Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Irish eyes are smiling

St. Patrick's Day is the one day of the year my husband's family claims their Irish roots. (Of course, it's his excuse to invest in a few good beers, but I suspect it has as much to do with March Madness as anything.)

And I admit in years past to have been a sucker for "Kiss me, I'm Irish" or "I'm your lucky charm" T-shirts that were oh-so-cute on the little ones. But the idea of a shirt for one special day has lost a lot of its appeal in recent years.

This year, the kids are old enough to get into the idea of St. Patrick's Day, and we opted to celebrate it with an all-green dinner. No green eggs and ham for us, though. We're tapping into my oldest child's imagination for our menu this year. If you've got a preschooler too, feel free to borrow an idea or two!

Green pasta (pasta with olive oil and some green herbs, likely basil and oregano, and garlic)
Green olives
Green grapes
Green salad (interestingly, she says with nothing on it but dressing!)
Shamrock pretzels (finally, a use for the green sugar from Christmas cookie decorating! A note: This is the quickie version with refrigerator dough, if you have a bit of time, here's how to get started with a yeast-based recipe.)

Still haven't talked her out of green cupcakes. I suspect that will be a battle to the end.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2 comments:

Janel said...

Love this -- not so sure about green pretzels but it sounds like a fun celebration. Enjoy!

Robbie said...

OK so it wound up not being the feast we'd envisioned. We were still full from a date lunch (our first in like a year), so we let the kids munch.

They loved the "pretzels" (breadsticks with a green-ish frosting made from powdered sugar and the green sugar) and green grapes.

The green olives were poo-poo'ed because there were red things in them. Go figure. They're headed to the food pantry!

Will go back to a healthier diet for all in the morning. Given this beautiful weather, it was far more worth it to go to the park!