Lemon Blueberry Mini Trifles.

I love these mini trifles, so delicious, wonderfully tart, and they were a perfect dessert for Mother's Day. And easy, which is the best part of course :)

Ingredients:
1 Pound Cake (store bought or homemade), cut into bite sized pieces
1 jar of lemon curd*
1 (8 oz) package of cream cheese, softened
2 cups of fresh whipped cream, give or take
5 Tbsp powdered sugar, give or take
Blueberries, washed
1/4 cup of lemon juice, give or take
*Our town's grocery store unfortunately didn't have any lemon curd, so I made my own using the recipe for lemon cheese cake frosting, but cut in half. The recipe for it is below.

1) In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the softened cream cheese and the lemon curd. Fold in about half of the whipped cream. Set aside.

2) In a small bowl, stir together the lemon juice and about 5 Tbsp of powdered sugar. Set aside.

To assemble:
Place a layer of pound cake into the bottom of a clear glass container of your choice. Drizzle a small spoonful of the lemon juice/powdered sugar mixture on top of the pound cake. Then top with a large dollop of the cream cheese mixture. On top of that place several blueberries. Top with a dollop of fresh whipped cream.

This recipe made 4 mini trifles for us plus one larger sized one.

Lemon Cheese Cake Frosting (halved)
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks
3/4 c sugar
1 1/2 sticks of butter
Juice of 2-3 lemons
Zest from 1 of those lemons

1) Mix all of the ingredients together and cook in a double boiler until the mixture thickens (takes about 25 minutes or slightly longer). Make sure to stir constantly. Allow the frosting to cool before using (it will thicken even more after cooling).

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers, grandmothers, and aunts out there. And most especially, I want to wish a Happy Mother's Day to my mama and grandma.

My mama and me, many years ago.

And Grandma and me.

Hope everyone had a very special day! We sure did. 

Update on the RP Eggs and more.

Very hectic week for us here with the house undergoing a little bit of renovation (definitely gonna have to share my bathroom's makeover when it's done), new pens being built, soap and lotion bars being made, and orders going out

By the way, for a limited time receive 10% off your order from our Etsy shop when you use the code: 10OFFMHF. I'll be listing two more soaps this month as soon as they're ready - restocks of Cool As A Cucumber-Cantaloupe and Oatmeal & Tupelo Honey, so watch for them :)

Back to the post at hand. . . I thought I would do an update on the Royal Palm eggs: seventeen went in the incubator on April 22nd, and after candling last night, we're left with fourteen (two were complete duds and didn't show any signs of development and one had a blood ring).  They've also been joined by a few Polish eggs. Time for a couple of pictures:

Not the best picture of a candled egg that I've ever taken, but there's definitely a little turklet in there. 

Polish egg.

Now, this is a much better picture of a candled egg. Check out those veins! One of the best sights to see for a confirmed hatchaholic (like me) ;). Less than two weeks left, and we should have babies. 

And guess what? I heard Ossiris the peacock screeching his head off the other day. Maybe, finally, the girls will begin laying. I can only guess that they're so late in laying because our spring has been somewhat mild (it was actually in the 40sF - high 40s, but still the 40s - early one morning this week). 

And in other news, we've added a Nubian doe, who's bred, to our herd. So thrilled about her. Our does are getting on up in years and I've been wanting to add registered goats to our farm for ages, and this year has been perfect for it. 

Meet Brownie:

What a sweet and smart girl she is (and big, too). She's learned that I take the weimaraners (Remy first, then Hunter second) out first thing in the mornings before I do anything else. So, unlike the other animals who start making noise and become totally rambunctious as soon as they see me, Brownie relaxes and chills out until she sees me with Hunter. Then she decides it's time to get up and meet me at the gate to her pen. See, I told you she's smart :)    Hope you have a nice weekend!

Getting There.

I told my mom the other day that I hoped she was ready to do a lot of picking and putting up of fruits and veggies this year. As someone who has never had a green thumb, I'm so ready and over the moon about it :)

The Flordaqueen peach tree. 

One of the Rabbiteye bushes is loaded with little blueberries.

The scuppernong vine is full of little scuplings. In a few months, they'll be much bigger and ready to pick. I'm really looking forward to making more scupling jelly this year, and maybe even trying my hand at scupling wine. 

No blackberries in my favorite spot, yet, but it won't be too much longer.

And the Washington Navel Orange tree actually has little oranges setting on it for the first time!!

Bashful Peas.

The peacocks have been unusually shy this year.

They can be in the midst of displaying with their feathers all spread out beautifully in an attempt to romance the girls, and as soon as they see me coming with my nifty red camera in hand, they close it up and look at me as if to say, "Keep moving, nothing to see here." In fact, this is only the second decent picture I've managed to snap of either of the boys this year.

What's cool, is that it's Osiris, the shyest of the boys. . . Score!!! He's only ever allowed me to take his picture displaying one other time, and that time, he was in the midst of regrowing molted feathers and was, sadly for him, not at his handsomest. That didn't stop him from showing off to the girls, though. Maybe that's where peacocks get the reputation for being vain creatures - though I still think Jim Bob the turkey is worse (I swear he could be the inspiration behind "You're So Vain").

But the boys aren't entirely alone. The peahens have, in their own way, been shy this year. Last year, during the breeding season, we found our very first peafowl egg of the year on April 2nd (I only know that because I blogged about it here. . . thank God for this blog to keep me on track lol) and by May 15th, we'd had our first peachicks to hatch. This year, they're completely behind and still haven't laid the first egg :( They're not alone, either, as the guineas and some of the geese have been tardy with their egg laying, too. I guess it's just going to be one of those years.

Luckily, the turkeys are more than making up for them. On Monday, I set 17 eggs from our Royal Palms in the incubator! So, sometime around May 20th we should have our very first hatch of Royal Palm babies :)

Road Trip to PC.

I have been meaning to get this post up ever since this morning, but honestly, I've been cooped up inside and completely glued to the news all day long (my excuse, and it's a good one, is that it has stormed all day long - and is still raining - so not nice weather for doing anything outside or productive by a long shot).

Anyways, back to the post at hand. . . We (meaning my mom, myself, and Grandma, of course) took a little road trip on Wednesday down to Panama City, FL to visit with four of my favorite aunts and uncles. And what a nice visit it was!

We were treated to the best restaurant for lunch, and surprisingly, I actually tried the sushi. . . for the second time :) When I tried it for the first time last year, ashamed to say I literally gagged and was completely convinced that my usually fairly adventurous taste buds were defunct. But not so this time, it was actually kinda yummy.

Sorry, no beach pictures, but here's one of the water going across the bridge at Lynn Haven, FL ;)

And look what I brought home. . .

Tupelo Honey is a mild flavored honey (and delicious, of course) and is only produced in northwest Florida. And since we used the last of ours a couple of months ago and we rarely get down that way anymore, I couldn't come back home without restocking. Which means that we finally made another batch of one of our more popular soaps, Oatmeal & Tupelo Honey, today!

Apple Crisp with Caramel.

I love this recipe, it's perfect for cool weather, stormy Spring days like we've had today, and especially good when the lights go out during those stormy days. As I'm currently sitting here waiting for the electricity to come back on (thank goodness the Hopper recorded Farm Kings earlier - don't you just love that show. . . or better yet the guys on it?), I'm seriously considering grabbing another bowl :)

The original recipe is here, but you know me, I just had to change it around a little ;)

Ingredients:
Apple Filling
3 Granny Smith apples (or whichever apple you prefer), peeled and cut into large bite sized pieces
A dash of lemon juice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/3 c Caramel (recipe here)*
*I halve the caramel recipe, and of course, exclude the part where you dip apples into it :)

Topping
1/3 cup of butter, softened
1/2 c brown sugar
1/4 c granulated sugar
1/2 c wheat flour
1/2 c old fashioned oats
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg*
*I freeze nutmeg, and then take it out and grate when I need it, so 1/8th of a teaspoon is a guesstimate. 

The Filling:
1) Preheat the oven to 350F. Then, toss the peeled and cut up apples in a dash of lemon juice. Add a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and the cooled caramel sauce, and stir to make sure the apples are completely coated. Pour into a baking dish (I use an 8x8 square casserole dish).

2) In a medium sized bowl, combine the softened butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, wheat flour, oats, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Combine using a fork, until the mixture is crumb-like in texture.

Just before going in the oven.

3) Spoon the topping on top of the apple filling, covering completely. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the apples become tender.

Serve with ice cream, fresh whipped cream, or how I like it, just plain :) And enjoy!