March 10 // Meal Inspiration // Irish Stew, Homemade Butter, Kyiv Mules, and More!

Green Muffins, Rainbow Toast, Irish Stew, Soda Bread, Homemade Butter, Chicken Biryani(ish), Kyi Mules, and a Pi day Workout!

This week’s meals might be a little carb-heavy, but a cold front is coming in and the world is going through hard times right now. Let’s enjoy cozy moments a little extra and hug our loved ones a little tighter this week.

Breakfast: Green Muffins
Lunch: Rainbow Toast
Dinner 1: Irish Stew with Soda Bread and Homemade Butter
Dinner 2: Chicken Biryani(ish)
Treat: Kyiv Mules
Exercise: Pi Day Workout

Breakfast

Green Muffins

If you were too scared to try beet pancakes for Valentine’s Day, here’s another chance: spinach muffins for St. Patrick’s Day! Yummy Toddler Food’s blender muffin recipe is fantastic.

1. Preheat oven to 375 and grease your muffin tin.

2. Place the following into a blender: 2 ripe bananas, 2 cups spinach (we did four big kid-handfuls), 3/4 cup milk, 1/4 cup honey,1 cup rolled oats, 2 Tbsp melted and cooled butter, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1/8 tsp salt.

3. Blend until very smooth. It should look like a green smoothie.

4. Add 1 cup of whole-wheat flour and pulse or stir.

5. Pour batter into the muffin tins and stir in chocolate chips if you choose.

6. Bake for 18-20 minutes, serve, and savor 🤤

Lunch

Rainbow Toast

This serves as both an activity and a food! Simply mix neon food coloring and milk, paint colorful designs onto bread, then toast it and serve with peanut butter, avocados, or whatever you normally eat with toast!

St. Patrick’s Day Dinner (in 3 parts)

Irish Stew

This recipe, adapted from the BBC, is simple and hearty. The barley adds a nice chewy texture to the soft vegetables and, sigh, it’s just a great meal. The recipe below is for the Instant Pot and can be done in less than an hour 🤩

1. Put some oil in your pot on the Sauté setting, and brown chunks of lamb or beef with salt and pepper.

2. Add in chopped garlic and onions. Let them get delightfully brown.

3. Add carrots and potatoes that have been cut into large chunks. (You don’t have to peel them.)

4. Pour in some beef broth. We added tomato paste to ours.

5. Stir in more salt and pepper as well as whatever spices sound good. We used herbed pepper from Alchemy Spice Co.

6. Stir in pearl barley or farro.

7. Close lid, make sure vent is sealed, and cook at high pressure for 30 minutes.

8. Release the steam, top with some fresh thyme, and enjoy!

Soda Bread

This recipe from Darina Allen is super easy to make!

Since you don’t have to worry about yeast or rise, it’s not the fluffiest bread, but this is a great recipe to hand to one of your kids and say “Can you please make this for us tonight?” The pictured batch was made by our 8-year-old. It’s a wonderful sensory experience (meaning: messy.)

1. Preheat oven to 450 F.

2. In a bowl, mix 3 1/2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp baking soda.

3. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in about 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk (see next recipe for making your own buttermilk.)

4. Stir together with your fingers, adding raisins in you’d like.

5. On a floured worktop, knead the dough a little.

6. With a sharp knife, cut an X into the dough, and bake for 15 minutes.

7. Lower heat to 400 F and bake for another 30 minutes, until it’s brown on the top and the bottom sounds hollow when tapped.

Homemade Butter

Have you ever made your own butter before? It’s not necessarily going to save you money, but it’s quite fascinating!

Basically, you’re going to beat heavy cream until it turns into whipped cream, then you’ll keep going until it separates into butter and buttermilk. (Yes! You get buttermilk out of the deal, too.)

If you’re doing a large batch, it’s much better if you use a stand mixer with a whisk attachment, but you can also make smaller batches with your kids by shaking a mason jar.

First, you get whipped cream ⬇️

Then it gets thicker until you eventually have two separate substances!

Strain the buttermilk and save it for another recipe (like for the soda bread above!)

Rinse the butter under water so it will preserve better. (The butter experts say this step is very important.)
Then pat it dry and add salt or whatever else you want! This is what’s called “compound butter” and it’s really fun to experiment with.
We massaged herbs into ours, shaped it into a loaf, and rolled it in parchment paper so it was ready for slicing!

Pioneer Woman has six recipes for compound butter here. That orange honey butter sounds awesome!

Chicken Biryani(ish)

We are still figuring out the best way to make this recipe—and there have been numerous failed attempts—but here is an easy, filling Instant Pot recipe from My Heart Beets that uses golden raisins and mint that you need for other recipes in this newsletter anyway 😉

1. In an Instant pot, sauté chicken thighs with ghee or oil and ingredients such as onions, garlic, garam masala seasonings, salt, chili powder, and ginger paste. You can also add cashews (optional.)

2. Add 1 cup of basmati rice and 1 cup of water. Stir in golden raisins, cardamom, coriander, cumin, and turmeric. Add some saffron if you have it. We added frozen peas for a little extra veggie goodness.

3. Cook at high pressure for about 6 minutes, then release and see how it turned out.

4. Stir in cilantro and fresh mint and serve! Yogurt goes great with this meal.

Treat

Kyiv Mules

In solidarity with Ukraine, some bars are renaming the famous drink Moscow Mules to “Kyiv Mules” and using Ukrainian liquor instead of Russian. 🇺🇦

So—even though this recipe doesn’t include any alcohol anyway—here is a “Kyiv Mule” mocktail that’s easy to put together!

Simply combine lime juice, simple syrup (or just some honey, if you don’t feel like making a syrup), torn mint leaves, ginger beer (or ginger ale) and club soda. Mix with crushed ice, garnish with mint leaves and a lime slice, and you’ve got a fancy, refreshing drink!

Ginger beer is spicy, but it’s a great way to make a strong, sippable drink without alcohol. If you haven’t made mocktails before, go to the cocktail section at the grocery store and stock up on some goodies! Angostura bitters, simple syrup, cocktail cherries, ginger beer, etc. are all good to have on hand at home to make fancy drinks for your kids and guests.

Exercise

Here’s a Pi Day workout you can do with your kids! (Pi Day is Monday, March 14th.)

Keep in mind 3.14 : 3 minutes of running (or any cardio), 1 minute of stretching, and 4 minutes of squats! Just one round of this will get your heart pumping, but it might be fun to compete against your kids and see who can do the most rounds 😉

Hopefully you found some meals you liked! If so, send in pics!

Warmly,

Hope from Family Scripts

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