Cooking and Thankful Friday

I missed my Thankful Thursday again :( so I'll have to do another Thankful Thursday on Friday.  I hope you all enjoyed St. Patrick's Day. I'm a bit Irish and have always loved Irish food, music and dance. I found a few fabulous recipes that you'll have to check out, no pictures, the food disappeared to fast. I made an Irish Soda Bread that was so easy and turned out fabulously. I altered the recipe just a little, so here's my version:

Irish Soda Bread

• 4 cups All Pur­pose Flour
• 2 Tablespoons White Sugar
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 1 teaspoon Bak­ing Soda
• 2 cups Buttermilk
• ½ cups Butter (softened)

Sift all dry ingredients together. Cut in butter. Make a well and add buttermilk all at once. Mix together quickly. It won’t look like white bread with yeast. Instead, it will look more like bis­cuit dough. Knead it for no more than a minute it does not need to be worked to death (the dough is very sticky so don't be afraid to use lots of flour in your kneading process). Shape into a round cake (you could even bake it in a cake pan if you like, I used a pizza pan and it worked wonderfully). Put it onto a floured sheet pan (or in a cake/pizza pan) and carve a cross into the top of it. Bake in a pre­heated over at 425 degrees for 40 minutes. The end result is bread with a crunchy crust and soft moist center. Perfect!

This weekend will hopefully be full of cooking and finishing a few of the sewing projects that are laying around my room.  If you've got some time you should check out Jennifer's series on the Our Father over at Conversion Diary. During Lent she's doing a post on each word in the prayer. Pretty great reading for this season. Enjoy the weekend and pray for all those in Japan and the hardships they are facing. And here's my Thankful Friday list...

At this moment I am thankful for...

(1) My varied heritage. I'm German, Irish and Danish mainly with some varied English roots as well as a bit of French thrown and all these wonderful nationalities helped to shape who I am.

(2) My knowledge of computers and limited knowledge of design. 

(3) The season of Lent and all the challenges that brings.

(4) Good friends.

(5) Good beer. Hey, it was just St. Patrick's Day and I do live in Wisconsin...

(6) Live music and all the talented musicians that are willing to share their gift with others.

(7) That I live somewhere with minimal natural disasters. I am thankful for all the courageous people who daily risk their lives to help others in such disasters.