St. Patrick's Day

Last night was our 5th annual St. Patrick's Day bash. It was a great time. We failed to take any photos during the party because we were too busy having fun. But we do have some shots from party preparation that I think will provide you with some evidence of the fun that was to come.

First, our welcoming committee.
Lucy is wearing a dress from Ireland (it was once mine) and she was VERY excited about the party. Carter didn't know what was going on, but he knew there was a lot of food being cooked, and once the guests began arriving, he was ready to shine at what he does best -- taking food from unsuspecting individuals. We need to get him a hat or bandana that says "no matter what I try to tell you, DO NOT FEED ME!" He took cheese right out of the hands of small children, and grabbed a cookie here and there from plates perched on the edge of the coffee table or on people's laps. He was vigilant about patrolling the floors (particularly the dining room) for any remnants.

Pictured here are the three pots of corned beef:

As usual, we got our briskets at Blood Farm in Groton. Special thank-you to Paula for getting the beef for us this year -- YUM! Jake did two in his "original recipe" (the one we've used for years) and then a third in a new recipe that involved molasses. The new one was good, but I think the voters preferred the original. It was all yum. We did have some left, but really not very much.

Colcannon is always a big hit here. Every year we make a bigger pot, hoping that we will have some leftovers, and every year, every last bite of it is eaten. This year, we went above and beyond, making nearly 20 pounds of potatoes:

And wow, our guests did an amazing job of tearing into this tray of colcannon. But finally, this year, we did have some leftovers. Not a lot, but enough to have a good dinner today. Hooray!

We skipped pie this year and went with an all-cookie dessert. We made double batches of both the lemon cream cheese gems:

And the horrifyingly addictive salted white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies:

That's a lot of cookies. Even with a half dozen little girls running over to [secretly] take cookies from the plates, there were still lots of cookies leftover. Yum! Lucy wanted to eat cookies for lunch today and was very distressed when told that wasn't going to happen. She really worked her sad girl face last night to trick grownups into giving her cookies.

I foolishly failed to take a photo of the whole table with the fabulous spread, but in addition to the stars featured above, we had a great supporting cast of lentil salad, spinach-cheese squares, our usual spicey pecans, Aunt Kris's salmon dip, hummus, guacamole, pea&soybean dip, boiled cabbage & carrots (who knew that would go so fast??) and various veggies and chips and the like. I think that covers it.

Also as usual, we now have more beer in the house than we did before the party started. Time to have another party!