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In 2018, I set the goal to get back to having a vegetable garden in my backyard! Well, in 2019 I have finally reached the goal of having a small garden again. Never give up on those goals! It doesn't take a lot of space to produce quite a bit of food. See the garden box in the above photo? That was Alicia's garden behind her home where she lives in the Bay Area. (It is much greener there than it is in Phoenix!)
Since we live in Phoenix, AZ, there are a lot of strikes against us when we garden. The soil is terrible, the heat is terrible, there are weird bugs and water is expensive. Also, although my husband and I no longer have any pets, we do have grandchildren who frequent our backyard, so we don't want anything harmful or toxic in our garden. So we try to garden organically in the easiest way possible! I thought today I would share some tips with you about how we do earth friendly and child friendly things to keep our garden healthy and thriving!
Watering Tips
Amending Soil
Non-toxic Pest Control
You can see the bubbles on one of the leaves. Ha Ha.
Now our tomatoes are getting loaded with baby tomatoes! I can hardly wait! I love garden fresh tomatoes! I don't care what the current fad is about nightshade vegetables, I love them anyway! I hope these simple tips will help you have a successful garden. Let's face it, we don't all have hours to spend in the garden, but this little bit of effort can help you have some success and the results are so rewarding!
For Gardening 101 Tips for your area, check out this website called Porch! It will tell you your zone and give you some good advice!
Remember, when you are out working in the sun, be sure to take care of your skin!
Easter Week: Because this is the beginning of Easter Week, here is a simple way to help you remember the true reason for this special holiday. You can read about Sunday and Monday today, then go back everyday to see what happened during this week so many years ago that changed our hope for eternity. #BecauseOfHim
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The verdict is in! This year, in order to accommodate everyone's schedules, we are doing Easter Brunch at our house! I am actually pretty excited about it! All of the kids who live in town, and those "adopted" into our family kids and various other friends and family are going to attend church with us at 8:30 AM. My husband and I will be singing in the choir. I am going to love looking down from the choir loft and seeing so many loved ones there with us listening to the Easter message. We get done with our Sunday meetings at 10:30. Since we live across the street from our chapel, it will be easy to come home and pull out all of the food that I will have prepared the day before and enjoy a lovely brunch together!
And what will the menu be, you ask? Well, that is still in the planning stages. But one of our favorite dessert/brunchy foods is a nice cake roll! We usually make and give away pumpkin rolls at Christmas time. (I can't believe we haven't shared our recipe for those yet)! For Easter, I thought a nice Carrot Cake Roll sounded like just the thing for Spring! I've made one to try it out! It is definitely going on my Easter Brunch menu!
As I began to create this recipe, I started thinking about other cake roll recipes I've made or eaten. The nice things about cake rolls is that you get a lot of bang for your buck! They are pretty simple to make, they don't have to bake very long and they look beautiful when they are all finished and decorated and sliced! Best of all, they taste deliciously decadent! All of these thoughts helped me to decide that cake rolls would be the Friday Faves subject for this week! Not only that, I came up with a nice little surprise for our subscribers! You may or may not know that our subscribers all get a secret link to a secret page on our blog where they can download printables just for them! Today, I am giving a nice little Spring/Easter Gift of a Mini Cookbook with 3 Cake Roll Recipes, along with some tips and variations for making them to our subscribers! All you have to do to download your own copy is to subscribe to our blog! Don't worry, I only send 1 email a week. I welcome new subscribers and give them the link to the secret page and tell you about what we are up to. It's painless! All you have to do is put your email in the box at the top of this page, or on the pop-up that appears.
Now, on to the Carrot Cake Roll!
This cake roll has the traditional carrot cake flavors of cinnamon and carrot with some sweetness of pineapple. The filling is a cream cheese filling with pineapple added as well. You don't have to add the pineapple, you can make it a plain cream cheese filling. But, my husband loved the pineapple in the filling. The frosting is our regular popular recipe. Those carrots aren't fondant, I just piped them on with the frosting. I am so excited to serve this at our Easter Brunch! And you can make it and serve it as well! Just follow us here on the blog and we will send you the link to the Mini Cookbook with this Carrot Cake Roll recipe plus 2 others that are faves, with ideas for delicious cake roll variations.
I printed off my own copy of the Mini Cookbook and put it right into my Bloggelicious Baking Binder under the cake section. You can order your own Bloggelicious Baking Printables here. It is a great way to organize all of the recipes that you print from online sites. I find it so much easier to print them off when I use them often, rather that searching for them again and again online.
Now, on to the rest of my menu! Deviled Eggs are a must. Some croissants with various fillings to choose from? Do you have any great ideas for me? Let me know in the comments with a link to your recipe! I am open for some wonderful ideas! Thanks! I'll let you know the final menu soon.
I can't forget a nice tablescape as well!
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Do you have a big family dinner at your house for Easter? Or, do you keep things simple and avoid going to too much trouble when it comes to food on that day? Either way, a nice fluffy loaf of bread, or rolls and maybe some cinnamon rolls to eat with all of those eggs in the morning is something that is always welcome. The nice thing about baking bread is that you can bake it in advance of the day that you need it and then have it for dinner or a light meal.
Over time, on our blog, we have posted some pretty delicious recipes for bread that would be perfect for an Easter meal. On today's Friday Faves #96, we thought we would share some of our favorite loaves with you. We will supply the buttons that lead to those recipes so that you can have them at your fingertips when you are ready to start baking. You're welcome! These loaves of Easter Bread would make awesome gifts to share with friends this Easter season, too!
You can read about the story behind this bread on this post. Click the button to go straight to the recipe.
Read about the traditions behind this Portuguese Braided Bread as related by my sister-in-law on this link. I think I could also form this bread like the braided loaf and tuck the eggs in the braid. That would look pretty!
I shared this recipe a couple of years ago. It was given to me by my friend, Anita who got it from a friend of her's named Julie. It is so simple and delicious to make. I feel like many of you may have missed this amazing recipe. Check out the original post here.
I made cinnamon rolls out of part of this roll recipe that came out really good as well! www.3winksdesign.com/home/fluffy-and-delicious-potato-rollsThis post will show you how to do both. The recipe is on there, too.
These rolls were shared on a Friday Fave over 2 years ago! You can see what the other favorite things were by going to this post. Or, click the button to go to the recipe.
Now I have to decide which bread I will make for this year! Let me know if you are baking bread this Easter. We hope you might give one of our loaves a try! Happy Baking!
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Sorry this post is a little late, I was a little out of it last week. This year PH and I hosted Easter dinner at our house. I always like having family gatherings in our home, it's part of the reason we bought this house, it's a great space for parties. Of course, clean up afterwards is always a hassle, but I love having family in my home where we can laugh and make memories. Plus, its so much easier with a tiny one to have the event in your home. You can still stick them in their own bed for nap time and you don't have to deal with an overtired baby crying the whole way home because she doesn't understand why you won't hold her when she doesn't want to be in her car seat.
Anyway, my mom and discussed beforehand what we would have for dinner. My SIL isn't a huge fan of ham. She always tells us not to plan a meal around her preferences, but I am not a huge fan of ham either, so I was happy to opt for something else. We discussed lamb, but that can be so expensive. Well I had pork loin in my freezer, so I suggested we have that. My mom had some in her freezer so we each made one. She did a completely different recipe for hers, so it was nice to have options. Maybe she will share her recipe here. I decided to make this Balsamic Brown Sugar Pork Roast. I had seen a recipe for something similar, but with bourbon. Well, I don't drink alcohol, and I know they say it burns off in the cooking, but alcohol is also expensive to buy and since I'm on unpaid leave at work. I decided to work with what we have. I thought Balsamic vinegar would pair nicely with brown sugar for that sweet and sour flavor. PH really loves the sweet and sours, and he asked me later if we could make that sauce and put it on everything. Balsamic Brown Sugar Everything! I don't know about necessarily putting it on EVERYTHING, but this Balsamic Brown Sugar Pork Roast was certainly a hit! At the end of the dinner when we were cleaning up, there was only a small portion of this Balsamic Brown Sugar Pork Roast left! The great thing about this recipe is how the meat really falls apart. You could make balsamic brown sugar pork roast pulled pork sandwiches if you end up with any left overs! |
Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
May 2024
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