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.