Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Celebrate with food

I'm bummed. It turns out that I forgot to celebrate Pi Day. I have never celebrated it before but now that I've been made aware, I'll never forget again.
If you haven't caught on yet, Pi Day is March 14th. 3.14. If you're really geeky you can celebrate it at 1:59. I'll choose to be semi-geeky and celebrate it by making pies. Pizza pies, fruit pies, pot pies, shepherd's pie. Next year will be the year!
I like to celebrate with food. Yesterday was St. Patty's day and I was wrapping up my food challenge week by making bacon wrapped shrimp skewers on a bed of couscous with a salad.



I was certainly being "green". But I wanted to make something Irish to celebrate the holiday, like corned beef or boxty. (Every time I go into an Irish pub I look for but rarely find boxty, the Irish potato pancake, best found here). I settled on Irish soda bread, for which I had all the ingredients. It is not made with a can of pop (though that could produce an interesting bread product). It's made with baking soda so it rises despite a lack of yeast. Thus it's a "quick" bread - just mix up the ingredients and put the dough in the oven. You'll be shocked at how much it rises, so don't put it on a lower rack with the upper rack right above it or you'll end up with grill marks on your loaf. Not that I've ever done this.
I used this recipe. I'm not saying it's the best one. But it's easy, it tasted good and I managed to have a slice with every meal today. And the same tomorrow...did I mention the loaf gets pretty big?