St. Patrick's Day Dinner Ideas

Are you wondering what to serve on St. Patrick's Day? I did my dinner early, as I won't have time on the 17th for anything special - so maybe what we had for St. Patty's Day dinner will give you a few ideas.

"Pot of Gold" Pinto beans.

Get the recipe by clicking HERE.

Cook up a batch of rice to pour the beans over.

Shamrock Dinner Rolls.

Get the "how to" by clicking HERE.

A "Green" Salad

Get the recipe by clicking HERE.

And don't forget about dessert.

Get the recipe by clicking HERE.

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Nanaimo Bars Recipe

Have you heard of Nanaimo bars?  I have had quite a quite a few guests from the U.S. that have mentioned they have never had them before. These are a big deal in Canada. Make them and you will find out why.

Here is a little history lesson on the Nanaimo Bar (courtesy of Wikipedia)...

The Nanaimo bar is a dessert of Canadian origin popular across North America. The Nanaimo bar is a bar cookie which requires no baking, and is named after the West-Coast city of Nanaimo, British Columbia. It consists of a wafer crumb-based layer, topped by a layer of light vanilla or custard flavoured butter icing, which is covered in chocolate made from melted chocolate squares. Many varieties are possible by using different types of crumb, flavours of icing (e.g. mint, peanut butter), and types of chocolate. Two popular variations on the traditional Nanaimo bar involve mint flavoured icing or mocha flavoured icing.

If you have never had a Nanaimo bar - this is a recipe you have got to try. Only try this recipe if you love chocolate, love sweet things, and if you don't mind NOT turning your oven on. I got this recipe from my sister - which is weird - because she doesn't bake. I think she got this recipe from my Aunt. The Nanaimo bar pictured here has a green center - but the center is usually creamy yellow(custard). You can make a mint Nanaimo bar - but I prefer the custard center - so I just added food coloring to go with our St. Patrick's Day meal. 

Here is the recipe for the custard center Nanaimo Bar....

Nanaimo Bars

Base:  Melt together 1/2 cup margarine, 1/4 cup brown sugar and 5 tablespoons cocoa. Add 1 tsp. vanilla, 2 eggs, 2 cups graham wafer crumbs and 1 cup coconut. Mix thoroughly and press into greased 8x8 inch pan. Cool.

Filling:  Mix together 1/4 cup softened margarine, 3 tablespoons cream, 2 tablespoons custard powder and 2 cups icing sugar. Mix thoroughly and spread over cooled base.                                        

Topping:  Melt 3 squared semi-sweet chocolate and 1 tablespoon margarine. Spread over filling and refrigerate. Cut into squares.

Here is the recipe card...

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Awesome Broccoli Salad Recipe

I love broccoli but I usually like it cooked. Add a creamy salad dressing, cheese and bacon to raw broccoli however - that is a different story. This has become one of my favorite salads - and I am not a salad eater. I found the original recipe on the All Recipes website that you can find by clicking HERE.
The changes I made were adding cheese, replacing almonds for sunflower seeds and not adding as much onion. I find that too much onion makes it too hot and sometimes hard to eat. Just a hint of onion works for me and my family. I have used apple cider vinegar when I haven't had the white wine vinegar. I also don't always add all the dressing as sometimes it is too much. I make this dressing for my coleslaw as well. It is SOOOO good. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

2 heads fresh broccoli

1/2 a small red onion

4 slices bacon

1/2 cup sunflower seeds 

        3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese

  1 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup white sugar

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Directions

1.Place bacon in a deep skillet and cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Cool and crumble.

2.Cut the broccoli into bite-size pieces and chop the onion into thin bite-size slices. Combine with the bacon, sunflower seeds, cheese and mix well.

3.To prepare the dressing, mix the mayonnaise, sugar and vinegar together until smooth. Stir into the salad, let chill and serve.

Here is the recipe card:

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St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Buns Tutorial

Want some cute dinner buns to go along with your St.Patrick's Day meal? These were a big hit at my house and I bet they will be at your house too! 

You will need to prepare the dough using my "Easiest Homemade Buns From Scratch" recipe. 

You can find that recipe by clicking HERE!

I cut my recipe in half and it made 14 good sized buns. 

When the dough has risen and you have kneaded it four times and let it sit for ten minutes - you are ready to shape them into shamrocks.

1. On a well floured surface, roll dough with a rolling pin into approximately, a 10x12 rectangle.

2. Cut long strips, 1/2-3/4" wide.

3. Roll each individual strip on your floured surface so dough is rounded (this reminded me of my play dough days), and extended in length to be approximately 18 inches. This stage of the shamrock is in the bottom of the picture above. 

4. Take the rounded strip and make a loop leaving about 2 1/2 inches for your shamrock stem. (Pictured at the top of the above picture)

5. Make another loop. (Pictured above left).

6. Finish up your shamrock by looping the remaining dough and tucking the end in the back (pictured above right). Just to note - my first few looked scary, but I got the hang of it. 

7. Cover and let rise for about an hour. 

8. Make bun glaze: 1 egg and 1 T. milk stir well.

Use pastry brush to apply glaze.

9. Cook in 375 degree pre-heated oven for 15 minutes or until golden brown. 

So cute and so yummy and not too complicated. Why don't you give it a try?

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Grandma's Pinto Beans From Scratch Recipe

I made this as part of our St.Patrick's Day meal this year. I called it the "pot of gold". This was my husband's favorite meal growing up. I had to ask his mom how to make it - and it is simple.

You will need:

2 cups dried pinto bean - rinsed
Bacon or ham
Water
Salt

Soak 2 cups of washed/rinsed dried pinto beans over night with enough water to cover them. If you forget to soak them over night you can boil them for three minutes. Rinse the beans after the soak or boil.
Put in a large pot. Cover with plenty of water. I make sure the water is an inch or so over the beans - but you need to watch to make sure the beans have plenty of water while they cook. Add desired amount of ham or bacon. I put in four slices of back bacon. Bring to a boil, then simmer on low for 3-4 hours. Add salt to taste during the last hour of cooking. Stir occasionally, and make sure the beans have enough water.  The last time I cooked this added about 1/4 cup of molasses when I added the salt. Cook up some rice, make some coleslaw and buns and you have a tasty and inexpensive meal.

So Lucky - St.Patrick's Day Appreciation Card

This card is a spin off from a card I found in a Paper Crafts magazine. It wasn't a St. Patrick's Day card, it was a good luck card and it had cherries instead of shamrocks. As soon as I saw this I wanted to make it into an appreciation card to give to people around St. Patrick's Day. I printed out a clip art of a shamrock six times. I filled all of them in with green glitter. I cut out three of them in rectangles the same size and the other three I cut out singly to put on top of the others with a pop dot. I cut out half circles in different colors and glued them on the rectangles to give a slot machine look. The letters were cut with a Cricut and some letters I cut out twice and hot glued them together to give them a chipboard look.

I adhered a piece of ribbon on to the bottom of the card, and then I adhered the letters on the ribbon. I folded a piece of ribbon to make a loop and glued it under one of the rectangles. I adhered three sparkly dots to the left side.

Here is the inside. This one is a personalized message from me....

and this one is a message from my family. 

Hoping to spread some lucky love this St. Patrick's Day and hoping to inspire you to do the same.

Thanks for looking!

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Petal Scarf Made From a T-Shirt

I bought a blazer for a birthday present - and thought a scarf would be nice to go with it. I wasn't willing to pay what the stores wanted for scarves when I knew I could make one for a fraction of the cost. So.......I went blogging and found a tutorial for a petal scarf - which I found HERE on a blog called "annekata". Make sure you go check it out. She has great pictures and walks you through making this awesome scarf.

This was a definite craft "try"al. I am going to do a whole lot more of these. This first one was from two t-shirts as I wanted it to be a spring scarf. I want to make some wool ones too and play with the colors a bit. There are so many possibilities here.

This scarf is made with 36 - 2 inch circles - BUT I am going to do at least double that next time. Thirty six circles is how many I got from the front of a t-shirt. With a whole shirt I can easily double that amount.

I wonder if I can make a green one before St. Patrick's Day???  I can tell this is going to be addictive. I have a lot of t-shirts I can cut up. Why don't you give it a try?

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