An Irish Toast

Whether you're Irish or not-today raise your glass and give a toast to spread some cheer!

"May your troubles be less, and your blessings be more. And nothing but happiness come through your door."

Grasshopper Drink
Cook's notes:Both recipes are delicious and make a great after dinner drink.
Ingredients and Directions: Recipe serves one.

• 3/4 oz. green creme de menthe
• 3/4 oz. white creme de cacao
• 3/4 oz. cream
• Shake all ingredients with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and serve.

Ingredients and Directions: Recipe makes one large glass.

• 1 oz. green creme de menthe
• 1 oz. white creme de cacao
• 2 scoops vanilla ice cream
• Place creme de menthe, creme de cacao, and ice cream into a blender. Blend until thick and creamy.
• Optional garnish a sprig of mint.

Leprechaun Mudslide

Recipe makes one large drink

Ingredients:

• 1 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. coffee liqueur e.g Kahlua
• 1 oz. Baileys Irish cream
• 1-1/2 oz. heavy cream
• Optional garnish chocolate shavings

Directions:

Mix in a cocktail shaker with ice cubes.

Jamenson Old Fashioned Cocktail

Cook's Notes: There are many options to add to Jameson drink such as

water, ginger beer, ginger ale, lemonade, splash club soda with 2 dashes angostura bitters, coke or Guinness. I garnished the drink with an orange slice and then squeezed the juice into the drink. This product Vitamin Enhanced Water Beverage Lemonade has no sugar and no calories which made a perfect addition for the cocktail.  

Ingredients:

• 1 oz. Jamenson Whiskey
• 1 oz. lemonade
• ice cubes
• Orange slice

Directions:

• Fill a glass half full with ice cubes. Add in whiskey and lemonade. 
• Stir once and add an orange slice to serve.  

Enjoy one of these drinks and a poem by a well known Irish writer,

Seamus Justin Heaney. Besides being an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, he is also the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Seamus Heaney's poem, "Digging," has a central theme which presents an analogy comparing the poet's pen to the spade of his father and grandfather. Love the metaphor in this poem.
"Digging"
by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney, "Digging" from "Death of a Naturalist." Copyright 1966 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC.