The Luck of the Irish

          Happy St. Patty's Day! I always love to be festive for holidays and this is no exception. Sunday we celebrated with the New Havens St. Patrick's Day parade and did everything green-themed. We woke up for green pancakes and jello shots and dressed in our best Irish attire. Yesterday I made Irish Soda Bread muffins, which didn't turn out quite like the real thing but they were fun and tastey enough. It just so happens that this year the holiday rests smack in the middle of MIDTERMS, so the festivites provide a much needed distraction. And after tomorrow SCSU is on spring break so everyone will have a reason to celebrate!

          I normally hate lime jello, but I made an exception for this occasion. These green jello shots (of course in lime green plastic shot glasses) were really easy to make, and came out tastey--lime flavor and all. The recipe I found is from drinkstreet.com, but there weren't a whole lot of us I halved the recipe. And since you don't really taste the alcohol, the cheap stuff is fine.

Drink Recipe: Jello shots

Ingredients:

     6 ounces Jello (large package)

     16 ounces Water (boiling)
     6 ounces Water (cold)
     10 ounces Vodka

          Mix the jello mix with the boiling water until the powder is fully dissolved and add the cold water and alcohol. Pour the cooling mixture into either shot glasses or paper cups. Shot glasses are more attractive, but drinker can turn the paper cups inside-out to more easily eat the alcoholic jello.

          I made these muffins yesterday to have something festive actually on the holiday. The traditional Irish Soda Bread recipes I found had a lot of ingredients, so I picked one with fewer necessities (of course from my go-to site, Sparkrecipes.com). On top of that, I took a few liberties with the recipe so that could be why my muffins were good, but not exactly authentic.

IRISH SODA BREAD MUFFINS
Ingredients

6 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 stick melted butter, 1 cup raisin, 1 cup golden raisin (I just used double of the normal raisins), 3 cups buttermilk (I used regular milk), 2 tbs baking powder, 1tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, and 2 Tbs caraway seeds (Skipped 'em).

Directions

bake at 350 Mix all ingredients. spray muffin pan with PAM. Spoon about a large spoonful into pans and bake for about 15 min or until toothpick comes out clean. allow to cool then eat. may freeze

Number of Servings: 36

Recipe submitted by SparkPeople user XN8960.

Why have green eggs and ham when you can have green pancakes?

Caden and Monti were fast friends. Must've been the matching "Pet Me I'm Irish" T-shirts.

Sunday was a beautiful day to be downtown.

Shout out to Aleisa and Mackenzie for actually being Irish. Hah!

         Good luck on midterms and happy Spring Break!

Love,

Annie

Rain, rain go away

          Yes, it's finally March! The shortest (yet longest feeling) month of the year is over. They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, but in New England, it's pretty much a lion-lamb hybrid throughout. So far this month, the climate has been rainy. Definitely preferable to snow and ice, but it can be a bit dismal. Everyone seems to be sick of staying inside and the taste of sun last week seemed to spark some spring fever.
          Since I am extremely warm blooded, I was not one of those girls Friday wearing dresses and flats. But in anticipation of the coming season, I've been wearing brighter colors (nothing like hot pink rain boots to brighten up a dark day), and punching things up with flowers. I never wear this flower headband, but I was feeling like spring this week and it was the perfect solution.

          And after a rainy weekend of being inside, whipping up some Irish-themed cupcakes cured both my sweet tooth and spring fever. Yum!

          How do you cure spring fever?

Love,

Annie