Wet down your bed pretty thoroughly - so its moist at least 18" deep, but not with pockets of water. It may take a couple of days of water-wait-water cycles to get it to this state. Maybe even 3 days. However long it takes, it will be worth it. Put down damp flattened plain brown corrugated boxes. You can get all you want for free from local groceries and even Valdemart. Leave "aisles" for your garlic, or you can just cut out where you need to plant the garlic with a box knife. Cover with mulch - ANY kind of mulch, even ground up trees - so they won't blow away. Water plants with drip or a soaker hose. You CAN water by hand, but it looks like your beds are kind of large for that. Overhead watering is kind of a waste of water with this method. There's no need to keep the mulch wet. You can run soaker hose under the cardboard if you want, but I prefer drip tubing with side hoses to where the water needs to go, and soakers down rows of things like carrots etc. Come spring, cut holes in the cardboard where ever you want to plant. In ONE YEAR, you will see a huge difference. The cardboard not only helps to keep the soil moist and cooler in hot weather, it keeps weeds from coming up. What few may poke their heads through the gaps where you've planted will be much easier to pull. The earthworms will be cool, moist, and happily working away ALL OVER your bed. Replace or add to the cardboard in the spring - it will eventually degrade and be pulled down into the soil by our friend, the earthworm. I like to lay down a double layer of flattened boxes to start and then I don't usually have to add to it for 2 or 3 years. If you are concerned about things overwintering or if you live in Slug Central (say, Portland, OR), you might want to just lay down a single layer and pull it up each fall to add to your compost. I've never had anything overwinter, nor had any particular problem with slugs - but I suppose the potential is there. I have tried everything. Double digging, tilling, using a heavy duty fork to break up hardpan at the bottom of my tilled/double-dug plots, working in tons of peat moss and organic matter, cover crops - the works. The only thing that worked was putting down 18" of spoiled hay one year. And how often do you get that much hay or straw for free? Cardboard plus mulch is the answer. It works on hard clay soil, it works on the sandy gritty soil I have here in the desert. Either way, I water less, plants thrive, earthworms magically appear to do all my work for me. I wish I had known this 40 years ago, what gardens I would have had, every single year! LOL! I am disabled now - lacking strength and stamina and its not that easy for me to get up and down. With this method I literally never have to touch the bed except to put the plants in and maybe toss some fertilizer in once in awhile. I have not had to pull a single weed out of that bed since I put down the cardboard. And it is INFESTED with bindweed. The other bed, where no cardboard was used, only mulch, gets carpeted with bindweed every time I turn my back. I have an incipient rock garden going in over there, but I'm going to have to put cardboard under the rocks or at least around those plants - such as rosemary - that don't spread to try to rein it in. The thyme - which does spread and which I hope will spread - seems to choke most of the bindweed out by itself. Cardboard plus mulch - no weeds, no bindweed. No cardboard, just mulch - the stuff still comes up. Guess which one I prefer? LOL!

Clare, no reason why you can't make a chocolate bread pudding out of your leftover Chocolate Cake. Just cut up the cake into cubes and mix in to the egg and cream mixture, sprinkle with sugar and bake. I've used spice cake and gingerbread cake in bread puddings before. With the chocolate bread pudding I'd serve a sauce. The caramel would work, but this vanilla sauce is wonderful with a chocolate bread pudding. Home Cookin Chapter: Recipes From Thibeault's Table Vanilla Custard for Bread PUdding ================================ 2 cups light or coffee cream 3 tablespoons flour 1/2 cup white sugar 1 egg beaten vanilla extract Bring milk to a boil. Mix the flour and sugar and mix into beaten egg. When milk is hot slowly pour the milk into the egg mixture, stirring constantly. Pour mixture back into the pot and cook over low heat until thickened. Stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Custard should be pouring consistency. Cover the surface with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Pixistix's Hot Milk cake. I copied the frosting off the Cooking forum, but darn if I remember who posted it. READ where it says to double the ingred for a 9x13 pan for the frosting! Hot Milk Cake - Pixistix Old fashioned, simple, melts in your mouth! 4 eggs 2 cups sugar 2 1/4 cups flour 2 1/4 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. vanilla 1 1/4 cups milk 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter Beat eggs and sugar well. Combine flour with bk. powder and add to egg mixture along with vanilla. Heat milk and butter together until butter melts; gradually add to batter, beating until well blended. Pour batter into a greased 9x13 pan. Bake at 350 for 30 to 35 minutes. I'm not sure where the recipe for the topping came from, but this is what Tara used: Brown Sugar Topping 1 cup packed light brown sugar 1/4 cup whipping cream 1 T unsalted butter 3/4 tsp vanilla 1/2 cup chopped pecans Combine the brown sugar, whipping cream & butter in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly until smooth. Remove from heat. Stir in the vanilla. Let stand 10 minutes. Whisk until of spreading consistency. Stir in the pecans. Spread over the brownies or cake. Let stand 1 hour or until set. Serve cold or at room temperature. Makes enough for an 8x8 pan. ChubbyRats Banana Cake BEST EVER Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting #67256 This is one of,(if not) the BEST banana cake i have ever tasted! I thought the oven temp. of 275 sounded a little low,but this cake baked up(and rose) beautifully in my oven at this temp. after pretty much exactly one hour. I do not know if the little "freezer trick" to this recipe is what ensured its moistness or not,but i did it,and this cake was exceptionally moist & delicious. Would be interesting to see if it still came out as great if this step was skipped. All i know is that i followed this recipe EXACTLY as stated (except that i had no buttermilk, so i subbed with a mix of lemon juice & milk) and i got exceptional results. Depending on the amount of frosting you like you can decide whether to half the recipe or not. I used the full recipe and had some leftover. I sprinkled on the chopped walnuts and threw this baby in the fridge and cut it the next day...TO DIE FOR!I really liked it slightly chilled, but great at room temp. too! It got better each day it sat! I was extremely pleased with this cake and will be making it over & over again!! So glad i came across this one!!(on another website). 3/4 cup butter 2 1/8 cups sugar 3 eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla 3 cups flour 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups buttermilk 2 teaspoons lemon juice 1 1/2 cups mashed bananas Frosting 1/2 cup butter, softened 1 (8 ounces) package cream cheese, softened 3 1/2 cups icing sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla chopped walnuts Preheat oven to 275. Grease& flour a 9x13 pan. In a small bowl, mix mashed banana with the lemon juice, set aside. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda,& salt, set aside. In a large bowl, cream 3/4 cup butter& 2 1/8 cups sugar until light& fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then stir in 2 tsp. vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk. Stir in banana mixture. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake in preheated oven for one hour or until toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Remove from oven and place directly into the freezer for 45 minutes. This will make the cake very moist. For the frosting, cream the butter& cream cheese until smooth. Beat in 1 tsp. vanilla. Add icing sugar and beat on low speed until combined, then on high speed until frosting is smooth. Spread on cooled cake. Sprinkle chopped walnuts over top of the frosting, if desired. DELICIOUS!

basilcook, I guess it shows that taste really is objective, not subjective. My daughter HATES the LiveGfree pasta. The varieties available in my small town are LiveGfree, Barilla, Ronzoni, Ancient Harvest and a refrigerated type called Three Bridges, as well as the "store brand", called "True Goodness". That's pretty much like Barilla/Ronzoni, but more expensive. No one liked the Ancient Harvest stuff. Annie's has some box mixes, like mac and cheese, which we haven't tried. Tinkyada is only available on-line here, along with any brand of lasagna noodles. I am not celiac, nor gluten sensitive, but I'm not really a fan of pasta either. I can't tell the difference between the gluten free Barilla and the regular Barilla/Ronzoni/Muellers/Prince/etc. dried varieties unless it's overcooked, at which point it becomes a shapeless mass of mush. Annie