Amidst the checkout chaos of paying for groceries with my 4 and almost 2-year olds, I started envisioning a naturally-dyed green jelly roll cake in the shape of a shamrock. And voilà! Here we are a few days before St. Patrick’s Day and my brainstorm image has come to life. You can enjoy your jelly roll in individual slices or arrange three slices per plate to make a festive St. Paddy’s shamrock.
This creamy baked {spinach} mac and cheese is another way to introduce healthy greens into your family’s diet. And if your kids are like mine and love dyeing foods whacky colors, then the natural green color is a little bonus, especially with St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner.
My almost four-year old son has been showing more signs of independent eating but he didn’t even care that these rolls contained two cups of spinach. They have a lovely shade of green so I will definitely tuck them away for St. Patrick’s Day but we will be making these many times before then, too.
My family likes to add chicken or chicken sausage, and feta crumbles to the creamy avocado pasta. Outside of pasta dishes, the avocado pesto is also like an Italian-style guacamole that is flavorful simply as a dip for breadsticks and veggies.
We don’t have a shamrock cookie cutter so we improvised with green hearts and iced a stem on the plate. Spinach juice gave the powdered sugar glaze its beautiful natural green color.
Color your breakfast casserole green with spinach juice for a festive St. Paddy’s Day breakfast. Bake it in heart shapes and arrange the cooked green hearts into shamrocks, the symbol of Ireland.
One of my favorite candies is Andes Chocolate Mints. With this recipe, you can leave the mint frosting white but I like to color it green so that it looks like Andes mints. (And the touch of green gets you out of being pinched on St. Paddy’s Day!)
With St. Patrick’s Day still on my mind, I decided to make Irish Soda Bread. Irish Soda Bread is considered a quick bread because there is no yeast and therefore it doesn’t need time to rise. Simply mix the ingredients together and bake it in a greased pan. The result is a large mounded loaf of bread with a golden, crusty exterior and a dense, scone-like interior.
The day after we had corned beef hash for dinner we made corned beef sandwiches for lunch with the leftover meat. I think we’ll be having these again sometime in the near future because we definitely can’t wait until next March!
When I was little, my family would always celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a feast of corned beef, boiled potatoes and boiled cabbage. For me, the meal was never that exciting. It was our traditional leftover meal on March 18, however, that was always my favorite: corned beef hash.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
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