Bountiful Baskets!

FRIENDLY REMINDER TO ORDER YOUR BOUNTIFUL BASKET RIGHT NOW!

Sneak peek at one of our Super Saturday crafts

Check out the cute bow/flower holder I made today that we will be making on Super Saturday as one of the crafts :-)  I am pretty pleased at how it turned out!
Valerie, I hope it is ok that I am giving people a pre-peek :-)

Eggs!

So I now have 4 chickens laying eggs now!  My Road Island reds started laying the last couple of days so now I am getting the pretty brown eggs too :-) If I still had a question in my mind that I might be turning a little bit crazy by having my own laying hens it was pushed out with this recent egg recall that is in the news.
We had eggs and toast this morning and it was comforting to know that our eggs are safe and that they came from happy chickens that have a enough space to move and graze around and that they are not being pumped up full of hormones and antibiotics.
Another crazy idea I have been thinking of lately is edible landscaping.  Shauna Colvin (my hero) got me started on this idea and I have been reading up on it and there are people out there who utilize their whole yard by mixing edible plants with decorative plants in the front and back.  Like that grass strip that everyone has in front  of their houses that usually has grass that has no purpose and so water is wasted keeping it green.  You can instead plant an edible ground cover like strawberries or put in small fruit bushes like currant bushes etc.  I am thinking about making some small changes in that direction next spring.

HellOo! (Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!)

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho! We sent them off to school!

And so???

How DID your MORNING go???

Don'tcha just LOVE trying to figure out the new norm?

Which way is up? Anyhow???

What's your "TOMORROW I'll know to do __________ differently" story???
What are your best "Things went well today because I remembered to __________" hints???

And last but not least, did you remember to purchase Bon-Bons so you could sit around on the couch eating them with your naked-toes up on the coffee table once those kiddos were gone?

Menu Planning Spreadsheet!

This morning I found a LOVELY jewel of a download that I just had to share! It's a monthly menu-planner spreadsheet with a page for shopping lists etc.! You can find it HERE by scrolling down to the rectangle toward the bottom- it's the last one but the others are good, too!

I'm a little sad that none of you took on my CHALLENGE. (Boo-hooo!!!!)

Oh well! I'm off for my final shopping trip to last me a MONTH! I'm excited to save time AND money! And I LOVE a challenge!

CHALLENGE- (pay attention, there's PRIZES!)

Okay- so I'm challenging you ALL to go to my BLOG and sign up for my challenge! THERE'S PRIZES! (You know you want to!)

Bountiful Baskets!

Just a reminder- Bountiful Basket orders open up at 8 pm tonight for Saturday pick-up in Grantsville at 7 am.

Dinner Rolls & Yummy Pull-Aparts!

Much apologies for not posting this sooner! These are SOOO yummy and SOOO easy!

Shauna Colvin’s Dinner Rolls

2 cups scalded milk (or better yet, 1 cup evaporated milk and 1 cup hottest tap water!)

¾ cup warm water

1 cube margarine, melted

***(you want the temperature of all the above liquids to be 90°-100° or about baby bottle temperature. So if you scald the milk or overheat the margarine, use cold water instead of warm water etc.)***

2 large eggs

½ cup sugar

2 tsp. salt

4 cups flour

2 Tbs. yeast

Add the ingredients in the order listed above, whisking in the eggs and adding the yeast on TOP of the flour (to shield it from the salt). Add 3-4 more cups flour, a ½ cup at a time until the dough cleans the sides and bottom of the bowl. Knead for 7 minutes. Turn out onto lightly floured surface. Squeeze off balls of dough about 2 ¼ inches in diameter. Place about ½ inch apart on a greased baking sheet. Preheat oven to 400°. Cover dough with warm wet towel and let rise about 20 minutes or until double. Bake 15-18 minutes or until golden brown. Brush with butter and cover with a towel until serving. Here's a little video to show you how Shauna shaped the dough balls!

Shauna’s Sticky Pull-Apart Ring

Make Shauna’s dinner roll dough above. Preheat oven to 400°. Spray a Bundt pan with cooking spray. Place a ring of 2 ¼ inch balls of dough in the Bundt pan (usually there is a wider section every inch or so). Next place a second ring of dough balls in between each ball from the original ring. Sprinkle ½ of a small package of cook and serve butterscotch pudding mix evenly over the dough. Melt ¾ cube of margarine in the microwave. Mix ½ cup light brown sugar in with margarine. Pour the mixture over the roll dough. Cover with a warm damp towel and let rise about 15 minutes or until double. Bake about 20 minutes in 400° oven. Dump out immediately onto a serving plate and serve!

Shauna’s Italian Pull-Apart Ring

1 cube butter

1/8 tsp. dried minced garlic OR one clove fresh garlic

Make Shauna’s dinner roll dough above. Preheat oven to 400°. Spray a Bundt pan with cooking spray. Sprinkle pan with parmesan cheese. Dip 2 ¼ inch balls of dough in melted garlic butter and place in a ring around the bottom of the Bundt pan (usually there is a wider section every inch or so). Next place a second ring of buttered dough balls in between each ball from the original ring. Sprinkle more parmesan cheese evenly over top of dough balls. Pour remaining garlic butter evenly over top. Cover with a warm damp towel and let rise about 15 minutes or until double. Bake about 20 minutes in 400° oven. Dump out immediately onto a serving plate and serve!

Eggs finally!

I had checked the Chickens laying box a few days ago a little hopful that there would be eggs in there, but   the box was empty so I figured it would not be until the end of August before the chickens would start laying eggs.  Then yesterday my nephew Logan discovered  3 white eggs in the laying box!     This morning after hearing a bunch of load cackling  we checked the box again and there was another one in there :-)  I know it is my white chicken doing it because the red ones are supposed to lay brown eggs.  They are supposed to lay about one egg a day so I figure she has been laying for 4 days now. Yay! I am so excited!  The kids and I wanted to try them out so we had yummy fried eggs and toast this morning and they were sure good!
 I was thinking I have 7 chickens and once they all start laying eggs if they lay one egg a day that will be a lot of eggs!  I might be selling fresh eggs soon if it gets out of control :-)

Garden Recipes

All the gardens look beautiful - and delicious! Since we moved in early summer, I wasn't able to do a garden this year (we do have a random stalk of corn growing), but one of the Orem Bountiful Baskets stops is five blocks from my house so I get an order every week. I am always looking for good summer recipes. I thought maybe we could post some of our favorite recipes for things out of our gardens/farmer's market/Bountiful Baskets, etc. Mine is zucchini fritters. What is yours?

Garden pics!

I finally am getting around to taking some pics of my kiddie pool gardens!  I had peas and carrots that have already been grown and eaten.  I have dwarf romaine lettuce that has done beautifully and I have enjoyed that starting in June( besides the times my chickens got to it before I did).  Lucily it grows back over and over.  My Zucchini plants, tomatoes and peppers grew into big bushy plants a while ago, but have only just started producing the last 2 weeks.  It has been a strange year for gardening!  I am used to eating and enjoying my veggies before August.  Hopfully we will have a longer summer to off set the longer winter we had. Oh by the way all my cucumbers died.  That is two years in a row that has happened!

So as I was taking pictures of my garden Dani said "Mommy"  and I looked up and there she was holding our chicken "Daisy"! I don't know how she was able to pick her up because those chickens are fast and don't usually like to be picked up! And the other strange thing was I did not hear any noise to indicate that the chicken had been picked up.  Usually they will complain a little bit when you first pick them up.   As you can tell from the pic Danielle was very proud of herself and I think the chicken does not quite know what to think  LOL!   I was glad I had my camera in hand to capture the moment :-)

Bountiful Baskets!

Don't forget to order your Bountiful Basket! I just placed my order and there are 49 shares still available!
V