Jennifer Lambert

A Sacred Balance

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Lamb Stew

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March 10, 2020 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

I love lamb, but it’s pretty expensive in the USA, so my kids get very excited when I find it on sale.

We often make the lamb stew with leftover roast lamb from Easter dinner or “on sale” fresh chopped lamb.

This stew can be made two ways and both are rich and full.

My kids prefer the stew with Guinness instead of red wine. It makes the gravy less sweet.

It’s like most stews – onions, carrots, and potatoes. You can add celery root, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, or other savory veg.

I dredge the lamb in raw sugar, seasonings like rosemary, and flour. Then I sear it in fat.

I add the beer or wine and beef stock, some Worcestershire, and bring to a boil to make gravy. Then I slow cook for about six hours.

I love my slow cooker so I can fix it and forget it, but the house smells so amazing all day long!

I often add some peas at the very end or as a side dish.

We like to serve this with fresh bread machine soda bread.

Print

Lamb Stew

Course Main Course

Ingredients

  • 1 lb lamb, cubed
  • 1-2 T sugar
  • 2-3 T flour
  • 2 T olive oil
  • 2 T butter
  • 1 bottle dark beer or 1 cup dry red wine
  • 1 box beef stock or about 3 cups
  • 1 T Worcestershire sauce
  • 1-2 t salt
  • 1-2 t dried thyme
  • 1/2 t coarse black pepper
  • 1 small onion diced, chopped, sliced – however you like it
  • 2-3 carrots peeled and sliced
  • 1 lb small red potatoes
  • 1 T parsley chopped, fresh for garnish

Instructions

  1. Sprinkle lamb with sugar and dredge in flour.

  2. Sear lamb in olive oil. Remove to a plate to make roux.

  3. Add butter to remaining oil and more flour if needed to make a roux.

  4. Add beer or wine and scrape pot. Add beef stock and bring to boil.

  5. Return lamb, spices, and vegetables to pot.

  6. Simmer on low for about two hours or set slow cooker to low 4-6 hours.

  7. If gravy is too thin, add some water thickened with cornstarch. Sprinkle with fresh parsley.

  8. Serve hot stew with soda bread and salad.

You might also like:

  • Celebrating Saint Patrick
  • Our Trip to Ireland
  • Ireland Unit Study

I’ve never liked corned beef and it’s not traditionally served on St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland. It’s more of a New England immigrant food.

Some other fun traditional Irish recipes:

  • shepherd’s pie
  • colcannon
  • champ
  • boxty
  • bacon and cabbage
  • coddle
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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: dinner, Ireland, lamb, recipe, slow cooker, stpatrick

Soda Bread

This blog may contain affiliate links: disclosure. Please see my suggested resources.

March 9, 2020 By Jennifer Lambert 8 Comments

Sometimes, I just want a very simple bread that doesn’t take all day to make.

Soda bread is versatile, delicious, and quick in the bread machine.

The sides and bottom of the loaf are crispy and firm. The top steamed a bit. The middle is soft and crumbly.

We prefer our soda bread without fruit, seeds, or nuts. It’s delicious either way, I’m sure.

We serve this with soups, for snacks, for breakfasts. It goes great with our lamb stew!

My bread machine completes this quick bread cycle in about 1.5 hours.

Soda bread isn’t just for Saint Patrick’s Day!

5 from 2 votes
Print

Soda Bread

Ingredients

  • 1/2 c water
  • 1 c buttermilk +2T
  • 2 eggs, slightly beaten
  • 2 T unsalted butter
  • 2 T molasses
  • 1 c whole wheat flour
  • 2 c bread or cake flour
  • 1/2 t baking soda
  • 1 1/2 t kosher or sea salt
  • 2 t yeast
  • 2 t caraway seeds optional
  • 1 c currants and/or raisins optional

Instructions

  1. Place all ingredients in the bread machine in order – liquid ingredients at the bottom and dry ingredients on top. I like to put the yeast in last, making a little divet in the center of the flour.

  2. Set bread machine to "Quick" cycle. Go live your life for a couple hours.

  3. When the bread machine beeps, you can add seeds and fruit to the cycle if using.

  4. Allow bread to set for 10 minutes before removing it from the bread machine. It'll steam a bit and be softer.

  5. Serve sliced warm with salted Irish butter and/or jam.

You might also like:

  • Celebrating Saint Patrick
  • Our Trip to Ireland
  • Ireland Unit Study

Some other fun traditional Irish recipes:

  • shepherd’s pie
  • colcannon
  • champ
  • boxty
  • bacon and cabbage
  • coddle
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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: baking, bread, Ireland, recipe, stpatrick

Celebrating St. Patrick

This blog may contain affiliate links: disclosure. Please see my suggested resources.

March 11, 2019 By Jennifer Lambert 6 Comments

We really like the story of St. Patrick.

It’s a fun holiday. It’s been popular in the USA for many years.

I love the prayer Breastplate. In part:

Christ be within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ inquired, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Legend of St. Patrick:

Patrick’s birth name was Maewyn Succat. He was born a Roman citizen in Roman Britain, in the town of Banna Venta Berniae, sometime in the late 300s AD. He was kidnapped into slavery and brought to Ireland. He escaped and became a priest, went back to Ireland, where he had a lot of luck converting the Druids into Christians.

He changed his name to Patricius (or Patrick), which derives from the Latin term for “father figure,” after he became a priest. 

It became a popular feast day or holiday in the 17th century.

Since the holiday falls during Lent, it provides Christians a day off from the prescriptions of abstinence leading up to Easter.

The first ever St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in Boston in 1737. In 1762, the first New York City parade took place.

It wasn’t until 1798, the year of the Irish Rebellion, that the color green became officially associated with the day. (It used to be blue.)

Thanks to a marketing push from Budweiser in the 1980s, downing (green) beer has become a common way to celebrate.

  • St. Patrick’s Day Parade.com
  • Irish Genealogy
  • Ireland Calling
  • Catholic.org

How We Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day:

  • We visited Ireland in 2016.
  • I designed an Ireland unit study.
  • Check out these fun preschool St. Patrick’s Day works.
  • Teach the Trinity with shamrocks.
  • Go on a nature rainbow scavenger hunt.
  • Special Irish-themed meal. We don’t like corned beef, so I sometimes make pastrami sandwiches or lamb stew.
  • Make soda bread.
  • Game Night.
  • Wear green of course!

St. Patrick Resources:

  • St. Patrick Unit by The Homeschool Mom
  • The Kennedy Adventures St. Patrick printables and Snacks and
    Preschool and
  • March Saints Books
  • Rainbow Watercolor Salt by the Rhythms of Play
  • Fruit Rainbow by Passion for Savings
  • Skittles science by Homeschool Preschool
  • Lucky Charms catapulting from Joy in the Works
  • Science activities from Feel Good Teaching
  • Printables from You Brew My Tea
  • Sugar Spice and Glitter Unit
  • EdHelper Resources
  • Montessori From the Heart unit
  • DLTK St. Patrick
  • Crayola St. Patrick
  • Printables from Spaceships and Laserbeams
  • Preschool Printables and Booklet from Teach Mama
  • A Slice of Smith Life
  • Christian Preschool Printables
  • Three-Sided Wheel Trinity Printables
  • 50 crafts and recipes from I Heart Naptime
  • Red Ted Art crafts
  • Living Montessori Now
  • Paper Dali coloring page
  • coloring page from Classical Family
  • Homeschool Share lapbooks
  • Embark on the Journey pack
  • Gift of Curiosity pack
  • Resourceful Mama dot printables
  • pack from 3 Dinosaurs
  • preK pack from Over the Big Moon
  • The Notebooking Fairy pages
  • The Notebooking Nook pages
  • Cynce’s Place pages
  • Notebooking Pages St. Patrick
  • Story of St. Patrick by Homegrown Learners
  • My St. Patrick’s Day Pinterest board

Learn about the other patron saint of Ireland: St. Brigid.

How do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?

St Patrick’s Day Notebooking Pages (FREE)
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Filed Under: Faith Tagged With: Ireland, March, saint, spring, stpatrick

St. Patrick’s Day Preschool Works

This blog may contain affiliate links: disclosure. Please see my suggested resources.

March 17, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

 
We read lots of books and watched some fun DVDs from the library this week about planets and our solar system.
 
Space matching game
Astronomy Matching Game
-an word family work and FLL proper nouns (aunts and uncles)
Letter Writing
-an word family word wall
Word Family Wall
How can you write the number 10?
Ways to Write the Number 10

Then we searched for shamrocks around the room and wrote the number 4 different ways on our papers! This was great fun!

Patterns with shamrocks

I love how creative the girls were! I gave them freedom to make up patterns. They turned the shamrocks backwards, sideways, and upside down to make different patterns! Then they told me the patterns: AB, ABC, ABBA, ABCD, AAB, etc.
Shamrock Patterns
We have a fun Irish dinner at church tonight. We’re making Irish lamb stew and corned beef and cabbage and soda bread!
We graphed with Lucky Charms cereal!

We read some amazing books and poetry about St. Patrick’s Day. Oh, how we love poetry!

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Preschool Letter R

This blog may contain affiliate links: disclosure. Please see my suggested resources.

March 19, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Letter R for Rainbows!

A Rainbow Scavenger Hunt!

Rainbow Scavenger Hunt

Tori found a red berry, orange pebble, yellow grass, green leaf, blue stone, purple? stick…

Rainbow Items

Katie found a red berry, orange rock, yellow grass and leaf, green leaf, blue pebble, purple stick…

More Rainbow Items

Katherine enjoyed learning about the color wheel. I got these great bowls at Target and we used balls from toys we already have. We learned primary, secondary, and complementary colors.

Color Wheel

We also studied Great Britain (Ireland) in geography this week with Expedition Earth and and missions in New Zealand.

The girls helped make an Irish feast. Irish soda bread. Recipe from Life As Mom.

Irish Soda Bread

Corned Beef

Corned Beef

and Cabbage (with lots of carrots, potatoes, onions, and celery…)

The girls LOVE chopping vegetables. We even bought them each their own set of kid-friendly knives.

Cabbage and Carrots

Here is Tori cutting out a shamrock.

Shamrock Cutting

We sang to the tune of Frere Jacques: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, 3 in 1…

Katie puts theme stickers on a shamrock she cut out. She loves cutting!

Shamrock Stickers

Katie colors her Bible craft from Raising Rock Stars Preschool.

Coloring Raising Rock Stars Preschool

Here are the girls making Shamrock shakers.

Shamrock Shakers

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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Filed Under: Homeschool Tagged With: LOTW, rainbow, stpatrick

March Preschool

This blog may contain affiliate links: disclosure. Please see my suggested resources.

March 12, 2011 By Jennifer Lambert 1 Comment

It’s March already and we’re so ready for spring!

Almost all the snow is melted and it’s been gorgeous the past few days!

We love our sensory bins. Here’s our March one with green and yellow lentils and shamrock stickers with gold and green glitter puffs. I am excited that I found this mini Montessori wooden rainbow. We all love it.
 
St Patrick's Day Sensory Bin
 
Tori and Katie practice their writing. We did K for kites this week. I get most of our preschool curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler and 1+1+1=1. I also use the writing pages from Homegrown Hearts. I’m still waiting for those March winds to try to fly the kites I bought…
Writing Practice
 
Victoria turned 5 years old on Thursday. She got a Hello Kitty bowling ball from my parents and, of course, we had to go test it out. Love her stance, eh? I think she could go pro!
Hello Kitty Bowling
 
For her birthday dinner, she requested Texas Roadhouse. Here she is in the birthday saddle. Yeehaw!
 
Birthday Girl
 

Happy Spring!

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Free Homeschool Resources (Notebooking Pages) Suggested Resources

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