Happy Belated St. Patrick's Day!

Did you have a good St. Patrick's Day?

Mine was busy, so I didn't have a chance to post. You see, St. Patrick's Day is a pretty big holiday in our house. A is predominantly Irish and his family always acknowledges the holiday. So, it has become a tradition in our home as well. Unfortunately, I need to learn how to break out the camera and capture some of the things that we do.

Basically, we invite friends and family over for an Irish themed meal and enjoy the company. Of course, there is Irish beer such as: Guinness, Harp's, Kilkenny, etc. but we don't make the day about drinking.  This year the menu entailed:

Appetizers:

• An Irish flag veggie tray - only green, while and orange vegetables of course
• An Irish Cheese tray - Irish cheddar with red wine, Irish Cheddar with Guiness and Dubliner
• Chocolate pretzels with green M&Ms

Main Course:

• Irish Soda Bread
• Corned Beef
• Cabbage
• Scalloped Potatoes

Desserts:

• Guiness Chocolate Cupcakes
• Vanilla Cupcakes
• Both with Baileys Buttercram Icing

We didn't have as large a group of people this year as he have in previous years. It was still really nice though, if anything I liked it better because I had more of a chance to visit with people. Normally I'm running around trying to get food ready!

What do you do for St. Patrick's Day?

Preparations are Underway...

For St. Patrick's Day!

It has been a pretty busy for me recently. A has been sick for getting close to a week, which means he's out of commission and more falls on me. I've been in hearing at work which means that I no longer have a regular workday. With St. Patrick's Day on Saturday, I need to start prepping things earlier in the week if I'm going to be ready for Saturday.

There aren't too many things that you can prepare early that will last. The only way that'll be an issue with these is if we can't resist eatting them. Last night and Monday evening I made about a 100 or so of these Holiday Pretzel treats (recipe).

Mine look a wee bit different since I used regular pretzels instead of pretzel waffles and mine don't look nearly as perfect as the ones above. However, I can claim that they are still delicious. I used just plain hershey kisses and the St. Patrick's inspired M&M colours of green, yellow and orange.

I think they'll be a great sweet treat! How can you possibly go wrong with pretzels and chocolate? Sweet with that slight twist of saltiness. Yumm!

Luck of the Irish

It feels like it was just Valentine's Day. How did March get here so quickly? Let alone St. Patrick's Day being just around the corner.

Ever since A and I got together we've been doing a St. Patrick's day gathering. This was inspired by that fact that St. Patrick's day has always been an important holiday in A's family. We've been slow to get organized this year, but we are planning on hosting a St. Patrick's Day open house next weekend. Since we've moved outside of the city and accessibility is a bit of an issue now we are trying to focus more on food and getting together rather than drinking and partying.

I've been working on a Irish themed menu which should be pretty exciting. So, I'll be busy next week making Irish soda bread, Irish car bomb cupcakes and of course Irish stew and Corned beef and cabbage! Each year I get a bit better with all of this.

I hope A will have a chance to look at the menu, guestlist and invitation tonight so we can get things moving.

Do you celebrate St. Patrick's Day?