Erin Go Bragh

My new antibiotics are beginning to work and I am feeling a bit better today. Hooray! Thank you for your sweet prayers and good wishes.



Here is our St. Patrick’s Day celebration this year. A banner found on sale at Jo-Ann’s welcomes visitors.



This is an Irish welcome plaque hanging by our front door. It was a gift from my Irish mother-in-law a few years ago.



Our St. Patrick’s menu tonight is from an old book found at a used bookstore, The Art of Irish Cooking by Monica Sheridan (Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1965): roast beef, potato flounces, and Irish peas.



The table is set for tonight. Our plates and goblets are onyx from Palestine. I made the napkins using St. Patrick’s Day fabric bought at Jo-Ann’s, simple hemmed squares. Little silk shamrocks found at Michael’s are sprinkled all over the table and our centerpiece is a flowering Oxalis.

For dessert, we’re having Irish Lace Cookies.



Click to enlarge and print. I purchased the recipe template from The Vintage Workshop.



My husband loves classic shortbread so I made some for him yesterday. Today I’m making batches for our neighbors which my husband will deliver after work.



Did you know the lines in shortbread pans are really not cutting lines (although it helps immensely)? They represent the rays of the sun. My shortbread pan is called British Isles and comes from Brown Bag Designs. Each segment represents an aspect of the British Isles: Scotch Thistles, Irish Celtic Knotwork, a Tudor Rose and a Welsh Dragon, along with the sun’s rays.



Oh, the music in the air!
An' the joy that's ivrywhere -
Shure, the whole blue vault of heaven is wan grand triumphal arch,
An' the earth below is gay
Wid its tender green th'-day,
Fur the whole world is Irish on the Seventeenth o' March!

~ Thomas Augustin Daly ~