Friday, March 16, 2012

Dublin Coddle One Dish Dinner for St. Patrick's Day

This has become our traditional St. Patrick's Day dinner!  We love it and you can't go wring with this recipe.  I found this recipe on SimplyPotatoes.com. I always cook it up with a few minor changes (that you will see below).

Dublin Coddle One-Dish Dinner

"Coddle" is the Irish name for this traditional comfort food - a favorite of Dubliners young and old. A hearty helping of sausage and potatoes with bacon and carrots creates a simple, satisfying meal.

Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Time-To-Table: 50 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients:
  • 3 slices uncooked bacon, cut into small pieces*
  • 6 frozen pork sausage links, cut in half crosswise (or Jimmy Dean Sage Sausage)* *
  • 1 cup thinly sliced onion
  • 1 cup 1/4-inch thick sliced carrots
  • 6-7 medium sized Russet potatoes cut up in cubes or sliced round. (You could also try red potatoes.)
  • 1 cup apple juice***
  • 1 tablespoon parsley
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

1. In 4 quart Dutch oven or large saucepan, cook bacon and sausage until
browned. Drain on paper towels; set aside.

2. In same saucepan, cook onions, stirring occasionally, until soft and lightly
golden. Add carrots, potatoes, apple juice, parsley, salt and cooked bacon
and sausage.

3. Reduce heat to low. Cover; cook 30-35 minutes or until potatoes and
vegetables are soft, adding more apple juice if the mixture gets too dry.


TIPS:


*I cooked and added all the bacon as directed. The flavor was amazing, but I like my bacon to be on the crispier side. So, when I make this, I add the bacon as directed, but then make a couple of more slices to crumble on top just before serving.

**If sausages are too frozen to cut; thaw slightly. Add some spice and heat to this entree up by using spicy pork sausage links. Also, I used Jimmy Dean Sage Flavored Sausage. The added sage stepped up the flavor of this dish.



***I definitely used more than 1 cup of apple juice. I added it throughout the cooking process so it created a little broth, which was perfect to have with some crusty bread.



Chasing Tiny Feet

Monday, March 12, 2012

Cupcake Crayons

I LOVE this activity!  This is perfect to recycle those old and broken crayons that are just taking up space.  These homemade crayons are easy for small hands to hold and they produced bright colors and patterns.

Here is our pile of old crayons.  I picked through and kept the good ones and used the rest for this activity. 


Age: 18-40 months
Need:
  • Old crayons and crayon pieces
  • muffin tin
  • paper muffin or cupcake liners

Directions:
  1. Discards black, brown and grey crayons
  2. Remove paper from all the crayons
  3. break remaining crayons into small pieces no more than 1/2 inch long. 
  4. Distribute crayon pieces into muffin tins lined with liners.
  5. Bake at 300 degrees about 15-20 minutes until all the crayons have melted together. 
  6. When cool, remove the new cupcake crayons from the tins - they will be ready to use!



I was a little nervous when they first came out of the oven!

But let them cool, take the wrappers off and flip them over!  Viola!!!!!


I think this is a great way to recycle old crayons!  If you have enough like we did, you might just want to melt all the reds together, all the blues together, etc and create a single colored crayon.  Either way, it is fun!