Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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"May the raindrops fall lightly on your brow. May the soft winds freshen your spirit. May the sunshine brighten your heart. May the burdens of the day rest lightly upon you, and may God enfold you in the mantle of His love."

~Irish Blessing~

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Happy St. Patricks' Day, my dear friends and family! I borrowed my quote of the day from my sweet Irish friend, Jayne. Thank you, Jayne!

Did you all have a nice St. Paddy's Day? We had so much fun!! We started celebrating as soon as our eyes opened, and we partied and played all day. It was also Carissa's special day, so lots of celebrating!

I made green eggs and ham for the kids for brunch. It was just Eggs Benedict with green food coloring in the Hollandaise sauce. Looks cute, doesn't it? Little key lime yogurt on the side. Green, green, and more green!

A little hint for anyone making Hollandaise for the first time. *Must* add freshly squeezed lemon juice in order for it to taste right. Otherwise, forget about it. hehe!

For dinner, I made Guy Fieri's St. Patrick's Linguini. It was awesome!

Ingredients: butter, oil, diced carrot, diced cabbage, minced shallot, minced garlic, cooked corned beef, freshly cracked black pepper, white wine, heavy cream, half-and-half, Dijon mustard, whole-grain mustard, prepared horseradish, grated Irish white Cheddar, peas, linguini, and freshly grated parmesan cheese.

We really liked this dish. It wasn't our traditional corned beef and cabbage, but it was really tasty, rich, and full of flavor! We also made Irish Soda bread to go with the dinner, and we had a green salad with Mandarin oranges, toasted pecans, and croutons, topped with... what else?... Green Goddess dressing! hehe!

Dessert... homemade carrot cake with cream cheese frosting... Green, of course.

Here are the sisterlets festively dressed in their green St. Paddy's shirts.

And Scotty in his celebrating duds. Justin wore the same shirt today (after work, of course).

Okay, moving on from our happy day of partying and indulgence of green food...

Let's talk '5 Ingredient Fix test drive', shall we? For the last of our 7 day test drive, I made Claire Robinson's Beef and Onion Stuffed Potatoes and her Iceberg Salad with Buttermilk Ranch Dressing.

First, the stuffed potatoes. Ingredients: beef stock, 3 large russet potatoes, EVOO, cubed beef chuck, Kosher salt and black pepper, water (as needed), and frozen pearl onions.

I won't go into all the directions being that you can just click the link above for that. But as you can sort of see by the pics, the potatoes are cooked and then hollowed out. The skins are thrown back into the oven to crisp. You season and sere the meat and cook the onions. Mash up the potato insides. And then you fill the potato shells with the meat/stew mixture and top with your mashed potatoes. Turned out really good. I'd elaborate more, but it's late and I'm soooo tired. Yummy, though, and super clever!

You can add to the seasonings for your meat/stew mixture (I did), but it would be good even if you didn't. I also deglazed my pan with red wine instead of water, which was terrif! And I spruced up my mashed potatoes, too, just to make them more special and flavorful. I went with a 'baked potato' idea and added milk, sour cream, salt and pepper, chives, etc. Just really good.

The salad and dressing were incredibly easy, but you wouldn't believe the flavor! And SO fast! Read the recipe and try it for yourself. You'll be amazed at how simple and delicious it is! I bet you'll never look at Buttermilk Ranch in the bottle or seasoning packet the same way again, I promise you! Go for it!!

I'm sorry to talk food and run without getting into any other life details, but as I said, I'm really beat tonight, and I need to run down to the kitchen and take care of my loaves of bread that are just about to come out of the bread makers. Yaaaaawn!

More later...