St Patrick's Day!

I wore green nail polish today (which isn't all that unusual for me), we listened to a lot of Irish music (again, not unusual) and we had a fabulous Irish meal. We splurged and bought Irish rashers (that's what the Irish call bacon) for our Colcannon. We also had black pudding and brown bread and Silver Shred marmalade. The children all love black pudding, but the younger two ate the rashers and left much of their colcannon behind. They'll like it better tomorrow when it appears as Bubble and Squeak.

My favorite brown bread recipe:
adapted from goodgiver.com

BROWN SODA BREAD
Makes one loaf
You'll need a piece of foil approx 12in
x 8 in
Preheat the oven to 425. Spray your bread loaf pan with the Pam that
has flour in it, and line the bottom with parchment paper.
1 cup whole wheat
flour
1/2 cup spelt flour
1/2 cup oat bran flour or oat flour
1
teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Sugar
1 oz Butter,
melted
1 Egg
12 ounces buttermilk or kefir
Sesame Seeds

Place flour in bowl and sift in Soda, Salt and Sugar. Mix to combine.
Beat Egg with half of the buttermilk. Pour egg/milk and melted butter into
flour. Mix thoroughly with stand mixer,adding the rest of the buttermilk.
Pour mixture into lined pan. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
Make a domed
lid for the pan with the foil and press securely around the rim (Mine doesn't
"dome" very well but it still works)
Bake 1 Hour. Remove foil, and invert
baking dish to remove bread. Pull the waxed paper off the bread.
Allow to
cool completely before wrapping. Serve with butter and marmalade or with chutney
and cheese (brie is nice). Especially nice with a cup of tea.

Links to recipes for colcannon and bubble and squeak are here: http://weakwearymom.blogspot.com/2008/02/favorite-online-recipes.html

Although I love corned beef and cabbage, our hostess in Ireland last year told us that Irish people in Ireland don't eat "that stuff", that it's more typical of Irish immigrants in the United States. So we'll have corned beef and cabbage some other day.