8 Fun "Paddy's Day" Traditions

You may know “Paddy’s Day” is a national holiday in both Ireland and Northern Island. But did you know that until the 1970s pubs in Ireland were closed on St. Patrick’s Day? St. Patrick’s day was a historically religious holiday brought to the U.S. by Irish Catholic immigrants. Paddy’s Day evolved into a secular tradition that celebrates Ireland and Irish traditions and food. Now, even in Dublin, St. Patrick’s day is celebrated in the pubs, and on the streets with a huge parade and festivities lasting multiple days. 

Here are 8 fun Paddy’s Day traditions in a few U.S. cities.  

8. Seattle lights the space needle green.

7. Boston has a huge parade in “Southie” and a 5K to run off all that beer.

6. Philadelphia has its own St. Patrick's Day Observance Association which hosts its historical annual parade and even a St. Patrick’s Day golf tournament.

5. Chicago is famous for dyeing the river bright green and throwing big parties in Grant Park and at the Irish American Heritage Center on the north side of the City.

4. Green horses are featured in Lawrence, Kansas’ St. Patrick’s Day festivities.

3. Portland, Maine kicks off its St. Patrick's Day celebrations with a plunge into the ice cold waters to raise funds for the Portland Firefighters Children's Burns Foundation. 

2. New London, Wisconsin’s Shamrock Club changes the “New London” highway signs to read “New Dublin”

1. The Dancing Grannies perform at the Milwaukee Irish Parade. They are such an inspiration, especially in the aftermath of the tragic events this summer in Waukesha. 

These days most people celebrate Paddy’s Day with beer, wearing green, and corned beef and cabbage.  Even though we LOVE Irish bacon and can easily find it here in America (more easily than most people, for obvious reasons), we eat corned beef on Paddy’s Day.  We also made St. Patrick’s Day sugar cookies. And ordered all the St. Patrick’s day doughnuts from Ms. Molly’s last Saturday (I should have taken pictures but they were gone instantly). 

Happy Paddy’s Day!!!

This is my oldest daughter “drinking” her cookie - which is a green beer.

4 Bumps and a Birthday Cake

The Irish have some weird traditions, I have to tell you. Have you ever heard of “Birthday Bumps”?  Birthday bumps are a tradition in Ireland where the birthday person is taken by the arms and legs and bounced up and down in the air with their head touching the floor the same number of times as their years of life. While I think my kids (including the birthday girl)  would have really enjoyed it if we bumped Noelle on her birthday, she’s gotten too big for me to do this without fear of dropping her on her head. Instead, I baked her a cake and let her lick the spoon.

These two were so excited about the cake and the birthday.

At her age (or any age), all you really need to make a birthday special is CAKE. Even though I didn’t know how to change a diaper until I had my first child, somehow I knew how important cakes were going to be to my kids. Before I had my oldest, Emmett, I bought all of the equipment necessary to make a layer cake. After he was born, I studied cake decorating youtube videos so that I would be ready for his 1st birthday.  Ever since, I’ve been making each of my kids a homemade cake for their birthdays.  Sometimes they tell me what flavor or theme they want months in advance, and just as with Halloween costumes, they change their minds at the last minute, requiring me to start from square one.   

This year, Noelle surprised me by sticking to the Chocolate on Chocolate “Lollipop” themed cake which she requested back in October. Paul thought I was going to make the cake look like a Lollipop. I told him that he’s clearly been watching too much of the Great British Bakeoff and who does he think I am anyway?  I made something much, much easier and all of the kids loved it. 

I decided to use a recipe from the amazing book Zoe Bakes Cakes, which I was able to download from the library. Amazingly, I followed the recipes exactly for both the frosting and the cake and I’m not sorry! I topped it with her fave, lollipops and a caramel apple, and a lollipop candle. She was in heaven. And it reminded me how little it takes to make their special day feel truly special. 

It looks wonky here but once it gets covered with frosting it will all even out.

I just spread it on thick and don’t worry about what it looks like. I’ll fix it later.

After smoothing things out a bit.

Don’t you just want to eat this with a spoon?

I made chocolate shavings that I put on the top. I tried to put them on the sides but just gave up. The frosting was too set by then and I was afraid I was going to ruin the cake by messing with it anymore. I bought the lollipops from Ashley’s and the candied apple from Sweettrio in Grafton. Love both shops! So many sweet treats!

 If you want to make this cake, the recipe is here. I scaled the cake recipe down by half to make a 4-layer 6-inch cake and I made ⅔ of the frosting recipe, which was EXACTLY enough. Emmett helped me with the math. Everyone helped me eat the tops of the cake layers after I leveled them. I cannot believe my baby is 4 years old! 

 Happy December everyone! I know it’s a busy time and I hope you are enjoying it.  I’ve been doing all of my Christmas shopping locally which has been really fun. We’ve shopped everywhere in Cedarburg, but also Grafton, Port Washington and other places close by and it’s been a great way to see more of the area. There are so many unique places to shop right here in our community. And for those of you who have shopped with us in Long Grove, Crystal Lake or here in Cedarburg, THANK YOU. It means so much to us that you have supported our family business. Whether you’ve been coming in for decades, or just once, we appreciate you. Happy Holidays! 

Fall Fig Bars with Irish Oats

Wine and harvest festival. “Irish girls have all the fun!”

Morning Walk

Fall in Cedarburg is so beautiful. Each time I look out my window and the wind blows the trees a bit, a whole bunch of rust-colored leaves literally FALL off the trees. I can’t help but think, over and over again, “This is what Fall is supposed to look like.” Fall is also brisk early-morning walks and sunny warm-not-hot days. The only problem is what comes after, but I’m trying to embrace and enjoy each season as much as I can and it’s hard not to when you live here.  We love it here and have met so many incredible people and feel lucky to have found this community that has been so welcoming to our business and family.

My parents live in sunny southern California - I may be jealous in a few months when the beauty of having “seasons” loses its luster. They have a bunch of fruit trees - Passion fruit, oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, Asian pears, persimmons and figs. Recently, when my Mom went to visit a friend for a week, Dad turned his attention to harvesting figs. They have SO many. It’s just crazy. It reminds me of one year when I had way too many cherry tomatoes for one family to ever consume.  I was totally overwhelmed and decided that I would never again let my garden stress me out like that.  I’ve achieved that goal, but the downside is very little homegrown produce. Anyway, if you know my father, you know that when he sets his mind to something, it gets DONE. Unlike me, cowed by cherry tomatoes, he’s never met a challenge he cannot conquer. His natural tenacity, paired with his inability to tolerate waste of any kind ended up on my doorstep about a week ago.  In a box. A box filled with several jars of homemade fig preserves and bags of dried figs. My youngest and I immediately ate a whole bunch of the dried figs with a big chunk of brie. They were delicious, soft and sweet. Then we tried the preserves, which Dad makes with lemon and not too much sugar. Divine.

Serendipity stepped in a few days later when I got a recipe in my inbox for Vegan Walnut Fig Bars. They looked amazing and I knew I could simplify the recipe by using fig preserves instead of the proposed bar filling. The recipe called for oats, one ingredient I always have on hand, if not in my cupboard, then just down the road.  Another bonus. My bars were not vegan. I used eggs, mostly out of laziness because I have no idea where my stash of chia seeds are or if I even have one anymore. However, these could easily be made vegan by subbing 1 1/2 tablespoons of chia seeds and 1/4 cup of water for the eggs. Using oats instead of wheat flour means that they are also gluten free - though some oats contain small amounts of gluten so if you are allergic to gluten, make sure to use gluten-free oats.

These bars were easy to make.  Filling, not too sweet and perfect for a breakfast, snack on the go, or lunch between conference calls. They can be made sweeter, more like a bar-style cookie but knowing that I would probably end up eating most of them, I made them less sweet and even added an additional sprinkle of sea salt to the top before baking.  I questioned whether I should increase the sweetener in hopes of appealing more to the kids but I’m glad I decided against it. My two older kids wouldn’t even try one because “new things, ick” (the main reason I didn’t alter them for their little taste buds, fool me once...) and my younger two LOVED them just as they are -salty and mildly sweet. #winning

Walnut Fig Bars

Adapted from Sarah Britton’s recipe in My New Roots

 INGREDIENTS

For the Crust

2 large eggs

3 cups raw walnuts chopped

2 1/2 cups rolled oats

1/3  cup fig preserves or applesauce

4 tablespoons honey*

3 tablespoons coconut oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

*The preserves I used were not overly sweet so this was the perfect amount of additional sweetness for me, but it’s not much for the quantity of the recipe. You may want to add more, or add less if the filling you use is quite sweet. 

For Filling

~2 cups fig preserves*

*these would be great with any kind of preserves or a quick mix of dried fruit and applesauce which is what was used in the original recipe

DIRECTIONS 

Make the crust

1. Put 2 cups of walnuts on a rimmed baking sheet, place in the oven, and set the oven to 350°F (180°C). Toast walnuts while the oven is warming up (depending on how fast your oven heats up, this could take 5 to 15 minutes—they will start to smell good when they are getting toasted, watch closely after that so that they don’t burn). Take the walnuts out to cool and leave the oven on. 

2. In a food processor, or blender, blend or process 1 1/2 cup of oats on the highest setting until it becomes a coarse flour, about 30 seconds. Add toasted walnuts and process until the mixture is the texture of sand. Add eggs, fig preserves, honey, coconut oil, and vanilla. Pulse until moistened.

3. In a medium bowl, combine the rest of the rolled oats, salt, and baking powder. Add oat mixture and fold until thoroughly combined.

4. Take about 2/3 of the crust mixture and press it firmly into the baking sheet. I used a quarter sheet pan.  You can spray your hands with oil or wet them so that the dough doesn’t stick while you are pressing it into the pan.

5. Spread fig preserves over crust.

6. Roughly chop 1 cup walnuts and sprinkle over top; firmly press nuts into filling. 

7. Spread the remaining crust mixture over the walnuts and try to cover evenly.  Sprinkle with sea salt, optional.

8. Bake until slightly golden on top, about 30 minutes.

9. Let cool completely before cutting into 16 bars. Store in the refrigerator, covered, for up to 5 days.

Process and fold together crust mixture.

Spread crust mixture into bottom of baking sheet.

Spread filling on top.

Add chopped walnuts - untoasted, they will toast in the oven.

Top with remaining crust mixture.