Happy St. Patty's Day

St. Patty's Day is such a fun holiday!! Every year my family gets together to celebrate St. Patty's with the traditional Irish Corned Beef and Cabbage! This year, we had our St. Patty's party the Sunday before St. Patty's Day and Paul and I had the party at our house. My Mom is so amazing and volunteered to make 3 big crock pots full of the corned beef and cabbage. She is absolutely amazing!! Here's the food and all the guests enjoying the delicious meal. I made icecream jello for dessert. It didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted it to, but it was still pretty yummy. Next time I will definitely add more ice cream. Here is the recipe for the jello ice cream if anyone is interested.

ingredients:
2 large packages (6 oz each) Jell-o (any flavor)
1 packet of unflavored Knox gelatin
4 cups boiling water
half of a container of vanilla ice cream about 3/4 quart (next time I am going to add about 3/4 of the box.)

In a large bowl combine the Jell-o, unflavored gelatin and the boiling water. Whisk until dissolved. Now you want to quickly add the ice cream until it is melted and combined. I’ve found that exactly half of a container works well. Now, they’ve changed the size of these things, believe it or not, so one container of ice cream is now actually 1.5 quarts, it is no longer a half gallon!

Once mixed well, pour into a 9″ x 13″ pan. Refrigerate overnight, cut into squares and serve. If you are doing this for a party, I suggest putting the cut pieces into cupcake liners.

The ice cream will magically float to the top of the jello.

And here's our cute little leprechaun. And here are some pictures from the party. After dinner, we watched a slide show of pictures from our family trip to Norway last August. Everyone had given Paul their pictures and he made a slide show from them. There were so many pictures from the trip that we only made it through Paul's and my pictures so we will need many more parties to be able to see them all.
Thanks so much for the fun evening everyone.
On the actual St. Patty's Day, March 17th, I made green eggs and rainbow pancakes for breakfast. Porter thought the pancakes were pretty fun, and he ate the blue one all gone.
And then I made St. Patty's Day Pesto Chicken Alfredo Lasagna. It sounds wierd, but it was actually very good. Porter even loved it.

Here is the recipe for the lasagna. You should try it. We loved it.


ST. PATTY'S DAY PESTO ALFREDO LASAGNA

• 1 pkg lasagna noodles
• 1 10oz pkg frozen spinach
• 2 chicken breasts--cooked and diced up
• 2 jars alfredo sauce
• 4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 pints ricotta cheese
• 1 container pesto
• salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350degs. If using regular noodles, cook in salted water until al dente. If using oven-ready, lay first layer in pan. Cook spinach according to package directions, drain well.
Pour each jar of alfredo sauce into a separate bowl, and divide pesto into each bowl. Mix well. Add the chicken into one of the bowls. Mix together the ricotta cheese and spinach.
If using oven ready noodles, add about 3/4 cups of water to he alfredo/chicken mixture.
In your 9x13 pan, layer your noodles, then all of the chicken/alfredo mixture. Sprinkle 1 cup of cheese over it. Layer noodles, then spinach/ricotta mixture. Pour half of the second bowl of alfredo over this, then another cup of cheese. One more layer of noodles, the rest of the alfredo sauce, then the rest of the cheese.
Bake for 50-60 minutes.

Hope you all had a HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY!!