Irish Soda Bread
Tis’ not the season for Irish Soda Bread. St. Patricks Day is a quite a way’s away but Reno was having a Fall Fiesta in her Pre-K class and the teachers asked that the parents bring in a food that celebrates your background. Reno has quite a mix of countries that make up who she is so we had a lot to choose from. I think the teachers assumed she would be bringing something Italian in because of our last name but the problem with that is I’m not Italian. Not even close to being Italian. I struggled a bit with what to make. I wanted to make something that I knew the kids would at least try and Seitan Parmesan was not something I was ready to introduce to those kids and their parents so I brought it down to two choices: Crepes (France) and Irish Soda Bread (Ireland). What kid doesn’t like pancakes and bread?
With the fiasco of the Halloween Cut Out Cookies that I had made for her school I wanted to keep this project as simple as could be so I chose the Irish Soda Bread. Having said that I of course have never made Irish Soda Bread. Crepes….I’ve made before….MANY TIMES. Luckily for me the bread came out beautifully! From what was left over after the Fiesta I would say most of the kids/parents/teachers at the party liked it as well.
Two parents exclaimed at how brave I was to tackle making bread. The thing is this bread was the least labor intensive item at the party. It was in the oven in less then 10 minutes. All you do is throw some dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another, combine, shape, bake for 40 minutes. So simple! I will definitely be making this again for St. Patricks Day in 2012 along with some boiled cabbage and potatoes.
November 19th, 2011
Ghost Cut out Cookies
Halloween was all kinds of messed up this year. The Saturday before we had this freak snowstorm. It was crazy! Trees and heavy branches were falling all over the place. I went outside to check on my husbands car and it was covered with large branches. Luckily there wasn’t any damage. While standing outside all I heard were these loud creaks and cracks and then WHOOOSH. If I turned around quick enough to where the noise was coming from I would see the tops of trees falling to the ground. Because of this storm Halloween was cancelled and the schools were closed on Monday and Tuesday…remember that this storm was on Saturday and there was barely 1 inch of snow on the ground. People were without power for over a week because all the trees fell on the wires…it was a mess.
Re as Dorothy from Wizard of OZ
Reno was suppose to have a Halloween party at her school on the Monday and I for some reason volunteered to make Halloween shaped Cut Out Cookies. Big mistake on my part. Before I knew that school was cancelled I spent hours on Sunday trying to make these cute ghost and skeleton head cookies. Making the dough, cutting them out and baking them was the easy part. Decorating them was a PAIN. IN. THE. ASS. After I applied the white part of the frosting I didn’t realize I had to wait for that stuff to dry before drawing on the face with the other color frosting. It took forever. I eventually gave up and went to the store and bought already made and decorated cookies that weren’t vegan. The second I got home from doing that I received a call to say that school was cancelled. I could have killed someone since that would have given me enough time to finish the cookies. It turns out us parents all agreed to have the party on that Friday because of all the families who wouldn’t get their power back until then. I still gave out the unvegan cookies because by then my delicious cookies weren’t fresh enough. At least I know for next year that I need to start decorating them first thing in the morning so they are dry enough by the mid afternoon to paint their sweet little faces on them.
Miles as Mickey Mouse
I also wanted to mention that Trick or Treating this year was horrible also. The town cancelled trick or treating on Halloween because of all the down trees and wires, which made total sense, and made it for that Friday. I took Reno around our neighborhood that Friday and hardly anyone answered their doors and we only saw 2 groups of kids plus one other single kid trick or treating. It was miserable and I felt so bad for Re. She loves Halloween so much and it sucked this year. She took it all in stride though and I am happy that she got very little candy. She did however get a lot of bags of potato chips which I found bizarre. I’m hoping next year will be better for her.
November 12th, 2011