Recently we held a board retreat at our Little Farm for a board on which I serve. It was productive and fun too! I made sure that all board members left with goody bags filled with cheese, jams, papaya and banana bread and much more! I do so love combining work with hospitality, pleasure with focus, and doing good with having fun! You can see everyone was having a very good time!
Papaya grows like crazy at our Little Farm -and it tastes wonderful with warm salted ricotta as well as blended into a drink or accompanying curried chicken salad – truly versatile and wonderful.
Papaya Drink:
Blend a peeled and seeded papaya with or without orange juice – enjoy!
Slow Cooker Chicken – sooooo easy!
The children can help you make this – let them mix all the ingredients as instructed – and there is nothing for them to burn themselves on – as the slow cooker will heat up slowly – so actually a teenager could cook this meal without any adult supervision! Basmati Rice is an excellent accompaniment!
ENJOY!
White Rice
INGREDIENTS:
2-3lb Whole Chicken with Giblets removed
1/4 cup of butter ( softened)
1 tsp Lemon Pepper
1 tsp thyme ( fresh is best)
1 thick slice of lemon
2 Cloves of garlic crushed
2 Tbsp Olive oil
2 Tsp seasoned salt
Cracked black pepper to taste
DIRECTIONS:
1. Rinse chicken, pat dry with paper towels and loosen skin under breast and thighs.
2. Put lemon slice into the clean chicken cavity
3. Mix butter and pepper and push under the skin
4. Put chicken into slow cooker.
5. Mix thyme, olive oil, salt, pepper and rub into the skin of the chicken
6. Cook on low for 6-8 hours ( perfect if you put it in before you leave for work – and its ready when you come home – even if you are delayed!)
Cook up some rice in a rice cooker that will keep hot (cook on a timer which most rice cooker’s have) and serve with some cherry tomatoes and sliced cucumbers for a really healthy dinner! ENJOY!
Individual Berry Pies
You can make the filling ahead and refrigerate it for up to five days; bring it to room temperature before using.
Serves 12 (serving size: 1 pie)
Ingredients:
Directions:
5. Bake at 450° for 14 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on pan 3 minutes; carefully place pies on a wire rack; cool completely
Here is a summer slow cooker recipe. For dessert. Its so delicious – enjoy!
Slow Cooker Caramel pie
INGREDIENTS
DIRECTIONS
And here are our twins with ice cream that is almost as tall as they are! Happiness is a hot day with cool ice cream!
Below is the reason why I bake – two little boys each of whom lost a tooth last week – so cute!
Some ovens preheat in just minutes. Some take a ridiculous 30 minutes! Know thy oven. Know it even better by dangling an oven thermometer from one of your baking racks. Finally, you’ll know for sure that the temperature on the oven dial matches the temperature inside. While you’re at it, make sure your oven rack is centered for even baking.
You know those recipes that call for room temperature eggs and butter? Stop ignoring them. You’ll be glad later when that smooth batter becomes a moist cake with a tender crumb.
You wanted to be thorough, you say. Well, sadly, your cake can easily fall victim to your good intentions. Overmixing the batter (easy to do with a stand mixer, especially) can incorporate too much air and result in a fallen cake as it cools later on. It’s all about a light hand. Think gentle.
Not enough of a good thing can also cause drama: unintentional swirls of flour or sugar, nuts and raisins playing refusing to play with the wet ingredients, butter blobs. You’ll know your batter’s in a good place when nearly all the flour is absorbed.
Fill your cake pan(s) no more than halfway (unless the recipe says otherwise). Why? This helps ensure your cake will rise evenly rather than overflow into your oven like a cake batter volcano. Check our handy Baking Pan Conversion Chart for more tips on volume.
Take your spatula and smooth the batter for your best shot at an even cake. Tap the pan against your countertop (tap-tap-tap-tap) to scare away any last few little air bubbles trapped within.
You know why? You’re letting out all the hot air and temperature fluctuations make for an unhappy, uneven cake (or, worse, Total Cake Collapse, which hey, could make a good band name for a bunch of bakers). Resist until the last few minutes of baking when you should…
Poke a wooden toothpick into the center of your cake about five minutes before its suggested baking time comes to an end. if it comes out clean or with just a few crumbs stuck to it, it’s time to pull your cake from the oven. Batter on the toothpick? Let it keep baking. Out of toothpicks? Use a dry spaghetti noodle.
Yes, this means you! Build adequate time in your day for this by counting backward from when you want to slice into the cake. Allow for at least one hour for your cake to completely cool before you frost it so that it goes on smooth and doesn’t tear blobs of cake along with it—it’s just not a good look.
Crumble up your cake and make trifle!
Here are my twin grandsons helping me bake last weekend.
I love to bake. But my baking experiments are not always successful. I came across these hints in ALLRECIPES.COM and wanted to share them with you!
1. Make sure that your Baking Soda and Baking Powder are fresh!
Baking soda and baking powder are essentially chemical leaveners that react to temperature and other ingredients, so you are testing to see if the chemicals are still active. All you have to do is drop a little bit of the baking soda or baking powder into hot water (and vinegar if testing baking soda) and look for a bubbling reaction — if there’s fizzing, it’s still good to use!
This test will help you know if your baking soda or baking powder will help your cakes and muffins rise, or if you should go out and invest in a new package. It’s so easy to do and only takes a minute, so get testing!
Baking powder or baking soda
Measuring cup
Hot tap water
1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon
White or apple cider vinegar (if testing baking soda)
Our children and grandchildren gave us the perfect fathers day gift – a Lemon Guava tree to add to the Little Farm! We had a planting ceremony – so adorable! And a lovely weekend together. So much fun!
The first time all four boys slept over – in the same room! So much fun! Of course baking is always part of the fun – and tasting the cupcake mixture too!
Jumping into our bed in the morning (early……) to watch a scary movie……
Once a year we go away as a family ( anything between 25-45 of us) and have 7 glorious days together. The kids ADORE it as do the parents.
Here are some of the activities we do.
We have Grandma’s Cupcake Afternoon ( lots of grandma’s and grandkids around).We have the GUYS COOK night – when all the men/guys bbq for us! YUM!
We have the Family Photo – whew what an effort to get everyone to smile at the same time! We swim – all the time. The adult parents get two nights out without the kids while the grandparents – all sets – babysit. We have a Grandparents night on the town – we go to a movie – fun but very sedate! We have Chinese evening, Mexican evening and then one afternoon excursion to a museum of some kind.
All in all, it is a time of laughter and fun and much love all around. How blessed we are! I can hardly wait for next year!
Here are some adorable pet pictures which made me happy. Hope they cheer up your day?
When we first got married 46 years ago, and especially living on frugal means in Canada for a year and then during our first years in the USA, we made do with lots of leftovers – and some of the dishes we ate were economical and delicious. Rice is a great staple that can be mixed with any leftover meat, fish, or chicken along with chopped tomatoes and onions and a bit of olive oil – and before you know it, that leftover protein is looking quite appealing! Basmati Rice is the best rice to use – it is a delicately flavored long-grain rice grown in India. It’s an extraordinarily perfumed long slender grained rice, more commonly known as simply Basmati. It has a different, nutty flavor and is heralded as the best quality of rice. The most authentic procurement happens at the foothills of Himalayas. Brown Basmati is also cultivated but the creamy white translucent grains are more common. It is a non sticky rice which only elongates upon cooking. There are many qualities of Basmati rice available.
Making Leftovers Work ( Note you could make this vegetarian by adding lots of different vegetables including beans for protein and no meat/fish/poultry)
Ingredients:
Directions:
White Basmati Rice
Fava beans ( also known as Broad Bean) are a pain to prepare since they have TWO skins – the green one that grows on the outside and then the skin that surrounds the actual bean. They are a species of Bean grown originally in North Africa and Southeast Asia but now they make up part of the healthy Mediterranean diet that we read so much about – so replacing meat with these beans a few times a month is good for you!
There are about 2-3 beans in each pod. So it takes a while to prepare just one cup of beans and they go down very fast. So I came up with a novel way to prepare them that cuts the effort somewhat. These beans are very high in protein and quite versatile. One does not see them very often but we tried growing them this season at The Little Farm and were thrilled with the results – they were prolific and we added them to a number of dishes. The recipe below is by far the easiest.
Fava Beans in the Oven
Ingredients:
Directions:
Here are the four grandsons in the bathtub – only little ones can have so much fun with water! A fair amount arrived on the floor but there was a mass mopping up after the bath – so all was well. Lots of laughter and splashing to be sure! 
Recently my husband and I welcomed two friends and their wives. One is a maxillofacial surgeon from Perth Australia and the other an ENT Surgeon from Cleveland Ohio ( formerly the Cleveland Clinic). Both went to kindergarten with my husband in South Africa – they have known each other for so many decades ( 7 to be specific) – and all of us are married to our first ( and only) spouses. It was an amazing week of memories, endless photos and videos of weddings and other family events – all of us are grandparents now – hilarious tales ( some of them went on for hours) and laughter. We celebrated our good health, the health and love of our children and grandchildren, definitely cooked and ate a lot and the guys talked and talked and talked. Quite a reunion! Here they are biking at Santa Monica Beach! And while one couple took a photo the other two couples shared a giggle. A fun time and we hope to repeat it often in the years to come. Let not distance separate good friends for too long!
We were blessed to baby sit our four grandsons last night. What a joy! Here I am reading to the twins – such fun.
If you have ever tasted fruit from the tree – you know the difference in taste from the pasty, cardboard, hard and tasteless fruit that is offered to us for purchase in supermarkets. Even organically grown fruit is put into cold storage and shipped – and it tastes awful compared to that which you pick from the tree and eat. We are so blessed to be able to do that. Here are pictures of our nectarines and peaches as well as some cucumbers I will be making into a salad later today.
Here is the Cucumber salad recipe – very simple:
Add sliced and peeled cucumbers to sliced red onion and chopped green onions, add rice vinegar mixed with some lemon juice and sugar to taste and mix all together. Great with sliced cold cuts! Enjoy!
We grow multiple exotic fruits – one is this amazing cherry – Cherry of the Rio Grande – isn’t it beautiful? Tastes amazing too!
And here are Surinam cherries – an entirely different taste but also delicious!
I buy my Little Farm shirts and clothes for all our staff at the farm from Lands End – with logos and all. So our newest workers of course must have shirts as they get bigger! Here the four newest additions to the Little Farm workers are from right to left – clutching their piggybanks after receiving payment for doing all their farm chores – Jack, Jonah,Gabriel and Noah – are they cute or what??
Ken took photographs at the event – and did such a great job! Here it is! Thanks Ken!
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