A Mom's Year

Here’s a recipe for my aunt Joan’s Irish Soda Bread. I’ll be making it for breakfast on St. Patrick’s Day, minus the caraways seeds and with craisins instead of raisins.

Ingredients

3 cups flour
2 TBSP. packed brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup dried currents or raisins
1 tsp. caraway seed
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, and salt. Stir in currants or raisins and caraway seeds. Add buttermilk and stir until moistened. Turn into greased 8-inch round pan. Bake at 350 degrees until browned, about 35-40 minutes. Cool 10 minutes.

The kids are working on this year’s Leprechaun Trap. We started with Family Fun’s version a few years ago, but new twists are added every year. I overheard talk of using a rainbow this time to lure the leprechaun. I hope they catch him because he causes a lot of trouble. He’s dyed the milk green, left green footprints* all over the place, overturned chairs, and left rude notes.

* The footprints were suspiciously similar in size to a Ken doll’s shoes.

• A sweet gift for St. Patrick’s Day.
• A fun and easy project for little ones involving a vegetable.
• These Beer Mug Cupcakes are insanely cute.

We’ve been talking about traditions at A Mom’s Year. One that we’ve had for a while is Muffin Mondays. Some food-related traditions have been hard for me to stick with (whatever happened to Taco Tuesdays?) but for some reason, Muffin Mondays have stuck. Maybe it’s because I can make the batter the night before so all I have to do in the morning is pop the muffins in the oven. Or maybe it’s because I can use a mix if I have to. It still counts. (See “Good Enough Cupcakes.”) There’s just something about starting off the week with warm, comforting muffins that does the heart good.

Lily helped me make the Buttermilk Chocolate Chip muffins from One Ordinary Day. Ours turned out with a texture somewhere between a muffin and a scone. I’m not sure if that’s how they’re supposed to be, but they were delicious! We’ll definitely make these again.

I made some pork sausage patties to go with the muffins. I just added a little salt and pepper and sage. Turkey would work great, too. Some people add maple syrup to their sausages.  Would you like that or would it be too sweet?