Simple Shamrock Sugar Cookies.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day (in a week or so) from this non-Irish (Scottish & Welsh, actually) gal!

I found this easy, kitchen-helper-friendly recipe at Better Homes & Gardens (I think) a few years ago & made it again this year for our Mom’s Club’s St. Patrick’s Day party.

• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cold
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp. extract of choice (I used vanilla, but you could do peppermint or almond)
• green food coloring (I’ve used both gel & liquid now, & find that liquid is just easier & doesn’t affect the dough’s composition)
• 2 cups flour
• green sanding sugar

1. In your stand mixer with the flat paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed 30 seconds or until softened.
2. Add sugar & salt; beat on med-high until fluffy.
3. Add egg, extract, & food coloring. Beat well. Add more food coloring if necessary; it will look paler when the flour is added.
4. On low speed, gradually add the flour & mix well. Divide the dough into 3 equal parts.
5. Place a sheet of wax paper on a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet. Pour a generous amount of sanding sugar all over the wax paper.
6. Take 1 of your dough lumps & roll it into a long “snake” 1 inch in diameter. Let your kitchen helper assist you in rolling it in the sugar to coat. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Repeat with remaining dough lumps. Toss the wax paper & leftover sugar.
7. Refrigerate dough “snakes” at least 2 hours, or up to 1 week (yeah right, like cookie dough would EVER last that long in someone’s refrigerator!).
8. Preheat your oven to 350. Remove one “snake” from the fridge at a time, unwrap, & slice crosswise with a sharp knife into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Take a few of your slices & cut them into thirds to make your “stems.”
9. Shape your shamrocks by placing 3 slices with sides very slightly overlapping on an ungreased cookie sheet & adding a stem piece. Gently press together. Don’t forget to make a few lucky 4-leaf clovers too!
10. Bake for about 8 minutes or until set in the middle. Cool on the sheet for a few minutes, then remove to cooling rack to cool completely.

To serve, position them next to each other on a serving dish or tray rather than piling them onto a plate like I did. They ended up looking like a jumble of circles so no one knew what they were until they picked them up. Presentation is everything sometimes!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! (Or, how do I get my kid to sit still?)

The Munchkin & I want to wish you a Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Wait, let me get her to stop fiddling with the necklaces.

Look at the camera!

Now she’s looking at the camera… Dare I try to get her to smile? Or maybe even sit up?

Wait! Put the hat back on!

I don’t know why I bother… Happy St. Patrick’s Day anyway!

Back to St. Patty’s Day: Magic Zucchini Coins.

I hope everyone enjoyed Pi Day yesterday! Momo posted the most delicious-looking peanut butter pie I’ve ever seen, & apparently the people at WordPress agreed, because they featured it on Freshly Pressed. So thanks, WordPress! & thanks, Momo! (I should have her post more often!)

So now what do I post, after a day like that?

The best answer I could come up with was: what I was going to post today anyway.

These Magic Zucchini Coins (the more often I type “zucchini,” the more wrong it looks to me…), which I got from the Sesame Street cookbook, are perfect for St. Patrick’s Day! They’re green, they turn golden in the oven, & they’re coins! Now all we need is a rainbow to put them under. (Dang, shoulda thought of that when I was setting up the shot…) They’re also quick, easy, & perfect for little kitchen helpers!

1. Slice some small zucchini or yellow summer squash (or a combo) into 1/4-inch-thick slices. A half a zucchini was enough for The Munchkin & me because she’s not wild about the stuff. If the zucchini (looks wronger & wronger…) is ripe enough & your kitchen helper is old enough, the Sesame Street cookbook recommends letting them slice it with a plastic knife.
2. Boil or steam until just tender, 3-5 minutes. (We boiled to save dishes, but steaming will preserve more nutrients.) Drain & set aside to cool slightly.
3. Meanwhile, preheat your broiler (on “high,” if yours has more than one setting).
4. Arrange zucchini in a single layer on a foil-covered baking sheet. Sprinkle with a dash of salt & a generous amount of parmesan cheese. (Kitchen helpers will love assisting with this too!)
5. Broil a couple minutes until the parmesan turns golden-brown.
6. Remove the “coins” from the foil & admire the modern art you just created:
7. Then let your little leprechaun devour this healthy veggie side with his shamrock pizza or rainbow wraps!

St. Patty’s Day dinner: I {shamrock} pizza.

Missive alert…

I’m going to admit something to you: I’m kind of embarrassed to post this next idea. I bought the dough for this pizza two days before I was going to be able to make it, so when I set about kneading & working the dough, it was about as pliable & stretchable as the Play Doh they only recently retired in our church’s Nursery. As a result, the finished pizza doesn’t look pretty. Like, REALLY not pretty. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My first thought was to just delete the pictures altogether; this doesn’t belong on the World Wide Web alongside all of these professional-quality photographs of delicious, beautiful food, does it? But then I was emboldened by a great post by the Reluctant Entertainer that I’d read last week. In it, Sandy relates a conversation she had with a food blogger who “does it all” by sending her kids to school, cooking & taking pictures in the afternoon, then shoving her beautiful food in the fridge, where it might get eaten later… or it might get tossed out.

Is this what our lives have come to? Not mine. For one thing, I don’t have the money to toss food out!

I’m not a food photographer, professional party planner, or classically trained chef. I’m just a mom with a rambunctious toddler, a love of cooking, a few ideas in my head, & a grand total of 10 square feet of natural light (& that for only about 3-4 hours on a sunny day… hence the exceedingly unflattering use of the flash for most everything). When I started this blog, it was to share my “just-mom” ideas with other “just-moms” out there. The pictures aren’t great. The food doesn’t look like it belongs in a magazine. But the ideas are there for you to share with love with your families, just as I do with mine.

Okay, disclaimer/missive over. (Would I refer to that as a dis-missive?)

Now for the fun stuff: How to turn a bell pepper into 4-leaf clovers for your St. Patrick’s Day pizza.

You probably already know about our love affair with pizza. So it should be no surprise that I came up with an excuse to eat it on yet another holiday. I honestly can’t remember how this idea came about — whether I read it somewhere or just had an epiphany — but regardless, it worked a lot better the first time I tried it, with a Papa Murphy’s pizza with a mercifully large, flat crust. So there you go, for what that’s worth.

When you go to the grocery store, look for a green bell pepper with 4 relatively equal-sized lobes:

Cut 1/4-inch slices across the width of the pepper from the bottom up, cutting out any of the seedy core as you come to it. These are your “shamrocks.” When you get close to the top, just cut short slices around the core. These will be your “stems.”

Now for the pizza part: Preheat your oven & pizza stone to 450. Then roll out your crust on your parchment paper (with a little flour if it needs it) & top it with the sauce & any other non-shamrock toppings you’re planning on using.

Then cover those with your cheese. (The store was out of regular shredded, so I had to go with finely shredded. Can someone give me a concrete reason they even created this stuff? It just gets everywhere except where you want it to stay!)

Now arrange your shamrocks & stems however they’ll fit & look pretty. A larger-than-13-inch pizza will provide more breathing room, so people will have an easier time telling what it is.

Now bake it until the cheese is bubbly & the crust is golden-brown. Then enjoy!

What are you making for St. Patty’s Day dinner?

St. Patty’s Day lunch: Green Rainbow Wraps.

First of all, I’m not Irish. I’m pretty much everything else that’s really really white except Irish. Plus we don’t drink. So if you’re looking for green beer or corned beef, sorry — this is the wrong place to be. I do, however, like finding fun ways to make our St. Patrick’s Day meals a little greener. So stick around!

Here’s an easy lunch idea: Green Rainbow Wraps.

Here’s what I used. You can add or change your ingredients as you see fit. For example, I hate raw tomatoes, so you don’t see any of those in there. Lettuce? We were out, so none of that in there either. The more sandwich toppings you can think of (& that your kids will eat), the more colorful your pinwheels will be!

• Spinach tortillas
• Mayonnaise
• Chili or taco seasoning (I use this fabulous chili seasoning from W-S)
• Colby-Jack cheese (I used the deli slices, but I think shredded could work great too)
• Deli ham
• Deli chicken

1. Spread a tortilla with some mayo. Sprinkle it with some chili seasoning.
2. Lay out your cheese, meats, & whatever else floats your boat, leaving about 1-2 inches on the right & left sides.
3. Fold in the sides of your tortilla, then roll it from front to back.
4. Hold the wrap tight, then use a sharp knife to slice it into 3/4-inch slices to make pinwheels.
5. Serve with rainbow Terra chips.

Of course, The Munchkin just preferred to dismantle them & pull out the meat… That’s my girl!