Welcome to Full Plate Thursday, come in the cottage and find a special place at the table. We are looking forward to a great party today with a table full of great recipes to enjoy. Spring is arriving here at the cottage, we have put the humming bird feeder's out, and the pear tree is budding and starting to bloom, I am so excited to see the first signs of spring! We have some great features from last week and I sure hope you will stop by and say hello to these great bloggers. Thanks so much for coming today, we always look forward to your visits!

I love roasted vegetables, roasting the vegetables brings out such great flavors. This Frittata is a simple blend of roasted vegetables with herbs and ham. We are making it on a sheet pan that keeps it real simple and informal. We have found this to be so convenient for feeding a brunch crowd and a wonderful way to cook for the freezer. We have recently used this recipe to feed a very large crowd for brunch and the folks really loved it. At the cottage we make the recipe and enjoy it for brunch then take the rest and freeze it in serving sizes for the freezer. It is a great grab n go for a busy life style and who doesn't have a day like that from time to time. The combination of vegetables and herbs makes this a delicious brunch dish that I hope you enjoy as much as we have.

If you are a Buffalo Chicken lover you are going to really enjoy this recipe for Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken Meatballs. These meatballs are just delicious and can be used as an appetizer, on a sub roll making a great sandwich with a sharp dressing that completes this flavor fest! It takes no time to make the balls then put them into a slow cooker filled with Buffalo goodness and walk away for the magic to happen. When you come back later the balls are ready for you to use for your party, or a covered dish, they will be a hit at any event! A recipe bonus lets you freeze the meatballs up to 3 months and the dressing can be used as a spread, dip or dressing for a salad.

We will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day with family and friends this weekend, looking forward to great food and fellowship. When I make meal plans for this celebration it is hard to choose which favorite recipes to make. I have asked a couple of family members for their ideas so we will see what ends up on the plan. We are coming into the spring storms and rains now, so I will sure have an eye for the weather when planning the meals. As I write this post it is pouring down rain, so we sure won't be planning a cookout for today.

Hello everyone, we are so glad to see you today. We are planning a great party filled with wonderful food with a nod to the Irish and a celebration of St. Patrick's Day foods and decor. We have Spring Breakers at the cottage and we are having a week of Irish Food this week, enjoying the food and fellowship. Be sure and stop by the great features these bloggers are some of the greatest cooks on the planet!

The Irish make wonderful soda and brown breads and like many others they will gather up the old stale bread and made a lovely dessert. Often times it is a bread pudding, that is filled with not only the wonderful spice from the bread but put into a custard with some lovely sauce and then they serve you the most delicious dessert, from the left over bread. Our Irish Brown Bread Pudding is a recipe that uses the day or two old brown bread, then soaked in a custard base and baked. After it cools just a bit it is cover with a very rich sauce and later served with the sauce on the side. Oh my goodness this is a very special treat that I am proud to serve my family and friends and share with you today.

We had Pork Chops on sale at the market and the cabbage was just beautiful and really fresh. Pork Chops and cabbage make a great combination for a delicious new dish. I really wanted to make something different but full of the flavors that we love with this combination. I had a lot of fun developing this recipe and was very excited about the way it turned out. It has the wonderful flavor of the cabbage and topped with the seasoned braised Pork Chops then we added a thick Mustard Sauce that puts this recipe over the top. I can see this recipe going to some potlucks and diffidently family dinners.

It is spring break time and we are planning some great meals for the breakers. When planning our meals this week we are giving a big nod to our Irish heritage that we will be sharing with the spring breakers. Lots of interesting things going on at the cottage, we are waiting for the weather to clear a bit and then we will hopefully be planting some of our gardens for the year. I have a couple of decorating projects going that I will be sharing with you later. We of course are looking forward to seeing some spring breakers and having some great Irish food and fellowship.

March has arrived with a lion and we sure hope it will go out as a lamb, we are ready for some good spring weather. We are already seeing signs of spring in our recipes that you are sharing. Last week we had some great recipes, that I know you will want to check out. Hope all of you had a great Fat Tuesday, I can't believe that today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of lent already and we have one of my favorites coming up, St. Patrick's Day! Many thanks to all of you for sharing your amazing recipes, and food related post with us, you truly are the greatest cooks on the planet!

If you are walking into an Irish home after a long days work or an Irish Pub, one of the Irish comfort dishes being served would be Bangers & Mash With Onion Gravy. This is a table favorite of our Irish friends and family, just pure comfort with a great flavor. The Bangers simmered in a flavorful onion gravy then served a top a mound of mashed potatoes, it just doesn't get much better than this. This is one of our family favorites.

This Irish Apple Cake is a very old and primitive, but delicious recipe. I actually found it in some of my Aunt's recipes that had been handed down to me from my Irish Grandmother. The outside of the cake has a nice sweet crust and the inside is a wonderful crumb of spices and lovely bites of apples. I have made the cake for years and it is a hit every time I make it. What better way to celebrate being Irish than with a slice of this fantastic cake!

I am so excited March is here, it has been a long winter. We are looking forward to fresh garden vegetables and spring dishes on the table. This week is Mardi Gras with parades and celebration's in many of the surrounding communities, it is a fun time with fantastic Cajun food. We will sure be tipping our hat to the Cajun food this week.  We should be able to be in our garden by this time but it is to wet to plow, you can read all about our Garden Forecast: To Wet To Plow. We are very excited to to get started on everything spring!

It is already the last few days of February and we are so excited that spring will be right around the corner. This week brings us to our Top Ten Viewers Post from last weeks party. These are all the post that you the viewers have choose to feature this week and you sure did a great job, we have some delicious recipes! We still have some cold  weather to get through and it is pretty cold today, so come on in the cottage and find a place at the table with us, it is warm and cozy here plus we are expecting to have a table full of wonderful food from the greatest cooks on the planet, and that is YOU!!

Usually by this time of the year, our onions have been planted along with our early greens, peas and potatoes, but not this year. We have had more rainfall than ever in recorded history, the ground is completely saturated and there is literally no place for it to go. Our lakes and rivers are all full and we haven't even come into the spring rainy season. When we try to start our spring gardening we just bog down in the would be rows, this year it is just "to wet to plow".

I recently had a friend driving out from the city to have lunch with me and I knew that she loves chicken soup so I made her this delicious Chicken Chowder. This Chicken Chowder has a great base with tender chicken and wonderful vegetables in a very creamy soup with lots of flavorful herbs. I put it in the Slow Cooker allowing the flavors to develop and the vegetables are so tender. This is a delicious soup and is even better the next day plus it can be frozen for up to 3 months. My friend and I had a great visit and didn't have to worry about cooking because it was already cooked, and by the way she loved the soup!