Miss Ginsu has the story of poisson d'avril, aka the April fish.

How to make green beer at Readymade

How To Cure Your Own Corned Beef ... in Time For St. Patrick's Day (except that I'm too late for this too!) at AT

the food of the irish: beef and guinness pie at Shelterrific

Last night I made Adelaide Bartow’s Irish Soda Bread from Cooking The Hard Way (via Tastespotting). We were out of butter so I sent Scott out for some and we ended up with this cheerfully appropriate Irish butter.



Last week I was watching the episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown makes corned beef. I was considering making that but when I re-read the recipe I found it needs to sit in the refrigerator for ten days. Oops. But I have to say, having Irish soda bread ready to eat when you wake up in the morning more than made up for it.



I made it in my Target Chefmate cast iron pot simply because Cooking The Hard Way showed hers in a dutch oven and I love any excuse to pull it down off the shelf, but you can simply use a casserole dish of some sort. The recipe calls for a pudding pan, anyone know what that is?



I have been considering getting the new-ish Target 6.5 quart cast iron Chefmate dutch oven to go with my smaller one. I'm interested to find that it appears to be exactly the same as the Tramontina pot that Cook's Illustrated recommended a while back. Did Target decide to simply rebrand the pot for people still looking for the Chefmate name?

I'm hoping to find time to make chocolate filled eggs but Easter is coming so quickly this year. Here are the links I've been gathering:

Chocolate Egg How-To at Martha Stewart. Note, the drying time for the emptied and sterilized egg shells is two to three days. I would like to do a praline center, like these eggs that Dean & Deluca carries each year.

Golden Chocolate Easter Eggs by Francisco Migoya, an instructor in baking and Pastry Arts at The Culinary Institute of America New York, shown at Apartment Therapy. These include various chocolate filling variaions.

See also the Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs at this Curbly video podcast, and Dyeing Eggs Naturally at the Martha Stewart website.

Mighty Goods has up Easter guides: Easter basket guide, Easter baskets for babies and Easter baskets for grown ups.

I love the candies that high end stores carry around Easter, if only to work as inspiration. Dean & Deluca's Easter Sweets is one I check each year. I love the fizzy-candy filled chocolate frogs. (Why couldn't the Harry Potter theme candies be more like this?)

Williams-Sonoma Easter candies are simple and sweet. I'm admiring the chocolate pea pods and carrots.

I've already mentioned how much I like the Hotel Chocolat's UK Easter Colleciton with the thrillingly large eggs filled with a large variety of chocolates.

I would love to hear about any Easter candy or Easter projects that has you inspired this year. Give me some ideas!

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, a day I just don't get that into. But last year I stumbled upon something that makes me want to mark the day - I spent all day cooking bolognese and cupcakes for dinner and it was lovely. I got to plan and shop and simmer and tidy up the house and sip wine (what? I had to open a bottle to add to the bolognese). So this year I've decided to do it again, this is the menu I'm planning:

Alton Brown's Sour Cream Cheesecake which I chose solely because the episode was on last week and the cake needs to cool for 6 hours and I declared (silently since nobody else was in the room) that it would do. I'll be buying my first real cake pan for this, I'm very excited.

A meal from Everyday Food of beef tenderloin with horseradish cream, potatoes anna (also) and sauteed swiss chard (or maybe). I suspect I chose this because they use a Hable Construction fabric for the background of the pictures (it's Issue #8). No, really I chose this because I made the horseradish cream sauce once and it haunts me still.

This isn't to say I willfully ignore all Valentine's Day themed things. This year I've been eyeing the round up of Valentine's Day dessert projects at Brownie Points, the stamp your own conversation hearts at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories and the wee Valentine's boxes at How About Orange.

Very cool - Saffron meringue chicks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Thanks to Farah for the heads up.

Tea eggs for the holidays at The Kitchen.

Craftzine - how to make onion eggs.

List of Easter projects at How About Orange.

How About Orange points us over to the Museum of Hoaxes. I really like the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes Of All Time.

Slate's April Fools' Day Defense Kit, Wired's Pranks for Nerds, via The Morning News.

Product Dose offers a few ideas for your April Fools' Day Office Pranks.

Pretty pretty Easter eggs made by felting wool over styrofoam shapes and needle felting designs on top by Betz White. See more here, via Craft.

Betz White makes these cute wool cupcakes, was on the Martha Stewart show (swoon), and she has a book coming out later this year called Warm Fuzzies: 30 Sweet Felted Projects.







Skip To My Lou has a tutorial up on how to make chalkboard Easter eggs using Martha Stewart's formula for making your own chalkboard paint. Such a great idea.





How to make a MOOPocket at Splatgirl Creates. Also, you might not want to look at how to make candied bacon, oh my yum.