Holiday #2: Happy Green!

I don't usually do much for St. Patrick's Day other than wear green. But, this year I decided to do something fun. So, everything we ate was green! Afterward, I totally thought, "Oh, we could have had green beans, peas, kiwi, green grapes ..." Well, there's always next year.

This year I made green pancakes for breakfast. The trick to getting them a consistent color is to add the food coloring to the water/milk before adding it to the dry ingredients.

For lunch, I made green mac & cheese. Again, I added the food coloring to the water the macaroni cooked it in. My children don't like my homemade mac & cheese even though I think it's much better than Kraft. But, since it was a day for them, that's what I made. So, when it came time to mix it up the macaroni had been colored green from the water, but I needed to tint the cheese green too. So, I whisked together the milk and the cheese sauce mix with food coloring before adding it to the macaroni.

My two daughters who are in school all day wanted something green in their lunches too. Usually, I'll make green bread for their sandwiches, but I wasn't thinking far enough ahead this year. So, I cut their sandwiches into a clover puzzle, and added green food coloring to their ranch dip for their carrots. They thought that was great!

For an after-school snack I gave the children cereal with green milk. And, finally for dinner we had green eggs and ham. It was fun to think of ways to use green in our menu. What have you done?