A Treat For The Weekend

TGIF!!! :)

I haven't been baking for a few weeks and I am really itching to do some soon. Not sure if I will be able to this weekend. But that shouldn't stop me from sharing with you one of my recipes.

A few months ago I read about a coconut quick bread posting from a random blog. The blogger wrote about eating it and asked her readers for recipes. So for the rest of that day my mind was set on coming up with my own recipe. I have a great recipe for banana bread, so I decided to adapt the recipe and come up with a delicious coconut quick bread recipe. If you are a coconut fan like me, you would enjoy this.

YD's Yummy Coconut Bread

Ingredients:
2 Eggs
½ cup butter, melted
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup brown sugar
1½ cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup chopped walnuts
½ cup chocolate chips
1½ cup shredded coconut
½ teaspoon cocoa powder + ½ teaspoon flour (for dusting pan)


Instructions:
1) In a small saucepan, simmer on low heat, buttermilk and ½ cup of coconut for 4-5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool. Drain the buttermilk and measure ¾ cup for the batter. Save the coconut to be added to the batter later.
2) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8½” X 4” loaf pan and dust with cocoa/flour mixture. Shake off excess flour from pan.
3) In a large mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, melted butter, ¾ cup buttermilk and vanilla. Stir in sugars.
4) In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Pour flour mixture into egg mixture and stir until just combined. Do not over mix. Fold in walnuts, chocolate chips and all the coconut. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 1hour to 1hour 10minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Loosen loaf from sides of pan. Remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely before slicing.

Hot Pepper Wax!

No, I'm not talking about unwanted hair removal products.

Remember that not-so-cute bunny I was talking about? Well, this product is(hopefully) going to keep it away from using my garden as it's own private salad bar!

After researching about rabbit repellents for a few hours, I found this product called Hot Pepper Wax Insect/Animal Repellent. It is completely biodegradable and contains no harmful chemicals.

Hot Pepper Wax is a patented combination of hot Cayenne Pepper and a highly refined paraffin wax that makes the pepper stay put.

I ordered a 16 oz concentrated bottle today. I guess we'll find out if this stuff really works in a week or two. In the mean time, you could check out their website yourself: http://www.hotpepperwax.com/Home/Home.html

Not So Cute Bunny

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for stopping by my little place and commenting. I hope you will come back often as I plan to blog as often as I could. There will be lots of yummy recipes, funny stories about my goofy goldens, my garden, and hopefully soon, photos!

I realized that I had left out some very important ingredients in my previous post for the meatloaf recipe: salt & pepper! I normally don't measure salt and pepper, so how much salt & pepper to use is really up to your taste. I sincerely apologize to all my readers.

Now, lets get back to that not-so-cute-bunny. After weeks of anticipation on my 2 rows(about a foot long each row) of peas, I went out to the garden yesterday and boths rows are gone!!! And one of my sunflowers. I know it's that pesky, soon-to-be-dinner bunny! I have seen it in my yard before and in fact my little hunter June almost caught that damn thing. I do have fencing for the garden, to keep my dogs out but now I guess I will have to get some bunny repellent or rabbit fencing soon before my whole garden is gone.

So dear readers, do you have any tried-and-true repellents for those pesky, not-so-cute bunnies? Please share with me your methods.

My First Day!

After months and months of sleepless nights(well, not really) thinking about whether I should start a blog, I have finally decided to go ahead and get with the program and start one. Here it is - my first blog! Thank you Lacy, my new found friend, for encouraging me to start a blog.

I guess this is a good way to share things with my friends and my family(they live in a different country than me).

So, as a celebration to my very first blog, we are going to have some kicked up meatloaf. Here's my recipe for this awesome meatloaf:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 lb. ground meatloaf mix or ground beef or turkey
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoon salsa (hot or mild, depending on your taste. I like to use my own homemade salsa. You can use store bought salsa, I won't judge you.)
1 egg
1 tablespoon parsley
1 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2) Mix all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Yes, this requires you to get down and dirty, well, your hands at least. So, be sure to remove all your jewelry before starting this messing job. I'm sure you could use a spatula ti mix it up but what fun is that? I like to get my hands dirty. :)
3) Shape the meat mixture into a 7" x 4 1/2" x 2" loaf and place it in a baking dish. You could cook your loaf in a loaf pan but I like the freeform.
4) Bake in the oven for about 1hr or 1hr 15min or until the meat thermometer reads 160 degree.
5) Remove from oven and let stand for 5min.
6) Serve with mashed potato, corn and biscuits. Enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed your visit. Please come back to visit me often.