St. Patrick's Day 2014

In a smooth segue from my last post in August, I bring you St. Patrick's Day 2014. 

St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite days. Here is how we celebrate:

 Geocaching! This is our third annual St. Patrick's Day geocaching expedition. It is our own version of finding hidden treasure :) This year we hid a cache for the first time. Lincoln was super excited!

 We do a traditional full Irish breakfast on St. Patrick's Day. Lucas and I went to Ireland the year before Lincoln was born, and every single place we stayed served us a full Irish breakfast: brown bread, bacon, eggs, blood sausage (full disclosure: we served good ol' sausage links...we'll save the blood sausage for our next trip to Ireland...), hash browns, and tea/coffee. I usually make Blarney Stones, too, but am going with a Sticky Toffee Pudding this year instead (not yet made...saving for tomorrow, when we have visitors!)

 At school today, Lincoln followed the green footprints and discovered some hidden treasures from a leprechaun! Hats, necklaces, and shiny's for everyone!

 More shiny's were hiding in the sandbox (Bennett is holding one up in the picture). Lots of digging today.

 My Grandma loved St. Patrick's Day and used to have a green hair piece she wore every year. This year we decided to remember her by donning our own green hair. Mine are extensions I ordered online, and Beebs' are green Crayola marker :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day from my me and my favorite leprechauns!

Also, this face:

St. Patrick's Day 2012

We went all out for St. Patrick's Day this year. I've always loved St. Patrick's Day. My grandma used to wear a clip of fake green hair on St. Patrick's Day...I need to get one of those for next year!

We started the day with a full Irish breakfast. When we went to Ireland, we ate this breakfast (or a similar variation) every day at the Bread and Breakfasts where we stayed. So delicious.

Our version contained: tea for me, coffee for Lucas, milk for Lincoln, bacon, sausage, eggs, Irish brown bread with Kerrygold butter, and grilled tomato.

Check out that awesome center piece...that pot used to have a basil plant. When the plant died, I just left the pot out on the deck. Apparently, some clovers seeded there. BAM. St. Patrick's Day centerpiece, done.

Bennett is decked out in his green in this picture, but I assure you, Lincoln did change after breakfast. Lucas does not own any green shirts. For shame.

Since we had such a gargantuan breakfast, we went with a light lunch. My intent was for these green smoothies to actually be green for St. Patrick's Day...but the blueberries took over and ruined everything. Seriously, I put at least 2 cups of spinach in these, and not even a green hint remained. Oh, well.

After lunch, we set out on our first geocaching adventure. It is perfect for St. Patrick's Day--we were searching for "treasure," just like the gold at the end of the rainbow. Or something like that. Anyway, it was awesome! We found all three caches that we set out to find. Lincoln loved "finding boxes" and already asked to go back and do it again.

We ended the day with blarney stones, of course:

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

(raise an invisible glass...Slainte!)

Irish Brown Bread

We went all out for St. Patrick's Day this year.  Usually, wearing green is about as celebratory as we get--but this year we baked not one, but TWO St. Patrick's Day treats!  And both were amazing.  Perhaps second only to the St. Patrick's Day we spent actually IN Ireland...that is kind of hard to top.

First St. Patrick's Day treat:  Irish Brown Bread.  Have you had it?  It was served at every B&B we stayed in when we were in Ireland, and it was amazing.  This recipe below is close, but not quite authentic.  It has to do with the type of flour used.  Irish flour is ground a bit differently, so the texture of the bread isn't quite the same.  I used plain whole wheat flour, but there are places online you can order Irish style whole mill flour (here, for one).

Irish Brown Bread
adapted from the book Ireland Memories by Patricia Preston


Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat bran
2 tsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1.5 cups buttermilk
2 tsp. olive oil
1 egg

Directions:
1.  Butter or spray with cooking spray a bread loaf pan and preheat oven to 300 degrees F (yes, 300!!).
2.  In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, wheat bran, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt.
3.  In a separate bowl, combine buttermilk, olive oil, and egg.  Add to dry ingredients and mix well with a wooden spoon.  Batter should be like a thick cake batter.  If needed, thin with a bit of buttermilk.  Stir lightly and quickly so that the batter remains light and airy.
4.  Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for approximately 1 hour.

Tomorrow:  Blarney Stones!