So after much digging and hunting through an extremely disorganized recipe filing system, I think I’ve managed to solve my menu dilemna for Saint Patrick’s Day.

Here’s an old one that I got from my mother-in-law years ago (she’s 100% Irish from New York and at age 80?+ still lives in her kitchen).  I remember having this one a long time ago and liking it, but now I have to figure out where to buy the lamb?

Thought I’d share it here for anyone else that may be trying to figure out what kind of Irish food to cook for Saint Patrick’s Day.

IRISH STEW (The Traditional Way)

3 lbs. boneless lamb shoulder (cut into 1 inch cubes
with most of fat trimmed)
3 lbs. boiling potatoes (such as red potatoes, yukon
gold…peel and cut into quarters)
1 lb. carrots (peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces)
6 stalks celery (cut into 1/2 inch pieces)
1 large onion (diced finely)
1 1/2 TBS. Fresh Parsley (minced)
1 Tsp. dried thyme
6 cups chicken broth (either canned or homemade)
6 TBS. flour (all purpose)
1/4 cup vegetable oil

In a large pot or dutch oven place the lamb, parsley and thyme. Add salt and pepper to taste and cover with 4 cups of the chicken broth. Cover, bring to a boil and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. After 1 1/2 hours add the potatoes, onion, carrots and celerated along with the additional 2 cups of chicken broth. Cover again and simmer for an additional hour.

In a small bowl mix together the oil and the flour until smooth. Stir this into the simmering stew and mix until well incorporated. Simmer uncovered for an additional 3-5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

So..if I can track down some lamb I’m going with this one (without the lamb it seems like it would just be regular old beef stew).

On a LOL side note:  my son happened upon my blog post from the other day about the broken “shoe”.  Called this morning to let me know how sorry he was.  I guess at the time it got broken by my grandson, we were all busy in the kitchen getting ready for dinner, and he said he “meant” to tell me about it later but forgot.  Funny how much these kids can “forget”.

Anyway…if you have anything you want to share with your kids and don’t know how to approach it…just post it on your blog!  Haha.

So today I went into the guest bedroom for a little vacuuming and dusting.  I very rarely go in there, but since the kids and grandson were visiting this weekend and were in that room it needed the cleaning crew (me!).

There was a little surprise waiting for me under one of the nightstands.  The broken pieces of one of my porcelin shoes had been neatly tucked underneath it.  These aren’t the real shoes like we wear.  They’re little glass or porcelin replicas of fancy shoes.  They’re part of a collection that I inherited from my mom when she died, so they’re kind of special to me.

Now admittedly I should know better than to leave them displayed when I know my grandson is visiting, but we never leave him unsupervised (at his age you can’t).  Soooo…it was determined that the only one who was in that room with my grandson was my son during  diaper changes.

Mind you, nothing was mentioned to me about the breaking of this shoe.  My grandson’s not old enough or smart enough to hide it.  Heck, he’s not old enough to know he did something wrong.  I’ve concluded that my sneaky son hid it away thinking I’d never miss it since the collection is fairly large.

Grrrr!  My son’s a big lighthearted goofball and avoids confrontation by any means, so I’m sure his intention was just to not upset me.  To tell you the truth, I’m laughing about it as I’m writing this because I can just see my son doing it.

So who gets the discipline here?  My son, my grandson, or both?  Not sure.

Honestly!  I should probably just drop it and not even bring it up, but I do want my grandson to understand he can’t play with certain things…then there’s the big kid who needs to know he has to supervise and watch his son.

What to do, what to do?  After 26 years of parenting you’d think I’d know the answer by now.