Well here is the result of my last minute St. Patrick’s Day Dinner Party, truly last minute, only gave myself 3 days to get it ready. I had no more than 2 hours each day in advance and about 4 hours the day of the party. So in total roughly 10 hours to get this dinner party ready.
Welcome your guests with front door decorations
Your front door is the first thing guest see when arriving, so add a little something to give them a taste of what they are about to walk in to. It doesn’t have to be much, here I taped a few really inexpensive shiny shamrocks to the door. I have had these paper shamrocks for years, although the are really inexpensive, I keep them and re-use them because they take almost no space to store. It also works as another clue for your guests that they have reached the right place.
Use what you have
There is no reason you have to go out and buy a brand new decorations for your St. Patrick’s day party, use what you have. Now what you have at your house will be different from what I have but look around and see what you can use first before buying new. I have these hurricanes with a flame-less candle on top of a black wooden pedestal sitting out in my house regularly so I picked up some fake greens, that reminded me of shamrocks, cut them up & stuck them into the hurricane. If you have smaller vases you could tie them around the outside with some raffia. You could also lay them on their side in a platter with a few candles in between.
Allow time for the moss table runner to lay down flat
The moss table runner I picked up, came folded in half and rolled up. It only needed an hour with some heavy books on it and some containers of pet food to lay down flat.
Corned Beef Shepherd’s Pie
I found the recipe on Pinterest from Real Housemoms, click here for the recipe. It is delicious and it was a HUGE success, guests were going back for thirds! I’m not posting the recipe here because I followed it almost to the tee from the Real Housemoms, so you can find it there. The only addition I added, was I brushed a beaten egg on top of the mashed potatoes before placing in the oven. It made the potatoes brown up just a little.
Another tip, that I think made it incredible was I picked up the highest quality corned beef, round. It is the most expensive but it has the least fat which makes your job much easier, almost no fat to remove. It was wonderful, lean and delicious. The piece I got was a little over-salted so I compensated by using low sodium beef stock, low sodium Worcestershire sauce and under-salting the mashed potatoes.
Traditional Irish Soda Bread
Another incredible recipe , but this recipe for Soda Bread is from Let’s Dish, click here for the recipe. I was a little worried about this recipe, just flour, baking soda, salt & buttermilk? I just wasn’t sure what this combination of ingredients would taste like. But it was so good!!!
One thing I never use is buttermilk, I always make my own substitution with milk and lemon juice ( 1 tbsp lemon juice : 1 cup milk) . However I switched over to almond milk recently and don’t keep milk in the fridge because almond milk last so much longer. So anyway I even used almond milk and lemon juice and it still came out yummy!
SPECIAL THANKS FOR THE CONTRIBUTIONS
On the left is the incredible Irish Creme Brownies my aunt brought. So decadent!!! On the right is my mom’s classic jello, modified with lime green jello for St. Patrick’s day. It just wouldn’t be a holiday without jello in my family and as my brother always says “there is always room for jello”.
If you missed the three days of prep, you can check them out here: