Backyard Farmgals

This is one of my favorite times of year (what time of year don't I love...really?).  I love peach season.  I wait for this all year, and then it's a frenzy to get in as many peaches as possible.  I put up halves of peaches in light syrup, freeze them, bake them, slice and eat them with juice dripping down my hands.  I love them!  One of my absolute favorite things to do with them is to grill them.  They are the perfect ending to a summer garden meal.  I know that grilling a peach may sound a little funky to some of you, but it is sheer joy for your taste buds.  The sweetness of the peaches and honey with the coolness of the cream and slightly sour of the raspberries is sure to excite the most dreary of all people!!!  If you are looking for an extra exciting twist on this recipe, add a few drops of honey wine vinegar over the cream.  We have a marvelous product produced here in Utah called Slide Ridge Honey Wine Vinegar .  ...

I thought that I would share a few fun pictures that I captured this week.  It's a little glimpse into our crazy life and what fun things we are up to during the week.   We found a new and inventive use for our clothes line!   Weekend art projects with my two favorite farm hands.  Creativity and mess all wound up in a big sticky paint pile.   My boys are so much fun.  They love art and being creative...and being just plain messy.  But that's what boys are for, right? What do you do with this besides just love it???  Wash in warm soapy water, give it a big kiss and hug, and love the mess that this boy is!!! My most photogenic chicken.  This is Jane.  She is lovely in every way!!!   Egg is always tucking herself under another chicken, the feet belong to Helen.  It must be a security thing, but it makes me laugh.  Silly girl!!! This is our buff orpington rooster up at the...

Pineapple tomato...gardener's gold!!! The end of summer is one of my favorite times of the year.  It is full of bounty.  Everything that I have worked so hard for since the early spring finally presents itself.  This time of year is packed with color, especially the colors of tomatoes, and you know that nothing says summer quite like a tomato!  I love walking through the tomato patch searching for those vibrant, glorious colors peeking out from under the leaves.  It's almost like a treasure hunt, and every now and then, you are rewarded with the crown jewel of tomatoes.  My crown jewel is a black brandywine, a shiny ridged costoloto, or a giant yellow and orange stained pineapple; a reward for a job well done! Black Brandywine...drool!!! Anyway, what would summer be without a really fabulous and easy tomato recipe?  I love summer tomato salads, but this time I thought I would share a recipe that my dad taught me a long time ago, ...

Let me give you a topic... French Toast is niether French nor Toast... Discuss... The earliest mention of French Toast is in an ancient Roman text...not in French...I am sure that the Frech added fluff to the idea and and so we let them keep the naming rights.  Besides, French Toast sounds much better than Roman Toast...don't you think??? One Sunday morning I was trying to think up a way to get my kids to eat their French Toast, it's not a vegetable, so sometimes we struggle.  (My children's idea of breakfast is cucumbers, red peppers, tomatoes and hashbrowns - we eat this often, but sometimes a girl needs something fun and fluffy to make.)  I came up with a fun idea to brulee the toast so that it would be encrusted with warm crunchy sugar.  This is a little labor intensive, it requires some attention so that the sugar does not burn, but the end result is absolutely fantastic! I started with a loaf of good brioche bread from a local bakery and sliced it thick...

"Egg" - one of Will's girls! I had to share this with you all.  My six-year-old son's chickens are pretty fabulous.  He wanted to enter them in the County Fair this year, he is so proud of his girls.  These are chickens that he has raised himself since they were chicks.  He has fed them, watered them, drug them around the backyard, given them bike rides and wagon rides; he absolutely adores his girls.  These are the same girls that ate my peas this spring and forced me to replant in between thoughts of chicken soup and fried chicken. My chicken whisperer We call Will (my son) our "chicken whisperer".  He can calm any chicken, pick up the buff orpington rooster that is as big as he is, and all of the chickens follow him.  They love him.  We have a blind chicken named Helen that Will has taken great care with.  He holds her and checks on her.  He is always teaching all of his little friends how to hold chickens and is often ram...

Sweet three-year-old hands holding his favorite things.   Every morning the same thing happens, my kids wake up, have a wonderful breakfast and head to the farm that is 5 minutes away, where they help with animals between tomato raids.  Ian, my three year old, folds up his shirt and fills it with sungolds, sweet 100's, chocolate cherries, and heirloom yellow pears.  His shirt bulges with the sweet little morsels that he calls "candies".  I watch in amazement as Ian and his older brother Will sit under an apple or cherry tree and devour all of their stolen goods.  Never have I seen kids so entranced with tomatoes.  It's a wonderful thing and goes back to prove my little theory correct.  Plant it and they will eat! Will with a green zebra, he ate it all, his face was covered in green zebra juice... Ian is such a ham...even covered in tomatoes and dirt. There is something magical about children helping in the garden.  As they plant a...

Frozen cup of shredded zucchini - makes life easy and fast! I got a wild hair the other day.  I was looking at my out of control zucchini and was wondering how I could save some for winter.  It would be so nice to have fresh zucchini bread or muffins on those cold mornings.  I thought about freezing it, but the problem is how.  I could shred it and freeze it, but it's hard to measure when it is frozen.  So, I came up with this wild idea...it's radical...can you handle it???  I shredded some of my larger zucchinis in my food processor and then pressed them into a one-cup measuring cup and inverted it onto a parchment lined pan.  Very carefully, I lifted the cup to leave a beautiful little formed mound of zucchini.  I popped the pan into the freezer and froze them.  After they were frozen, I carefully placed the premeasured little zucchini towers into plastic bags and placed them in the freezer.  Now I can just reach into the freezer, ...