The Irish Festival

We missed Tallahassee's St. Patrick's Day parade today, but we did make it downtown for part of the Irish Festival. We took the 3 year old, that I babysit for, with us and she had the best time, dancing in front of the bands, playing with hula hoops and balloons, and riding on DH's shoulders.





The band at the end of the second video is Krooked Kilts. They have a facebook page that can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/Krookedkilts

Lamb Hash

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here is a recipe I created last night, using the Irish inspired foods that were on sale at our local grocery store this week.




Lamb Hash

1 pound ground lamb

1 cup finely chopped onion (about 1 medium onion)

1 cup finely chopped mushrooms (optional)

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or put through a garlic press

two parboiled red potatoes, diced

Salt and pepper to taste


In a large frying pan, fry the lamb and onions together. Stir frequently with a fork, to break apart the meat so it doesn't clump together. When the meat is fully cooked, but not brown, and the onions are translucent, drain off the excess grease. Add all the other ingredients. Use a pancake turner to flip and stir the mixture until the potatoes and meat start to brown.

Serve with eggs for breakfast, or what I did, which was serve it in a raw cabbage leaf for dinner. Blaze likes raw vegetables, but not cooked ones. Besides getting a vegetable into Blaze's diet, the cabbage leaf also made eating more fun, because he could roll the hash up in the leaf burrito style.

The Leprechaun Trap

There has been a lot of creative building going on this week, because Blaze and his friends have been busily making leprechaun traps. The one they've been working on during recess at school is made of natural materials found around the playground.



The one Blaze made at home is made out of a cardboard box, painted green. A trail of gold painted rocks leads up to the trap and the largest of the gold rocks serves as the bait inside the trap.





The friendly leprechaun on the front of the trap hides a stick that is tied to a string, which goes over a small pulley, and is then tied to the gold bait rock. When the leprechaun pulls on the rock, the stick will fall, causing the box to fall, and trap the leprechaun inside.

The trap sits in the most lush and inviting patch of clover we could find.

The Pot of Gold Cupcake

When I saw these rainbow candies at a candy store in St. Augustine a few days ago, I got all excited about using them to decorate St. Patrick's Day cupcake. As it turns out, though, they don't really hold their shape very well. They are too thin and floppy to be a good stand-up rainbow, but I'm sure they'd be fine on the side of a cake.

Here is what I came up with:



fondant coins and gold glitter gel in the center of a chocolate cupcake.

I have read that a variety of colors of "Airheads" candies, sliced length-wise and formed into rainbows is much more successful for this sort of thing.

Revisiting Some Favorite Irish Recipes For St. Patrick's Day

Irish Soda Bread

butter for greasing the baking sheet

4 cups unbleached white flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 cups of buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Melt 1 Tablespoon of butter and use it to heavily grease a baking sheet. Them mix all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.




Add the buttermilk and mix until all the flour is moist and can be made into a ball. Place the dough ball in the center of the baking pan and cut an X in the top of the dough, using either a knife or a pair of scissors.

Bake for 45 minutes




Pratie Oatens

3 Large potatoes, peeled

1 cup uncooked rolled oats

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 tsp. salt

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Dump in the potatoes and boil until they are tender. Drain and mash them. Add the butter and let it melt. Mix the melted butter in with the potatoes and let the mixture cool for about 10 minutes. Mix in oats and salt to form a soft dough.



Roll out on a well floured board to about 1 inch thick. Cut out circles using a biscut cutter.

Fry in a little butter or oil until golden brown on both sides.




Salmon Patties with Parsley Sauce


2 6-ounce cans of salmon (boneless)

1/2 cup cracker crumbs ( this time I used panko bread crumbs and they worked very well)

1 egg, beaten

1/4 Cup parsley sauce ( the recipe will follow this one)

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

vegetable oil for frying


1. Drain all the water from the canned salmon. Place the salmon in a large bowl.

2. Add the cracker crumbs, egg, parsley sauce, lemon juice, and pepper. Mix well.

3. Heat 2-3 Tablespoons of oil in a large frying pan.

4. Using wet hands, shape the salmon mixture into patties.

5. Fry the patties for about 5 minutes on each side or until they are an even golden brown.

6. Serve with a spoonful of parsley sauce on each patty.



Parsley sauce

4 Tablespoons of fresh parsley, washed and finely chopped

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

1 Cup mayonnaise

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

1 Tablespoon milk

Place everything in a blender or food processor and puree until the sauce is smooth and flecked with green.

Leprechaun Hat Cookies

This week's Corner View theme is "Miniature Worlds". I figured little hats for St. Patrick's Day Leprechauns counted as things from a miniature world.


Leprechaun Hats

1 9-ounce package of plain chocolate cookies ( I used Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers)

1 bag of large marshmallows

1 12-ounce bag of dark chocolate chips

green tinted buttercream frosting

Wilton's gold colored "Sparkle Gel" (cake decorating gel)




Melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a glass bowl in the microwave. If microwaving, heat for 2 minutes on high, then stir, and return to the microwave for another minute and stir again.

Spread two dozen cookies out on a sheet of waxed paper.

Use a toothpick to hold each marshmallow as it is dipped into the melted chocolate, and spoon additional chocolate over each marshmallow to be sure it is completely covered. Let any excess chocolate drip from the marshmallow before placing it in the middle of a cookie. The spoon can then be used to help remove the toothpick and smooth out the chocolate to cover the hole left by the toothpick.





Let the "hats" sit until the chocolate has hardened. then use green frosting to make the hat bands and the gold Sparkle Gel to make a buckle on the hat band.

Enjoy!




As a variation on this cookie, I also made some little top hats with goggles made out of Smarties candies ( feeding my son's continuing fascination with airship pirates).




I am looking forward to seeing all the other ways this theme has been interpreted. To find other "miniature world", please visit Spain Daily and all of the blogs listed on the sidebar there, on Weds., March 9, 2010.

Milk Punch

Here is a festive green St. Patrick's Day drink, for those of us who will not be drinking the green beer.



1 pint of lime sherbet

4 Cups of Milk

4 Cups of ginger ale

a few drops of green food coloring (optional)

Place the sherbet in a pitcher or punch bowl and let it sit at room temperature for about 15 minutes or until it starts to soften. Break up the sherbet with a spoon and add the milk. Stir well. Add the ginger ale and stir. If you would like a brighter color, add a few drops of food coloring.

Other flavors of sherbet can be used for other holidays, such as raspberry would have been nice for Valentine's Day

St. Patrick's Day Napkins

Thanks to well meaning gift givers, we have ended up with a very large collection of plain cloth napkins, so we decorated some of them for St. Patrick's Day.
This was a very easy project. All you need is a thumb, some green paint, cloth napkins, and a thin paint brush.







Each petal of the clover is made with a thumb print. Then the stem is painted on.





This would be a good project for younger children or as a continuing project to be added to each year, as your child grows.