Exciting news! Mountain Valley View Farm is now featured on BestofHorses.com, the best online search engine for horse enthusiasts. It is a real honor to be listed among the other great websites in the Best of Horses directory. You can view our page here.

Mountain Valley View Farm is proud to be a small, family owned and operated farm dedicated to raising beautiful Icelandic horses and growing fresh, organic produce that we sell at local farmers’ markets. We also have a small herd of Nubian dairy goats and Babydoll Southdown sheep that provide us with rich, creamy milk from which we craft a line of delicious artisan cheeses and handmade soaps that nourish and rejuvenate the skin.

Our Getaway Studio features a beautiful Bed & Breakfast where you can relax in a peaceful country setting, as well as the Dining Room that is open year-round for catering, hosting small dinner parties, and cooking classes taught by Karen Jean Matsko Hood, author of the popular Cookbook Delights series.

In our fully-licensed commercial kitchen, we use time-honored family recipes to make small batches of scrumptious artisan baked goods, candies, jams, jellies, fruit butters, and syrups from high quality local and organic ingredients that have a fresh, unbeatable taste. We also craft lovely gift items, including cookie and soup mixes packaged attractively in jars, sachets of lavender and potpourri, and our signature potpourri strings that add a decorative touch to any room.

As you can tell, there is always something new and exciting happening at Mountain Valley View Farm! Of course, we also have a great selection of organic produce and fresh eggs from the free-range chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys that live right here on our farm. We love serving the Spokane area with fresh, local food and handmade products that hearken back to a simpler and more friendly era. You can purchase any of our items directly at the farm, located at

4301 South Chapman Road
Greenacres, WA 99016

Or visit us year-round at the Spokane Public Market, and seasonally at other area farmers’ markets.

Spokane Public Market
32 W. 2nd Ave
Spokane, WA 99210
10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Wed – Fri

We look forward to seeing you soon!

Christmas is a time for giving and it is time for huge commercial sales. However, the two do not have to go hand-in-hand. There are easy homemade gifts one can make for friends and family for Christmas. In many cases, making homemade gifts is less expensive and more personal.

Movie Night Basket

To make this gift, you will need a wicker basket, a 12- to 16-ounce Christmas tin, wide green and/or red ribbon, silver or gold glitter paint, popcorn, wax paper, semisweet chocolate, caramel, a throw blanket (store bought or homemade) and a DVD.

Wrap the ribbon around the basket near the rim and tie it in a bow. On one of the hanging ends of the bow, paint the name of the recipient in silver or gold glitter paint. Melt the chocolate and caramel while you pop the popcorn. Once the popcorn is done, lay it out on wax paper and drizzle chocolate and caramel over it. Allow it to cool and then place it in the tin. Put the blanket in the basket with the tin and DVD.

Personalized T-shirt

For this gift, you will need a printer, computer, t-shirt transfer paper, a light-colored t-shirt and an iron.

Find a great picture or make personalized text and prepare it to print. If you would like to customize it, use a photo manipulation program like paint or Photoshop to perfect the image. When you go to print the image, make sure to size it so it will look nice on the t-shirt, load the transfer paper into the printer and reverse the image. Print the image and make sure it is backward before proceeding. Place the t-shirt on an ironing board front facing up. Line up the paper with the image facing down. Make sure it is centered. Iron the image onto the t-shirt using the instructions on the transfer paper packaging. Allow the transfer to set and then put the t-shirt in a gift box.

Homemade gifts like crafts, baked goods and chocolates still work wonders during Christmas. People can decorate their houses with crafts and serve food gifts at holiday celebrations. Some of the more modern homemade gifts include homemade DVDs made with pictures and home videos and digital cards. Clearly, there are homemade gift ideas for the old-fashioned and the modern alike. What you decide to make is entirely up to you, but remember to keep the recipient’s taste in mind.

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My name is Nisha, I represent a site called Wish.co.uk.  I love to write especially about crafts, gifts, health and beauty. Feel free to visit our site for more great Christmas gifts!

All Hallow’s Eve is less than a week away, and if you haven’t started planning for the holiday, you may be in a panic right now wondering what costume you will wear, how you will decorate your house, and what to do for the party you promised all your friends. Not to fear! First, take a deep breath and take a look at some of the excellent articles preceding this one. From costumes to harvest festivals, they’ll give you some great ideas to get started on your Halloween celebration no matter how much you’ve procrastinated.

Another quick and easy tip to jumpstart your Halloween planning is to peruse a copy of Karen Jean Matsko Hood’s Halloween Delights. Far more than just a cookbook, Halloween Delights is a treasure trove of ideas that will help you create the most memorable Halloween possible. Packed with innovative recipes that will both delight the tastebuds and send shivers up and down your spine, this book gives you everything you need to quickly develop a theme around which to plan your entire holiday. You will find yourself inspired by just a brief glance at the recipes–there are over 200 to choose from, and they can help create an atmosphere that is spectacularly ghoulish, fun and playful, or anything in between.

For example, you may be inspired to use a monster theme by such treats as Goblin Dip with Bone Crackers and Eerie Eyeballs , or perhaps the Graveyard Cake and Disappearing Ghost Cookies will prompt you to decorate your house as a cemetery and dress up as a haunting spirit. Doubling as both a decorative centerpiece and a tasty treat is the Bleeding Human Heart, a delicious red gelatin that bleeds when you slice it. You could design an entire party around that one item: imagine the lair of a mad scientist, perhaps even Dr. Frankenstein himself, and all the grisly things you might encounter there. Witches, vampire bats, even less frightful symbols of Halloween like the black cat and jack-o-lantern, and so much more can be found in Halloween Delights. You will be thrilled with the abundance of creative ideas, and your party guests will be impressed and delightfully spooked.

Halloween Delights Cookbook – Paperback ©2008

Please click on the above image to view
and print in a larger, easy-to-read format.

Have you ever wondered what gift to give that special someone in your life? They already have everything they need, and you’ve been racking your brain each holiday and birthday for the last several years to come up with something unique, something that is truly as special as they are–and now you have completely run out of ideas.

A personalized poem by Karen Jean Matsko Hood is the perfect answer. Affordable on any budget, personalized poems can be anything you want: fun and lighthearted, romantic, friendly, or sympathetic; they can be tailored to fit almost any occasion including birthdays, engagements or anniversaries, holidays, bereavement, as well as any other important event or milestone. A Personalized Poem by Karen gives you the opportunity to select extra options that many other personalized poems don’t bother with, such as whether or not you want the poem to rhyme, and whether or not you wish to add artwork or have your poem printed on special paper. Furthermore, most personalized items simply add the name of your gift recipient to an already-existing poem, but a Personalized Poem by Karen is always a unique creation, written specifically for you.

Karen Jean Matsko Hood has been writing poetry for many years, and her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals both national and international. You can read a review of her first volume of poetry, Frost of Spring Green, here. Karen’s experience and expertise in writing well-crafted, poignant poems makes her a natural for personalized poetry. Her deft touch and finely-woven words are guaranteed to touch the heartstrings no matter the subject or event you are looking to commemorate. Give a gift that will be treasured forever–give a Personalized Poem by Karen.

Perhaps the easiest way to plan any party is to pick a theme and design your food, activities, favors, and decor around that central idea. If you have already chosen a theme for your Halloween decorations, as discussed in our earlier article, why not use this as the theme of your party as well?

For example, if you chose to decorate your house as a spooky graveyard, build on this by serving creepy skeletal treats like Brittle Meringue Bones or create an entire edible cemetery with the Haunted Halloween Forest Platter, both fabulous recipes from Karen Hood’s idea-filled cookbook Halloween Delights. Play Pin the Skull on the Skeleton, bob for apples in a coffin–whatever you do, be sure to include plenty of ghosts, vampires, and other creatures of the night!

A great party idea for younger kids who may frighten easily is to base it on the classic holiday cartoon It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Decorate your house as a pumpkin patch with hay bales and pumpkins; serve pumpkin bars, roasted pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin-shaped cookies as treats; hold a Jack-o-lantern carving contest–and be sure to designate one very special gourd to be the Great Pumpkin himself!

Party ideas for Halloween are almost endless. Invite your friends to a Monster Mash, and you decide whether the theme is traditional Hollywood monsters like The Mummy and The Wolfman, or a more open theme that welcomes all beasts of fur, scale, claw, and fang. A creative costume contest for this party would be a blast. Go with today’s popular trends and throw a vampire party complete with Blood Punch, flitting bat and coffin decor, and party games like Mafia are easily adapted to suit the undead. Another trendy choice is, of course, the zombie apocalypse. A ghoulish game of tag would be the perfect end to the evening.

Halloween Delights Cookbook – Paperback ©2008

Photo by Ethan Miller, Getty Images

Harvest festivals are a wonderful way to enjoy the autumn season for those who do not celebrate Halloween for religious reasons, or who simply don’t like to be scared.

Decorations concentrate on rich fall colors of gold, yellow, orange, red, and earthy brown. Pumpkins, corn stalks, apples, and colorful fall leaves can be incorporated into the décor to invoke a welcoming, harvest atmosphere. You can even go farther and make your home look like a farm—try bales of hay, friendly-looking scarecrows, horse or chicken themed pictures and items, rustic gingham prints, straw hats, and other items that can be found on a farm.

Food should concentrate on traditional autumn fare like apple cider, roasted pumpkin seeds, oatmeal cookies, zucchini bread, caramel apples, and popcorn. Hot, hearty dishes like soup and chili will warm up your guests. Try butternut squash soup as squash is plentiful at this time of year. Don’t forget that Halloween Delights, the fabulous cookbook by experienced chef Karen Jean Matsko Hood, contains a host of delicious and creative recipes that are perfect for autumn, not just Halloween.

Some traditional Halloween activities can be easily adapted to a harvest festival. Bobbing for apples and carving pumpkins are always fun, and you can invite your guests to come in costume as long as they don’t choose anything scary. Wheelbarrow races and other relay games provide excitement and competition for all ages. Carnival games, like beanbag throwing and ring toss, are also popular at harvest festivals, and of course there is the traditional fall hay ride.

Don’t let the frights and commercialism of Halloween stop you from celebrating this gorgeous time of year! A harvest festival is good, clean family fun that will create treasured memories for years to come. Be safe, be creative, and above all have fun!

Halloween Delights Cookbook – Paperback ©2008

• On Halloween, a girl can divine the name of her future husband by paring an apple and tossing the peel over her shoulder. The peel will fall into the shape of the man’s initials.
• If a girl stands in front of a mirror in a darkened room holding a candle, the face she sees in the reflection over her shoulder will be the face of her future husband.
• Black cats were originally thought to protect witches’ power from negative forces.
• To keep spirits away from your house, place a bowl of food outside to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.
• Light a candle to guide your loved one home from the spirit world
• Ringing a bell scares away evil spirits.
• If you see a spider on Halloween night, it could be the spirit of a loved one watching you.
• To meet a witch on Halloween night, put your clothes on inside out and walk backwards.
• Do not look at your shadow in the moonlight. Doing so on All Hallows Eve will guarantee a death in the near future.
• If you see a ghost, walk around it nine times, and it will disappear.
• If you hear 3 knocks and no one is there, it usually means someone close to you has died. This is called the 3 knocks of death.
• If you kill a black cat on Halloween, you will have 7 years of bad luck.
• If you hold your breath while you drive by a cemetery, evil spirits can’t enter your body.
• If a black cat meows on your porch or near a window, a death will soon occur in the family.
• When bobbing for apples, it is believed that the first person to bite an apple would be the first to marry.
• If you go to a crossroads at Halloween and listen to the wind, you will learn all the most important things that will befall you during the next twelve months.
• If a person lights a new orange colored candle at midnight on Halloween and lets it burn until sunrise, he or she will be the recipient of good luck.
• A burning candle inside a jack-o-lantern on Halloween keeps evil spirits and demons at bay.
• If a candle flame suddenly turns blue, there’s a ghost nearby.
• Walk around your home three times backwards and counterclockwise before sunset on Halloween to ward off evil spirits.
• Girls placed hazel nuts along the front of the firegrate, each one to symbolize one of her suitors. She could then find out who her future husband would be by chanting, ‘If you love me, pop and fly; if you hate me, burn and die.’ The nut that popped out of the fire instead of burning up when she named her suitor would indicate her future husband.
• Gazing into a flame of a candle on Halloween night will enable you to peer into the future.

Halloween Delights Cookbook – Paperback ©2008

Decorating your home for Halloween can be as simple or complex as you like. In recent years, companies have created strings of lights that you can hang outside your home like Christmas lights, but in the orange of Halloween. Inflatable yard decorations depicting Jack-o-Lanterns, black cats, and spooky ghosts are another quick and easy way to dress up your yard for the holiday. Carving pumpkins is both a fun Halloween activity and a traditional means of decorating. The flickering glow of Jack-o-Lanterns in the night is always a spooky sight.

If you would like to put more effort into really scaring trick-or-treaters and party guests, design your decorations around a theme. Scary graveyard and haunted house are two of the most popular themes. For a graveyard, buy premade fake tombstones at your local party store or make your own by cutting out and spray painting Styrofoam. Add skeletal remains, open coffins, ghosts and dark spirits hanging from the trees. If you really want to splurge, a fog machine will create fantastic atmosphere, and glowing colored lights placed on the ground will seem eerie in the mist.

The trick to creating a good haunted house is to make it look long abandoned. Spiderwebs, fake bugs and bats, and tattered curtains fluttering in the wind work very well. You can add to this with flickering black candles in the windows, torn wallpaper, old paintings or photographs of people who are obviously long dead—the possibilities are endless. There are dozens of premade items for sale that make decorating on this theme quick and easy, but you can also do it yourself by creating spiderwebs from torn cheesecloth and using baking flour to create fake dust.

Of course, there are many other decorating themes if you use your imagination. A vampire’s lair, witch’s castle, or mad scientist’s laboratory are some other traditional Halloween themes, but why not go for something more unique? Given the current popularity of the Zombie Apocalypse scenario, you could go wild creating a post-apocalyptic look that would thrill trick-or-treaters. No matter what theme you choose, the important thing is to be creative!

Halloween Delights Cookbook – Paperback ©2008

Trends in Halloween costumes change every year—after all, no one wants to be seen in the same costume they wore last year. However, costumes always fall into one of several categories:

Cute
The cute costumes are usually for infants and younger children, and are often similar from year to year. Most costumes for very young children dress them up as an adorable animal like a monkey, bunny, or dinosaur. There are also miniature versions of costumes for older children, which can range from devils and angels to witches and pirates, or whatever else is popular for older kids that year.

Silly
Funny costumes are for all ages, kids and adults both. Many silly costumes are foods or other inanimate objects, and there are also sets that go together for couples, like Fork & Knife or Ketchup & Mustard. Many costumes in this category are a play on words, like A Chick Magnet being someone dressed as an actual magnet with rubber ducks attached to it. The possibilities are endless, and this is a great way to show off your creativity.

Scary
By far the most popular category, scary costumes play on the long tradition of Halloween superstitions and ghost stories. Old stand-bys like vampire, witch, werewolf, and mummy remain prevalent each year, but every year also sees new ideas that push the envelope of what is frightening. Masks, makeup, and costumes are becoming more and more realistic so that it is very easy to come up with a hideous persona that will startle your friends and neighbors.

Sexy
Sexy costumes for women have become very popular in the last decade. Many of these play on traditional sexy characters, like French maid and belly dancer, while others take characters from movies and children’s TV shows and create a more flirtatious version of their outfits. Stick Rainbow Brite in a short skirt and stockings or modify Lara Croft’s costume just a little, and you’ve got the perfect sexy costume.

Pop Culture
This category is the most ephemeral of all, for it shifts with every trend. Costumes can portray currently popular entertainers like Lady Gaga, political figures, characters from recently released movies, or play on a trend like the vampire craze started by Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. For Halloween 2011, the Zombie Apocalypse will be a huge trend, popularized in books, graphic novels, movies, and TV shows like The Walking Dead. Many boys may want to dress as Thor or Captain America this year. Steampunk continues to flourish in a smaller portion of the populace, and is an excellent choice for creative and detailed costuming.

Halloween Delights Cookbook – Paperback ©2008

Paneer, also called Indian cheese, can be produced from the milk of sheep, goats, cows, and other mammals. It is prepared by heating raw whole milk and then adding food acid (usually lemon juice, vinegar, or citric acid) to it to separate the curds from the whey. When the milk coagulates, the curds are drained and the excess liquid is pressed out. It is similar to Ricotta cheese except that it is in block form. The resulting paneer is dipped in chilled water for 2–3 hours to give it a good texture and appearance.

From this point, the preparation of paneer in India diverges based on its use and regional variation. In most cuisines, the curds are wrapped in cloth and placed under a heavy weight, such as a stone slab, for 2 to 3 hours and then cut into cubes for use in curries. Pressing for a shorter time (approximately 20 minutes) results in a softer, fluffier cheese.

In Eastern Indian and Bangladeshi cuisines, the curds are beaten or kneaded by hand into a dough-like consistency. In these regions, it is distinguished from ponir, a salty semi-hard cheese with a sharper flavor and high salt content. Hard ponir is typically eaten in slices at teatime with biscuits or various types of bread, or deep-fried in a light batter. In the area surrounding the Gujarati city of Surat, surti paneer is made by draining the curds and ripening them in whey for 12 to 36 hours.

Health Benefits

Paneer, prepared by the most simple method, has many health benefits and it is good to know about them.  Indian cheese is a treasure of good nutritional elements.  It is easy to digest and can be used in a number of preparations.  It is used in most Indian homes.  Paneer can be used in sweets, savories, and in gravies of dishes too.

Indian cheese is a rich source of calcium.  This helps in building strong teeth and bones. Paneer has the health benefit of helping to prevent osteoporosis, which is a curse of old age. Women who have attained menopause and men above the age of 65 should make it a rule to include such foods in their diet to get 25% of calcium through food.

Paneer eaten in moderation could help reduce weight.  It is good to note that many people who wish to lose weight include Indian cheese in their daily diet.

Paneer also gives the health benefits of reducing the development of Insulin Resistance Syndrome.  Hence, it is all about tackling the problem of insulin-dependent diabetes.
Including paneer in one’s daily diet helps to give the health benefit of providing the protein required by the body for growth and renewal.

It is, however, also interesting to note that Indian culture believes that paneer cheese provides protection against cancer.  Equally interesting is Indian culture states that this cheese helps prevent stomach disorders in people as they grow older.  One thing that health practitioners can agree on is that paneer is a storehouse of calcium, which has the benefit of making bones stronger and helping prevent brittle bones as we age.  Since it promotes strong bones, paneer also helps to prevent and reduce back and joint problems.

To conclude, anyone who has realized the health benefits of paneer should make it a rule to include this delightful cheese in their diet.  The ways in which Indian cheese can be used are many and varied and most people would enjoy the taste and flavor also.  We definitely enjoy cooking with paneer here at Mountain Valley View Farm, Inc. and the Getaway Studio.

Please note that Mountain Valley View Farm, Inc. is working very hard to become a licensed WSDA Grade A Dairy!  We are currently following all their guidelines to produce safe goat milk and goat milk products.  We are following the law here at Mountain Valley View Farm, Inc. and we will not sell any goat milk until our WSDA license is finalized and approved.  In the meantime, we are making and testing various cheese recipes for our family.  When our license is finalized we will know exactly which is the best recipe to sell to our customers.

Please pre-order Paneer Cheese from Mountain Valley View Farm, Inc.

We will not sell any cheese until we officially receive our WSDA Grade A Dairy license.  Until then, we are keeping a waiting list of all future customers so we can also evaluate the volume of cheese we will need to plan for once we have our license.

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Mountain Valley View Farm, Inc.
Your Source for Northwest Farm Fresh Foods Shipped Worldwide
4301 South Chapman Road
Greenacres, Washington 99016-8732 USA
Phone (509) 928-1800 | Fax (509) 922-9949
Email: sales@mountainvalleyviewfarm.com

Website: www.mountainvalleyviewfarm.com
Online Store: www.mountainvalleyviewfarmstore.com
Blog with us at www.mountainvalleyviewfarmblog.com

Mountain Valley View Farm Hours:

Monday – Saturday
8:00 a.m. – Noon; 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Pacific Time)
Closed Noon – 1:00 p.m.

Other farm hours by advance appointment only.
Please call (509) 928-1800 to schedule an appointment.

Getaway Studio Dining Room
& Bed and Breakfast
Phone (509) 928-8900

Directions to Mountain Valley View Farm, Inc.
From I-90 East or West
Take the Sullivan Exit (291B) – South for about 3 miles
Turn left on Saltese (east), and continue straight for .5 mile
Turn right on South Chapman Road (south), and proceed .9 mile
The farm will be on the left-hand side of the road – 4301 South Chapman Road