Chicken Cordon Bleu is such a satisfying and delicious meal. It's also extremely labor intensive. If you are having a hankering for this dish, try this cheater method. It gives you all of the same flavors, but without the same workload. 

Ingredients: 
3 chicken breasts
3 slices comte cheese
9 slices prosciutto
2 tsp lavender herbs de provence (found here) 
1 tsp kosher salt

Directions:
Slice your chicken almost in half width wise. Lay down your slices of prosciutto inside the chicken. Top the prosciutto with cheese. Close the chicken halves and top each breast with herbs de provence and salt. Cook at 400 degrees until the chicken breasts reach an internal temp of 165 degrees fahrenheit. 

See? Delicious chicken cordon bleu flavors, but it couldn't be easier!

Gee, for being such majestic creatures, our dogs sure weren't feeling photogenic this day....

Some of my favorite people we meet at the farmers market are the dog owners. They always seem just a little bit happier and little bit more relaxed that the general public. I am a big believer that pets can help us to have a little more joy and love in our lives. 

If you are a dog owner, then you have got to try our lavender dog soap. 

We make our Lavender Dog Soap with natural goat's milk. Its free from all the drying and harmful chemicals that are in many dog soaps. Our dog soap even includes tea tree and neem oil which is healing for your dogs scalp. Those oils also help keep the bugs off of your dog naturally. 

You and your dog will love it. Learn more and order yours HERE

Anyone else feel like this by the end of winter?

  I snapped this photo at the farm next to the Lavender Apple. This pretty much sums up how a farmer feels at the end of cold harsh winter. This week we were teased with some ok temperatures. And while the Cache Valley inversion isn't tricking anyone to believe that this winter is over yet, the sun sure is trying. 

If you're like me and craving some spring, here are some teaser photos from last year to help get you through. 

Do you have a babe who loves pirates? Well we do. So when we had a birthday approach, there was no question, what type of birthday cake we would have. A pirate ship birthday cake is not just easy, its delicious too! So come on ye scury scrubs, grab a sword (or a knife) and come a long for the ride!

I recommend using Peggy's famous Nelson Cake recipe for your cake base, you can find the recipe here: http://thepurpleapple-lavender.blogspot.com/2015/01/nelson-cake_7.html 

But like the saying goes, fresh is best unless you're stressed. So if you want to use a boxed cake mix and pre whipped frosting, I won't tell anyone. I know how things can be right before a birthday party...

Directions: 

Make two 9x13 cakes. Make sure you butter your baking dishes really well so the cake slides out when it's done cooking. I found it helpful to refridgerate the cakes for at least a couple of hours before removing them from the pans. Take one of the cakes and if its facing you horizontally, slice the middle third of the cake out. Stack the remaining two edge peices on the top of the other whole cake. Take the slice you made and put stack it on one of the ends, so you essentially have one side that is 3 layers of cake wide. Then shape front of the cake to look pointed like a boat. I pushed some straws down through the cake layers to help hold them together and give them some stability. You could add frosting between the layers too. This makes it look prettier when sliced. 

Then simply frost your entire cake. I add pirouette cookies to the front to look like railings, kit kats for the doors, pretzels for the back deck railing, and chocolate malt balls as cannons. I also added some chocolate chops to the side to look like the port windows. Then I drew a skull and cross bones onto a black peices of construction paper, and used skewers to make the sails.  Then I added my sons pirate figurines and added some blue frosting along the sides to make it look like water. Adding double the amount of water your frosting recipe calls for will make the frosting actually set up and look like real water. 

There you have it mateys! This can all be acomplished during one nap time too. What's better than that! Yo ho!