Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Other than wearing green so I wouldn't get pinched, I've never been big on celebrating St. Patrick's day.  My mom used to bake green bread and die our milk green and all that fun stuff, but thats about it.  I guess I just never really knew why we celebrated it in the first place.  Now that I have kids old enough to care, I'm big on holiday celebrations, so today I thought I'd find the real reason why we celebrate St. Patrick's Day (and since I'm not Catholic or a beer drinker, it might be a good idea).  Here's a few of the facts I found, so I'll pass them on to you.  You can go here or here or even here.  There's fun facts like the color of St. Patrick used to be blue not green (I personally think the green came from Ireland being so green...took a lot to figure that one out!) or that the shamrock was St. Patrick's way of teaching the people about the holy Trinity or that St. Patrick was said to have rid Ireland of all snakes (did you know that Ireland has NO snakes?), but really they think that the snakes meant Druids, who's symbol was the snake.  Anyhow, St. Patricks Day is (obviously) big in Ireland, but it seems that it came to the good ol' USA with the Irish settlers here.  I guess its a good thing I've got some Irish in me (I think) and that I like Ireland - I'd really LOVE to visit there some day and even though I can't understand 1/2 of what they say, I LOVE their accents! ;)

Alright, enough of the trivia and on with the food.  Of course I had to throw in some green food for the kids, but I wanted to make some good ol' Irish food.  I opted out of the Corned Beef & Cabbage because (gasp) I can't stand corned beef.  I know, I know.  My husband loves it, but everything about it just grosses me out.  Soooo, instead we had the following (oh and I didn't mention that we had green eggs for breakfast):

• Oven Baked Fish
• Colcannon - a traditional Irish potato dish.
• Pot O' Gold Jello - lemon (yellow) jello jigglers made in ice cube trays and stacked like gold bars.
• Irish Soda Bread
• Ginger Beer for my hubby (I can't stand the stuff).  It's not Irish, in fact its Caribbean, but the bottle was green and it gave us the feel for the Irish beer tradition without actually drinking beer...silly us!
• Sprite for the kiddies - those mini green cans were perfect!

For dessert we enjoyed:

• Shamrock Truffles from Bakerella of course!  I couldn't find Double Stuffed Mint Oreos, so I just used Mint Joe-Joes from Trader Joes and they turned out excellent!
• Leprechaun Pudding - Pistachio pudding topped with homemade whip cream.

I hope all of you had as tasty of a St. Patrick's day as we did!