Garlic Bubble Bread, recipe #3

From the farm to the kitchen…
Can I just say, I am loving this cookbook! I made Garlic Bubble Bread to go along with girl’s night Perfect Cheesy Pasta Bake. The bread was the hit of the party. (What can I say, we love butter and carbs!)

As always, gather your ingredients…This recipe calls for one pound of frozen bread dough. My grocery store didn’t have exactly that, but it did have frozen dinner roll dough. Worked great!!

This recipe also calls for both garlic powder, and garlic salt. Use them. Love them. Yum.

It does take a little bit of time, though, so plan ahead!

First, thaw the bread (roll) dough according to package directions. Then cut it up into bite-sized pieces. I cut each roll into 4-5 pieces. (This ends up being a super-savory version of the sticky-sweet pull-apart Monkey Bread. A fantastic variation on a theme!)When your thawed bread dough is ready to go, melt 1/4 cup of butter (1/2 stick).Add 1 tablespoon dried parsley, 1 teaspoon of garlic powder, and 1/2 teaspoon of garlic salt to the melted butter.Dunk the pieces of bread dough in, and let them get a good coating.Layer the buttery, garlicky hunks of bread dough in a buttered loaf pan.   I started to run low on my melted butter mixture when I was about half-way through the dough-dunking. I melted another 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) and added it to the mix. This was a little too much, and I had extra left over. So I poured it over the top of the loaf pan. (We also love our butter!) Let the dough rise for about an hour, until doubled in size. Mine didn’t rise very well – I had the air conditioning cranked in my house, and it was on the chilly side. I moved the pan closer to the pre-heating oven for the last 15 minutes, and the rising went much better then.

Bake this yummy concoction at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. I left this in the oven in my stoneware for 35 minutes to get this perfect color.The extra butter bubbled up over the sides of the bread in the corners of the pan, and the pieces on the bottom were so buttery delicious!

We all loved this bread, and I have already had requests for the recipe, and to make it again! I will definitely make this again!

Special thanks to Gooseberry Patch for providing me with this great cookbook to try and to share with you. If you would like to see other great recipes, check out www.realfarmwivesofamerica.com.

Printable recipe card:

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Buckets of fun on the farm

Red Hill General Store was very generous to supply the Real Farmwives of America & Friends with some buckets to try out! (Check out the rest of the girls today to see what they did with their buckets on the farm, too.)

On Monday, I shared with you the many uses I found for a 4-quart galvanized bucket in our Home and Garden. Today, I’ll tell you about using the bucket on the Farm!

We have a pretty small farm here at the house. We raise cattle (no more than 10 cows on the pastures at our house) and hay, so our farm is usually pretty low-maintenance. Lucky for me!

But there are some things that I used my 4 quart galvanized bucket for around the farm.

The handle was just perfect for hanging over the water hydrant to fill.

Doesn’t that look refreshing on a hot hot summer day?

I used the bucket to water the tulip poplar tree we transplanted…

And our transplanted pecan tree.

I also used it to fill up the dogs’ water bowls. Hubby Doc likes to use a 5-gallon bucket for this, but that is just too heavy for me to carry very far. This 4-quart works just perfect!

Speaking of 5-gallon buckets, this is what we feed our calves every day (there are seven calves this year). They get a 5-gallon bucket full of creep feed to share.

I wasn’t going to make the trip from the feed storage out to the creep feeder that many times, but I did use the little bucket as a scoop to fill the big bucket!

Then the big bucket into the creep feeder for the little guys. What is a creep feeder you may ask? Well, that is a post for another day…

We always seem to be in the middle of a construction project around here. Right now, we’re adding on to the barn, because it wasn’t big enough before. Or so I’m told.

With any construction project, there are always lots of little pieces that need to be kept together. Hubby Doc said he would rather use my galvanized bucket than this plastic pail. He gets a lot of used plastic coffee containers, but he doesn’t like them because they don’t have handles.

He mentioned stealing my bucket to keep greasy tractor parts in when he is doing maintenance… I may have to get him a bucket of his own…  

Like the bucket? The Real Farmwives of America & Friends are having a giveaway this week! Be sure to stop by and enter to win a Galvanized Embossed Tub from Red Hill General Store on the Real Farmwives’ blog. Also check out Red Hill General Store – they have lots of buckets, tubs, bottles, and so much more!!

Thanks, Red Hill, this bucket fits right in around my Farm!

While Red Hill General Store did provide me with a bucket to blog about for this post, the pictures, ideas, and opinions shared here are my own.

Perfect Cheesy Pasta Bake, recipe #2

Welcome back for recipe #2 from In the Kitchen with the Real Farmwives of America & Friends and Gooseberry Patch!This is the first time I have cooked with chicken in a long time… We have freezer beef and freezer pork, so I don’t buy (or cook) much chicken. This time, I did! (And it was kind of a nice change.)First, measure out 4 cups of uncooked pasta, and cook according to package directions. I used whole grain pasta, but no one says you have to. (The 13.5 ounce package I bought was the perfect 4 cup measurement.) Boil the pasta, drain, and put into a large bowl.
I had planned to use pasta sauce that we had canned last summer, but I only had pint jars left. This recipe calls for 3-1/2 cups, and a pint is only two cups, so I pulled this pinch-hitter out of my pantry at the last minute. Again, I just used the whole container. It was pretty close to 3-1/2 cups.
Then, grate up 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese. The pre-grated stuff is fine, too. I like to use any excuse to get out my fancy cheese grater!
Add the sauce (canned, jarred, or otherwise) and the parmesan to the cooked pasta.
Mix it all up…
And put half the pasta in an 8x8 baking pan. Then put 1 cup of cooked, diced chicken on top of the pasta layer. (This is one chicken breast, boiled, and diced. It’s kind of a boring way to cook chicken, but the chicken is not the star in this dish – this is all about the pasta and the cheese!)
Layer the rest of the pasta on top of the chicken.

Grate up 1/2 cup Velveeta cheese (I prefer the 2% milk variety)…
And get yourself 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella (this was pre-shredded).
Spread the cheeses over the top of the pasta dish.
I didn’t think that looked like quite enough cheese. So I added extra mozzarella. Hubby Doc thinks I should have added even more.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes, until hot and bubbly. (In my stoneware, it took 35 minutes. Another 5 and the cheese should have gotten that pretty brown color.)
I served this to my girlfriends with Garlic Bubble Bread (recipe coming this weekend!) for our girls’ night in. The girls loved it. (Although the bread took center stage!)Don’t worry, we ate our vegetables too. We had a veggie platter to pick from all night long. Just none of them made it on the plate… Whoops.

While we did enjoy the pasta, I would recommend a few slight changes. We all thought there could have been a little more sauce – maybe a can of diced tomatoes for a bit more texture? And you can never go wrong with more cheese… I will definitely make this again, but I might tweak it, just a little…

Special thanks to Gooseberry Patch for providing me with this great cookbook to try and to share with you. If you would like to see other great recipes, check out www.realfarmwivesofamerica.com.

Update:  Here's the printable recipe card!

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Play ball!

The winner of the Indianapolis Indians baseball tickets for Indiana’s Family of Farmers Family Night at the Ball Park is…

Donna Handley!

Congratulations, and thanks for entering! I’ll be contacting you soon with the details. I hope you and the kids enjoy the night, and have a chance to talk with some Real Farmwives and their Kids!

A bucket for every occasion

Okay, so it’s just one bucket. But it got quite a bit of use this week.

Red Hill General Store was very generous to supply the Real Farmwives of America & Friends with some buckets to try out! (Check out the rest of the girls today to see what they did with their buckets, too.)
I got a 4-quart galvanized bucket to play with. And let me say, it has already come in pretty handy, and I’ve got some more uses planned for it in the future!

Right after I got my bucket, I went away to a veterinary conference for a week. I asked Hubby Doc to use the bucket to corral the mail while I was gone. It’s just the perfect size!

I thought perhaps I could use this bucket as a cat dish, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about feeding the cats twice a day (you know, self-feeding).

No such luck. Leo (on the left with the white toes) and Pretzel (on the right with the giant mouth) went to town on the huge bucket of food.

And they would not share with Martin…


Or with Orleans. Poor Floof-Cat.

Okay, so scrap that idea. I will share that I made a giant mess trying to get the cat food back into the original bag. Cat food all over the floor. Whoops. Good thing I had four hungry cats around to help me clean it up!
My fish tank was looking a little low, so I used the bucket to top off the tank (after a thorough washing and rinsing, of course). Just the perfect size for this, too!


I may have accidentally poured water all over the floor while I was filling the fish tank. Note to self, next time, get someone else to take photos when I am dealing with running water in the house…

So I took my bucket outside to see what kind of trouble I could get in out in the garden.
Hmmm… These blackberries are not quite ripe yet. But when they are, this bucket will be the perfect size to pick them into! (And then I’ll be able to post about our famous homemade blackberry ice cream recipe…  yum!)

The tomato plants are also not quite ready. They have started to flower, but are far from putting on fruit. Hubby Doc likes to pick into a five-gallon bucket in the garden. Those get too heavy for me, so this 1-gallon bucket will be just right.


Um, did he really plant four rows of green beans? I might need another bucket…


On the way back inside, I stopped to pick a few lilies from my weedy flower beds.


And then I turned my bucket into a centerpiece for dinner with the girls before the True Blood season premiere!


If only I can get the cats to leave the flowers alone… (That is a long shot around here.)

Like the bucket? The Real Farmwives of America & Friends are having a giveaway this week! Be sure to stop by and enter to win a Galvanized Embossed Tub from Red Hill General Store on the Real Farmwives’ blog. Also check out Red Hill General Store – they have lots of buckets, tubs, bottles, and so much more!!
Thanks, Red Hill, this bucket fits right in around my Home & Garden!

While Red Hill General Store did provide me with a bucket to blog about for this post the pictures, ideas and opinions shared here are my own.