Backyard Farmgals

I had leftover Ginger Grapefruit Curd...perish the thought!  What to do with it?  Too divine to let it go to waste, and an irritating reminder of my lack of motivation every time I opened the refrigerator (if only there were 36 hours in a day, right?).  I had a wonderful idea to use it in a braided bread that I have made a few times before, and it turned out beautifully... This would be a great Easter brunch bread.  It is light and the citrus and ginger are very refreshing and bright.  I borrowed the idea of this bread from Smitten Kitchen , a fabulous site based in New York.  Mrs. Smitten Kitchen has a much more exciting life than I do... but then, she doesn't have a mini horse, so I guess we are even!  Really, she is a very sophisticated cook and her site is beautiful, check it out, you will probably fall head over heels for it, just like I did a few years ago. This is a simple recipe, don't let yourself get intimidated by the braiding and ...

Because it is snowing and because I have this little hibernation thing going on, I had to make something warm and yummy today.  Something that when I baked it, the aroma would permeate the whole house and fill my mind full of warm happy thoughts.  That something ended up being Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Banana Bread.  I have had this recipe forever and it is one of my favorite warm gooey bread recipes.  There is no shortage of chocolate...something that a farmgal needs every now and then...plus this recipe is a for sure crowd pleaser.  My boys all belly up to the bar for a big thick slice of this.  They love it warm, when the chocolate chips are still gooey and melted. I know that the title calls for sour cream, but I have also used Greek yogurt and it turns out equally wonderful.  So feel free to substitute with a good THICK  plain or vanilla yogurt if you don't have sour cream.  I use really good chocolate when I make this recipe, ...

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, ...