Spring has Sprung!

This past fall, I planted a bunch of early spring bulbs up the length of my front walk and outside my front door, and, finally over this weekend, the first ones opened up!!  It is my first spring in my new house, and I am really looking forward to starting up the garden.

My first crocus in bloom!

Definitely going to be planting roses and hydrangeas - it doesn't seem right to me to live in a Cape Cod style house without hydrangeas!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

When Sister K and I went to Ireland back in 2010, I had my first experience with the very delicious potato and leek soup. I loved it and ended up eating some in pretty much every stop on our tour (along with the brown bread and scones. Actually, the whole scone thing became kind of an obsession.)

Today, I am hosting a St. Patrick's Day dinner at my house for my family and in addition to the traditional (American) corned beef and cabbage, I wanted to make something that was actually authentically Irish. I found this easy and delicious recipe over on the Irish American Mom blog and am really looking forward to sharing this with the fam this evening. (I made it earlier today - so that the flavors could meld more and so that I would have time for a redo, if necessary. It is sitting on the warming burner right now, smelling amazing, just teasing me with its deliciousness. But I am being good... for now. Couple of modifications that I made to the recipe: I doubled the number of potatoes and I added some chicken low sodium Better Than Boullion to the vegetable stock. I used Ina Garten's suggestion for cleaning the leeks - a salad spinner. Next time I might use more stock as the soup is on the thicker side.)

Off to start the corned beef...