless variety and potential for creativity that each mixing bowl meal presents. If you, too, want to fall in love with three pound plates of green, I recommend this formula:

Greens
Bite-sized sweet things (chopped fresh fruit, dried fruit, pomegranate arils, etc.
Crunchy things (nuts, sesame sticks, roasted chickpeas, etc.)
Creamy stuff (avocado, hummus, nut cheese, dressing… I usually double up here with, for example, avocado and dressing… but I’m a wild woman)
A protein or two (edamame, tempeh, quinoa, etc.)

Boom. Get crazy and throw in some butternut squash or fresh herbs or crumbled raw crackers… (almost) instant awesome. And yes, on most days, we should strive to eat the rainbow. Maybe dinner will be an “At the End of the Rainbow” salad. But this is my version of  whiskey shots and emerald sequined booty shorts. So sláinte!

How are you celebrating this weekend? Did you know that sláinte means both “cheers!” and “health”? IS IT A SIGN?!

XOXO and shamrocks and Blarney Stones,
Rose