We decided to celebrate today because it was the best day this week for a family feast. We started by setting the leprechaun trap…at this point, I can only assume that “Lucky” is taunting us!
Of course there were Lucky Charms:
And I made myself my favorite green drink this afternoon…the lavender matcha!
I love baking soda bread:
And we had our traditional corned beef dinner with all the fixin’s:
For dessert I made Guinness mousse to go with the Guinness cake Bunny baked:
This is truly one of my favorite dinners of the whole year!
Two days ago we celebrated Chicago on 3/12, and now it’s St. Louis’ turn…in honor of the original telephone area code for the metro area, we observed 314 Day!
We had a few St. Louis favorites…(frozen) Imo’s pizza for dinner, with the St. Louis classic, Fitz’s root beer:
And a homemade lemon gooey butter cake for dessert:
The celebratory season is far from over…tomorrow we’re having an early St. Patrick’s Day, and then the two March birthdays in our house within a week!
Happy 312 Day, a day to celebrate the great city of Chicago based on the city’s (and my) original telephone area code. I made our favorite Chicago-style pizza for dinner, and Bunny made a Portillo’s-inspired chocolate cake for dessert…it was a most delicious day!
For the last few years, we’ve really looked forward to celebrating MAR10 Day on March 10th. I usually make something Italian in honor of everyone’s favorite plumber…this year, it was bolognese, with a cannoli cake for dessert. I also found some Mario-themed Bubly water, which was an extra special treat!
16 days of glory go by very quickly, and the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics have sadly already come to an end. Here’s a quick look back at all of the fun we’ve had!
Of course we had to stop by the Olympic Spectacular outside Francis Olympic Field at Wash U in St. Louis…just last month, (future) Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu visited these same rings!
Chickadee and I made our favorite edible Olympic torches:
And we cooked a ton of (very delicious) Italian food!
Biscotti
Zuppa Pavese
Frullato di Frusta
Italian Bread
Carbonnade à la Flamande
Insalata di Arance e Finocchi
Radicchio in Padella
Limoncello Spritz
Crostata di Ricotta e Visciole
Marinara
Basil Pesto
Ravioli
Zeppole di San Giuseppe
Italian Grilled Cheese
Peposo
Creamy Polenta
Italian Limonata
Sporcamuss
Pork Milanese
Antipasto Salad
Seltz Limone e Sale
Panna Cotta with Berries
We also picked up a few Italian treats from the store:
There were crafts:
And a girls’ outing to go ice skating:
We had fun keeping track of the medal count at the end of every day…here’s a final look at our chart:
I love the Olympics, both winter and summer, so much, and I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with myself now that they’re done…but I’m already looking forward to L.A. 2028!
I’m so excited about the start of the Winter Games, so of I course I planned a day of Italian food for us to try in honor of Milano Cortina 2026. We started the day with a trio of homemade biscotti to enjoy with our coffee (or hot chocolate, as the case may be)…orange-cranberry, chocolate, and traditional flavored with anise.
For lunch, Chickadee and I enjoyed “Zuppa Pavese,” which is toasted bread swimming in beef broth and topped with an egg and parmesan cheese…super warming and delicious! We also made a light “Frullato di Frusta,” a slightly sweetened fruit smoothie.
I guess maybe I do bake bread? I sliced this Italian bread pretty well, too!
The star of tonight’s Olympics Opening Ceremonies dinner was Carbonnade à la Flamande, a delicious beef stew braised in beer:
I also made two side dishes to go with our Italian Feast…Insalata di Arance e Finocchi, an orange and fennel salad, and Radicchio in Padella, radicchio sautéed in garlic oil and drizzled with balsamic vinegar.
The best special meals include a special drink, and we really enjoyed a non-alcoholic limoncello spritz made with homemade lemon oleo saccharum:
I think this was one of the best Opening Ceremonies dinners I’ve made!
For dessert Chickadee and I baked a Crostata di Ricotta e Visciole, which is a Roman sour cherry and ricotta tart. The filling was very similar to a cannoli filling minus the chocolate chips, and spread over sour cherry jam.
I’m looking forward to immersing myself in winter sports and Italy for the next two weeks!
Time for a last look back at the festive feasting season!
We started Thanksgiving week by baking…Christmas Funfetti cupcakes? There’s never a bad time for Funfetti!
Of course, the main attraction Thanksgiving week was the turkey dinner:
And seven pies!
We celebrated Nikolaustag with chicken Döner Kebab and gingerbread tiramisu:
The next special dinner was a week later, for Santa Lucia Day, featuring potato pancakes and kielbasa, with cranberry fluff for dessert…and let’s not forget the lussekattes for breakfast!
We had a gingerbread layer cake filled with gingerbread mousse and frosted with molasses cream cheese frosting on Christmas Eve:
And our favorite cherry coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas Day:
But the best meal of the year is the Christmas Day pick-out dinner!
For our “fancy” Christmas dinner, we had bolognese, breaded artichokes, and fresh baked Italian bread:
In keeping with the Italian theme, we had cannoli for dessert:
On New Year’s Eve, we had black bean soup and corn bread:
And our traditional hot chocolate bar, of course!
Our New Year’s Day dinner was enjoyed a day late…I made pork medallions and spaetzle:
And we had a Glühwein-Kuchen for dessert:
We also had a special “Lord of the Rings Day” celebration (on Tolkien’s birthday!), featuring one of the fanciest chicken recipes I make, and “Westfarthing Fairings” from the Recipes from the World of Tolkien cookbook:
For the last feast of the season, Ryan’s birthday dinner, (which also happens to be Epiphany), we had fry bread and chili:
And Boston Cream Pie for dessert:
We did lots of other baking along the way, including a pair of Italian Christmas cookies for Christmas school:
And all of our favorite fancy Christmas cookies…chocolate crinkles, linzer augen, chocolate peppermint, raspberry almond thumbprints, peppermint meltaways, and fig thumbprints:
With the addition of a few of the pudding cookies Bunny made, they created a beautiful Bunter Teller!
For our New Year’s Eve hot chocolate bar, we baked two kinds of hot chocolate cookies:
In addition to the Christmas cracker candy I usually make, we also tried a new recipe that had sliced almonds on top:
And on the last day of Christmas, we baked and decorated sugar and gingerbread cookies:
I made a couple of bonus pies along the way, too:
And a bevy of festive drinks, including standards like egg nog and wassail, and some frappe kits from Aldi:
And just as we made a special dessert at the beginning of Thanksgiving week, we ended Epiphany week with a carrot cake:
I think that’s it for festive feasts and holiday baking…I’m ready to close the Markel bakery for a bit!
Today is Epiphany, but it’s also Ryan’s birthday, and we had one last festive feast to celebrate!
I made chili for dinner, and making chili means also making fry bread to go with it:
And for dessert, I baked a Boston Cream Pie…it’s been years since I attempted this particular cake, and back then, I had a problem with the filling being too thin and running out of the cake. If anything, this time I over-thickened it, but it tasted good, and it stayed put!
The days have long since passed when I used to make baklava every year on Epiphany, and our church doesn’t have an extra service during the week, but I still wore my favorite star-shaped brooch from Erstwilder…it is the absolute perfect star for Epiphany!
I still have one more cake to bake yet this week, and then the festive feasting season will draw to a close!
Before Christmas break started, we decided we should have a “Lord of the Rings Day” and watch all of the movies back-to-back-to-back while everyone was still home on vacation. I picked today for our marathon, but it wasn’t until after we started The Fellowship of the Ring this morning that I discovered that today is actually Tolkien’s birthday! How felicitous is that?!?
I saved the Lavender & Pine candle I bought at the Bath & Body Works semi-annual sale to burn today…something about it seems rather Elvish to me!
We saved the “Vintersaga” mulled fruit drink we found on clearance at Ikea for today, too…it has a very nice “mulled wines of Moria” vibe!
And I couldn’t let the day go by without making something from Recipes from the World of Tolkien…you’d think I’d be sick of baking cookies, but that didn’t stop me from making Westfarthing Fairings, which are flavored with cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and lemon zest…perfect for the days after Christmas!
Our dinner wasn’t inspired by the world of Tolkien, but it was one of the fancier dinners I make, and one that everyone loves…pan-fried chicken and grapes with a creamy mustard sauce served over couscous.
I can’t believe that the random day I picked for our movie marathon was actually Tolkien’s birthday…what a great way to make a fun day extra special!
Thanks to the very unwelcome guest influenza, plus work schedules, we stretched out our New Year’s celebration over three days instead of the usual two!
On New Year’s Eve, I made black bean soup and cornbread:
And we had our customary hot chocolate bar, with a twist…Turkey made the hot chocolate from scratch for us! Chickadee helped me bake two kinds of hot chocolate themed cookies to go with it, too:
And somehow I managed to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year on Gloriana:
New Year’s Day was a pretty quiet day, lacking our usual trip to the mall and the Lego store, and we had our celebratory meal today instead. We spent most of the day watching the last few Christmas movies in our annual rotation, and I made some peppermint frappes from a kit I got at Aldi:
I went with a German theme again this year for dinner, featuring Schweinelendchen mit Pilzrahmsoße (pork medallions with a mushroom cream sauce) and spaetzle, plus roasted carrots and green beans with bacon.
For dessert, Bunny and I made a Glühwein-Kuchen (mulled wine cake).
I wasn’t intending to begin 2026 with illness, but at least we still had a few nice meals to end one year and begin another!
