St. Paddy's Day is only a couple days away!  Our family traditionally loves Corned Beef and Cabbage to celebrate this day, but sometimes different options can be fun.  Surprisingly, some people don't love Corned Beef like we do.  For these reasons, I've rounded up a few recipes that would each be fun to try for your St. Patrick's Day celebration! 

     What is it about St. Patrick's Day that makes everyone want to celebrate it even if you aren't Irish?  After doing our DNA tests my kids found out that they do have some Irish heritage through my husband's line, but not mine.  We don't drink beer, which seems like a traditional way of celebrating the day.  But still, if you look through our posts over the last few years, there is usually something about St. Patrick's Day every year!  Maybe it is the beautiful Irish accent or the idea of pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Whatever it is, for today's Friday Faves, we are honoring St. Patrick's Day once again. 

    Here are the things my family has always looked forward to, and then I will share one new special thing: 

• Watching Darby O'Gill and the Little People
• Having green milk in the morning on their cereal or just to drink.
• Eating Corned Beef and Cabbage
• Wearing green to keep from getting pinched

    We have an entire section about St. Patrick's Day on our blog where we share food, party ideas and printables to help you do little things to mark the day with your children and family! These little Rice Krispies Treats Pots of Gold can be made so that they are vegan if you use vegan marshmallows!  

      Now, here is the one more special thing that I told you about.  For many years now, one thing that is always fun to do for St. Patrick's Day is to go to McDonald's and get a Shamrock Shake.  It is a minty green nod to the holiday.  I already had mine for this year, and I wondered if there was a way that I could make something similar for my vegan Maddy.  Here is what I came up with! 

     I used Tofutti, a vegan cream cheese, almond milk Reddi Whip, and mint Oreos!  They were super easy to make, and they taste so good!  The Tofutti was available at Sprouts and I purchased the Reddi Whip and the Oreos at the regular grocery store. 
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I hope you give this recipe a try, and enjoy your St. Patrick's Day this weekend! 

Alicia back again with another Irish recipe for you. This will be my last recipe for Ireland. Next month we're moving on to French food! This has been a very fun experiment so far. I hope you get the chance to try something like this out sometime.

Today I'll be sharing a recipe for Cottage Pie.

You may be thinking that this Cottage Pie looks a lot like Shepherd's Pie. That's because they are essentially very similar. But one thing is very different between them. Shepherd's Pie has to use ground lamb or sheep meat! Never Beef! This makes sense if you think about how Shepherd's watched over sheep and not cows.

I didn't have ground lamb, however, so I decided to make Cottage Pie withe the ground beef I had i the freezer. And it was so tasty, we "accidentally" ate half the dish in one sitting, going back for thirds. Even my 6 month old daughter was digging it. She is so fascinated by food. Every time we would bring the fork to our mouths she would open her mouth. It was really cute. I ended up giving her some of the mashed potato topping, and she loved it!

Cottage Pie is layered. A delicious beef layer with veggies and gravy, and a topping of champ and cheese. 

Champ is mashed potatoes with diced green onions, lots of butter, and milk. They are mashed until they are really creamy smooth. You definitely don't want any lumps for this dish. So get those potatoes as smooth as you can. 

Because you want it layered, dollop small amounts of the champ on top of the beef mixture, and then gently smooth them together with a fork or spatula. You don't want any holes in the top.

The cheese I used was Kerrygold Dubliner cheese. It's an Irish cheese, and it tastes a bit like Gruyere only a bit sweeter. It's very tasty! 

This is such an easy meal to make and pretty inexpensive. I hope you give it a go. Let us know how you like it!

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Hey Alicia again with another recipe from our culinary travels around the world. If you're new to 3 Winks, each month my family is picking a country from our heritage and making one meal a week from that country. So far we have done Germany, Ecuador, and Ireland. To see all the food I've made in this experiment so far, look through the slideshow below. If something looks delicious, clicking on the picture will take you to the post with the recipe. Enjoy!

This week I made Irish stew. I made it before St Patrick's Day actually because we were going out of town over the weekend. It was very delicious!

To make this Irish dish, I looked up a lot of recipes. They all varied in some ways, but all had one thing in common; you have to use lamb. It's not Irish stew if it doesn't use lamb. Lamb is a must for Irish stew. Never beef! In my area lamb isn't something they have in plenty year round. But now that Easter is coming the stores are stocking up. This could be a great dish to make with your leftover Easter lamb! (If that's what you eat on Easter).

Because this is meant to be a meal that feeds a crowd, it's very filling itself and doesn't really need any side bread etc. Every version of this stew I saw used slightly different vegetables. Some used turnips, rutabagas, and even beets! I used more traditional stew ingredients such as carrots, celery, onion, and, of course, potato. 

Some of recipes baked their stew in the oven for about 90 minutes. While others let theirs simmer for at least 3 days on the stove! I decided a few hours would be good for my stew and let it simmer (covered) for 3 hours. 

The leftovers were delicious! It reheats really well! Everyone in my family loves this stew. My husband was skeptical at first because he doesn't really like lamb. But as he was eating he kept telling me how good it was. He also was sad to find the leftovers were all gone. My 3 year old had 2 helpings of this stew! He almost never does that. So that will tell you something. He is also the culprit for eating the leftovers before Dad could get any.

Irish Stew

I hope you give this stew a go. It was really so delicious and perfect for the rainy weather we've been having in the Bay lately. I think I would really be enjoying it in the early spring snows I know are happening around the world now too!

Tomorrow I'll be sharing my last Irish recipe for Cottage Pie! Be sure to come check it out!