Grand's Scrumptious Cheese Bread

This is a fantastic little bread recipe that grand has been making for years.The ingredients are something you'd have on hand in the kitchen. It can be from mixing bowl to oven to table in less than one hour. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Ingredients

3¼ cups of All-Purpose Flour

¼ of a cup of white sugar

5 teaspoons of baking powder

1½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon of garlic powder 

2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese

2 beaten eggs

2 cups of milk

2/3 of a cup of vegetable oil

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 400°
2. Lightly grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans
3. In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and garlic powder
4. In a second large bowl beat togeather eggs, milk, and oil
5. Stir the wet ingredients (eggs, milk, and oil) into the large bowl of dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and garlic powder)
6. After mixing well stir in the two cups of cheese. If you would like, you may save 1/4 cup of cheese to sprinkle on top of the loaves before baking. However, we like to top the loaves with nuts and seeds, Poppy seeds, Sunflower seed (Used in photos), Sesame seed, and, of course, chopped pecans.
7. Pour the batter into the greased pan
8. Bake in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean

Remember this recipe makes two loaves

Hints From Grand

1. It's a good idea to line the loaf pan with parchment paper
2. If you would like, this bread can be baked in a 9x13 pan instead of two loaf pans.
3. We think this bread is very good topped with pepper jelly
4. Chopped green onions are also very good in this recipe
5. Grand's favorite hint for this recipe is...divide the batter in half adding the garlic powder to only half of the batter. That way you have one loaf with garlic and one without. The way you remember which has garlic is to put different topping like poppy seeds on the garlic one and chopped pecans on the one with no garlic. This way you have one for supper (with garlic) and one for breakfast (no garlic). The loaf with pecans (no garlic) in great toasted with butter and served with strawberry preserves.

Chicks are growing up!

       Remember the chicks we ordered in the mail? They are growing into beautiful birds. We got exactly what we were hoping for, one rooster and six hens. Our chicks are growing up so fast. Our rooster is already growing his iridescent tail feathers and Cock-a-doodle-dooing. His comb and waddle are reddening up too. He is turning out to be a Fantastic Feathered Fellow. Now on to our hens, they are turning into gorgeous birds. They look like they are covered in beautiful black and white lace hence the name Silver Lace Wyandottes. Our hens haven't started laying yet but we have the nest boxes ready for when they do. Now we're just waiting for the eggs to start rolling in. If you would like to see our Fantastic Feathered Friends the pictures are down below.

Say Cheese!

The beautiful black and white lace pattern 

Standing Guard

Patrolling the Grounds

Our Fantastic Feathered Fellow

Chickens and Polkadot barn boots. What could be better!

Happy New Year!

     To celebrate 2016, we decided to tell you all the things we would like to do in the new year.

• When we put in our circular driveway, it created a half circle of vacant space. That we would like to landscape with flowers and our farm sign. First, we need a low retaining wall because it is starting to wash.
• We would like to powerwash the house including the front porch to brighten it up and paint the back porch.
• We also want to clean out the barn so we can put that space to use.
• Tomatoes and potatoes are items we buy a lot at the grocery store so we want to plant enough of these to be self-sufficient.
• We also want to fence in the farm and keep the deer away from our crops.
• We'd like to clean the bank of the creek and build a bridge so we can have better access to the woods
• We want to plant more blueberries and raspberries and eventually have separate beds for both. 
• We need to till more beds to plant peas, carrots, lettuce,  onions.
• We use a lot of honey and are planning to get bees this year.

And that is what we would like to finish in 2016. Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Oops! Merry Christmas from Sweet Summer Farm!

Grand's Beer Battered Fish

When we came home from our guitar lessons we came home to a Friday Night delight! Grand's Beer Battered Fish. French fries, Coleslaw, homemade tarter sauce, and Sweet Tea to top it off.

Grand's Beer Battered Fish

Ingredients

7 to 8 lbs of cod

2 cups of SR Flour

1 (12 oz) bottle of beer

Seasoning of your choice. We use Morton's Natures Seasoning. You can use Salt & Pepper, Dill, or any other seafood seasoning you like. 

Directions

1. Wisk in the seasoning to the flour.
2. Wisk in the bottle of beer.
3. Dip in your fish and fry until golden brown.

Garlic Update

The garlic we planted in October is coming up well. Almost 100%  of it made it out of the ground.

Since October, we have put hay around the garlic and made mulch pathways. We hope to get a good garlic harvest, Keep your fingers crossed! See pictures of the garlic below.

German Chocolate Pie

Ingredients

 1 (4 oz.) Bar of German sweet chocolate

1/2 cup butter

12 oz. can of evaporated milk

1 1/2 cups of sugar

3 tablespoons of corn starch

1/8 teaspoon of salt

2 eggs

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 unbaked (10 inch) pie shell (check out Grand's Best Pie Crust  Ever recipe)

1 1/3 cups of coconut

1/2 cup of chopped pecans

 

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 350°
2. Melt chocolate with butter over low heat stirring until blended.
3. Remove chocolate and butter from heat and gradually blend in milk
4. Mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt.
5. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
6. Gradually blend in chocolate mixture.
7. Stir in coconut and pecans.
8. Pour into pie shell.
9. Bake for 1 hour.
10. Let pie cool for at least 4 hours before serving.

Tips from Grand

This recipe makes a large deep pie. Grand bought one of those red on the outside cream on the inside ruffled around the edge pie plates you see everywhere from Wal-Mart to the grocery store. This recipe fits perfectly in that pie plate.

 

If you don't have a large deep pie plate just butter a small deep ramekin and put any left over filling that doesn't fit inside your pie plate. Put it in the oven and bake it with the pie. The ramekin takes less time to bake and less time to cool. Lucky you, you can eat all of this in the kitchen before anyone knows your baking a pie. Grand calls this "cook's treat!"

German Chocolate Pie

Rich, gooey, chocolaty, with coconut and pecans. What could be better!

This is the pie pan that Grand used. You can use a smaller pie plate and have
"cook's treat!"

 

 

Best Pie Crust Ever

Ingredients

5 cups of All Purpose Flour
2 cups (1lb) of butter
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of ice water
1 tablespoon of vinegar

Makes 4-5 pie crusts.

Directions

1. Cut butter into small cubes
2. Put in the freezer until very very cold
3. Mix flour and salt into the butter
4. Slowly add the water. add 1 tablespoon at the time. You may not need the whole cup.
5. Add the vinegar as you add the water.
6. Don't over mix, just mix until if you pinch some off it sticks together. You want to have chunks of butter throughout.
7. Rake dough out of the bowl and onto a floured surface.
8. Shape dough into large disk and divide into fourths.
9. Wrap each fourth in parchment paper and place in Ziploc bag. Place in refrigerator. Chill 1-hour. 
10. After chilling roll out on floured surface and use in any recipe.

Tips From Grand

Grand uses her Kitchen-Aid mixer. It only takes a few minutes to mix the dough.

 This recipe is good for sweet pies. But because it has no sugar it is good for Chicken Pot Pie, Beef Turnovers and such.

Grand divides this recipe into fourths flattens them into a disc, then wraps each one in Parchment Paper. Place in a plastic bag and place them in the refrigerator (keeps for a week) or the freezer (keeps several months). If you save the "scraps" that you trim off the pie plate you'll have another pie crust, so you end up with 5 crusts.

Grand has made many pie crust recipes and she has also used pre-made pie crusts. This is the best pie crust EVER! She finally got it right.

This is well worth making. No preservatives and YOU have control over what goes in and what doesn't.

Chicks get a coop

     The chicks have finally moved to the farm. In the morning, we got a dog carrier and put some straw in it. Then we caught and put them into the dog carrier. Then we loaded them into the "Farm Minivan" and headed to the farm. That was the first time the chicks rode in the car. They were very stressed but, they finally laid down and then they were fine. Once we got to the farm we had to carry the dog carrier (with chicks that wouldn't stop moving) all the way to the back-door of the coop. Once we got to the coop we put them in the coop with food and water. Lots of people say to lock the chicks in the coop for the first day so they know where to sleep. The next day we went down to the farm to open up the coop. When we opened the door the chicks ran farther into the coop and then cautiously approached us. A few seconds later the chicks emerged into the sunlight. As we watched them through the day we found that they explore the edges of the fence as a group and then spread out in the yard. You can see pictures of the chicks below.

Chicks in the "Farm Minivan" headed to their new home. "Let's
sit on top of each other, it'll make the trip more fun!"

"What strange structure is this? We are no longer in a galvanized
tub."

Suddenly, the door creaks open. 

Sunlight pours in!

"What strange world is this?"

"One small step for chicks, One giant leap for chicken kind."

"What is this green stringy stuff?"

"Come on Myrtle! Be bold!"

"Grass, toe tickling and delicious, who knew!"

Stay in a group in this strange new world. "I think we'll like it
here."

Planting Garlic

                                        We planted garlic!!!                                                                         

 Since we closed on our farm in August there are not too many things you can plant in the fall, so we planted garlic.                                                                                                                                      

We planted our garlic on October 17th and we will be able to harvest it in mid-summer. It's is one of the first things we planted along with a couple of flowers, some fruit trees and a variety of greens.

We planted soft neck garlic and hard neck garlic. We also planted elephant garlic which is actually part of the lily family. Who knew.

If you're wondering soft neck garlic  does not have a stem and instead just has tiny flat cloves of garlic. Around the tiny cloves, it has regular cloves of garlic. It also has soft little stalks like green onions. With soft neck garlic, you can dry and then braid the garlic stalks together and hang them up and just pick of cloves of garlic.

Hard neck garlic has a hard stem and just has cloves around the stem of the garlic. It has a hard stalk that you can't eat or braid but in the spring there are garlic scapes which are garlic blossoms that you can eat.

We planted two different kinds of soft neck garlic Inchelium and California Early. We only planted one variety of hard neck garlic which was German White.

We got our garlic from our favorite local seed company Sow True Seed in Asheville NC.

                                        Planting The Garlic. 

1.First we read about planting garlic and decided to try lots of different things. FYI: If you are not familiar with planting garlic you don't plant the entire head of garlic you actually break the head of garlic into cloves and plant each clove.

The first thing you have to do is dig a trench. Some people think you should dig a four-inch trench and others think you should only dig a one-inch trench so we tried both to see which one worked the best for us.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
2. The second thing you need to do is place the garlic in the trench root down and the pointed end up. You need to place them about four to six inches apart.

3. After you place the garlic in your trench you need to gently cover up your garlic with soil and softly pat it down.

4. The next thing you need to do is water your garlic. Your garlic has to stay moist for three or four days.

5. Next we put mulch in between our garlic as pathways. We are going to mulch the garlic with hay when it starts to grow.

We hope you enjoyed this blog post and if you have any questions or advice please comment below. Happy Planting.
                                   

Our new Garlic

Planting our Elephant Garlic

A row of planted Elephant Garlic

A planted bed of garlic