Green Food Fun for St. Patrick's Day

A quick and fun breakfast for children on St. Patrick's day is Lucky Charms cereal. Besides all its inherent Irish-ness of rainbows and four leaf clovers, you can add a drop of green food coloring to the milk for an added surprise. Any cereal you have on hand, like Cheerios, would lend itself to the addition of green milk.

Green vegetables naturally make a simple St. Patrick's day snack or appetizer. Cut cucumbers and celery into large enough pieces to pick up with your fingers. And, all of your green vegetables can be dipped into prepackaged or homemade spinach dip.

Nachos would also make a fun appetizer. Simply melt cheddar cheese on a tray of nachos. And serve with homemade salsa made with green tomatoes, guacamole dip, and tinted green sour cream (just mix the sour cream with drops of food coloring until the desired color is achieved.) To turn this into a meal, you could add some browned ground beef to the nachos.

Drinks can be made fun and flavorful by adding a lime wedge to the side of the glass-water, gin and tonic, beer-are some that would benefit from this addition. Of course you could even tint drinks green with some food coloring for fun.

For St. Patrick's day dinner, you can find green tortillini in your grocery store. You can also make your own green pasta by boiling water according to the directions and adding several drops of green food coloring before cooking the pasta. Serve your pasta with olive oil and grated parmesan or romano cheese so that you don't cover up its green color. Sliced french bread toasted in the oven with a dab of olive oil (mixed with green food coloring for the kids and topped with pesto for the adults) is green and festive. A simple green salad with romaine lettuce, cucumber slices, clover sprouts, oil and vinegar is a perfect compliment to the meal.

For dessert, mint chocolate chip ice cream is always a hit. Sometimes you can find this ice cream in a cool mint color. Otherwise you can add some mint green jelly candy to the side. Or you can make your ice cream green by adding a few drops of food coloring and mixing forcefully and rapidly in a bowl so that you have a green soft serve.