hopeful

We take St. Patrick's Day pretty seriously around here. In the old days, that meant a lot of loud Irish punk and some serious pub carousing. Now we settle for excessive amounts of green clothing, nothing but traditional Irish music on the iPod, and cold beverages in a can poured perfectly into pint glasses (see here) enjoyed from the comfort of our own couch. For the last few years, we've attended our church's St. Patrick's Day program, and this year we somehow landed ourselves on the planning committee. It was a blast - Irish stepdancing, snake hunts, cake walks, an appearance by St. Patrick. With all that on the agenda, we managed to talk my parents into coming down for the day...and they brought along my aunt, my eleven-year-old niece, and my eight-year-old nephew. My boys were completely surprised, and the day was subsequently even more fun than anticipated. There is nothing quite as exciting as a group of surprise visitors at the door, especially when the group includes cousins.

We started the day with St. Patrick's Day brunch. This recipe was soooo yummy, and really easy to throw together. I made the biscuits the night before so all I had to do when everyone arrived was warm the biscuits, fry up some eggs, and stack it all together. Yum. As written, the recipe makes 8 to 10 biscuits, but because you only use half a biscuit for each serving, you end up with a lot of extra biscuits. If you are serving a bigger crowd, just make more eggs. The ham is totally optional; use it if you like it, skip it if you don't. I opted to double the recipe and freeze lots of leftover biscuits; we had them for dinner tonight with baked potato soup and enjoyed them all over again.

In addition to tasting good, the biscuits are really pretty to look at. I did not manage to take a decent picture, but the one on the Betty Crocker website gives you a good idea.

It wouldn't be a holiday without a little custom applique...

Happy March!

St. Patrick's Day Biscuits
Adapted from Betty Crocker

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Makes 8-10 biscuits / 8 servings + leftover biscuits

1 package frozen creamed spinach, thawed
2 3/4 cups Bisquick mix
3/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. ground mustard
2 Tbsp. butter
8 eggs
2 Tbsp. butter, softened
1/4 lb. sliced deli ham (optional)

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.

2. In medium bowl, mix spinach, Bisquick, cheese, and ground mustard just until dry ingredients are moistened. It seems like you need to add liquid, but you really don't - there is enough in the spinach.

3. On a lightly floured work surface, knead dough eight to ten times. Pat to 3/4 inch thickness; cut with 3 inch round cutter. You should get 8-10 biscuits.

4. Place rounds one inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 13 to 16 minutes or until golden brown (can be done in advance).

5. In a nonstick skillet, fry eggs to desired consistency in butter. Season with salt and pepper.

6. Split 4 biscuits and spread cut sides with softened butter. Reserve extra biscuits for a later use.

7. Top each biscuit half with a slice of ham and one fried egg.

I'm not sure when my mother started making this bread on Easter, nor do I know where she came across the recipe. I only know that when I think of Easter morning, it evokes the wonderful taste combination of hard boiled eggs and big, thick slabs of this fantastic, subtly sweet bread with lots and lots of butter. This is actually a variation of Christopsomo, which is a bread traditionally served on Christmas in the Greek Orthodox tradition, but I'm sharing it here with you today in case you are looking for a little something to go with your Easter eggs this weekend.

The bread is made with just a touch of anise. I'll say up front that I do not particularly like the taste of anise (and I absolutely despise the taste of licorice), but it adds a complexity to this dense loaf that works so perfectly.


 Enjoy!

Greek Easter Bread

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2 packages yeast, active dry
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1/2 cup milk, scalded and cooled
1 cup butter, melted and cooled to lukewarm
4 eggs, slightly beaten
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. crushed anise seed
1 tsp. salt
7 cups all purpose flour
1 egg white, slightly beaten

1. Blend yeast with warm water and let stand until softened, about 5 minutes.  In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, anise, and salt.  Blend thoroughly.  Gradually beat in the flour.


2. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic. Place in a large greased bowl, turning so surface is coated. Cover and let rise in a warm place about 2 hours or until almost doubled in size.


3. Punch dough down and knead on an unfloured surface. Divide into two balls and knead until smooth. Place on a greased baking sheet and flatten to form two discs.  Cover and set in a warm place for about 1 hour or until almost doubled in size.


4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brush both loaves with beaten egg white. Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool on wire rack.


5. To reheat, wrap bread in foil and place in 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.

I've been trying to grocery shop every other week instead of every week; no reason, really, except that I'm constantly tweaking my grocery habits to find what works best for our family so I thought I'd give this a shot. There are definite upsides to less frequent shopping - it makes me plan very carefully, it means one less big trip to the store with two kids in tow - but there are downsides as well. Case in point: when I made the grocery list, it was cool and rainy and rather March-like, so I planned for lots of soups...and for the last few days it has been in the lower eighties, sunny, and warm. Really, nothing says spring like a steaming bowl of Baked Potato Soup, right?

Weather aside, this soup was absolutely delicious. How can you go wrong with a recipe that, as a final step, instructs you to throw in two blocks of cream cheese? This is another slow cooker recipe - I promise to get back to "fast" cooking one of these days, I'm just loving my new cookbook!

The recipe is included in full at crockpot365. I used vegetarian bouillon instead of chicken broth, regular salt instead of seasoned, and reduced fat cream cheese with no ill effect. For toppings, I served chopped scallions, crumbled bacon, and sour cream.


I used my friend Maggie's recipe for bread bowls - so good, so easy, and so much fun for the kids! Her recipe is here (along with another yummy-sounding soup recipe).



Enjoy!