Wednesday, January 27, 2010

18-0

The Nebraska Women's Basketball team is 18-0 this season, which has never happened in the history of women's basket at UNL or the Big 12 Conference.

So, Mike and I went to their home game on Saturday with my grandpa. It was Pepsi Pack the house day, so general admission was $1 (We paid $7 to have reserved seats) and all pop at the game was a dollar. This meant there were a lot of people at the game about 13,300 (a new school record for women's basketball) and there were very long lines at the concession stand.

Our seats were really good, in row 13, a little to the right of the half court line.

We had to have the food staples of UNL athletics. A piece of Valentino's Pizza

and a Runza.

We played Kansas State and won by a good margin.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Mennonite Monday - Taco Salad

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.
~

This week, Taco Salad won the top spot in the Mennonite Monday poll. This is a salad that I have always liked. One change I would make to the recipe below is omit the beans and put cold spiral pasta in the salad. That is how I remember the salad from when I was younger and it is a personal preference because I don't care for beans. This recipe is found on page 166 of the white church cookbook.

Taco Salad
1 lb ground beef
1 envelope Lipton onion soup
1 medium, head lettuce, in bite-site pieces
1 small onion
1 package taco chips
1 can red kidney beans, drained
3/4 cup water
1 large tomato, diced
2 cups shredded cheese
Dorothy Lynch salad dressing

Brown the ground beef and the soup mix and simmer for 20 minutes. In a large bowl mix the other ingredients, except the taco chips. Add the ground beef and toss thoroughly. Place crushed taco chips on top. Then pour 1 small bottle of Dorothy Lynch salad dressing no top of this. Refrigerate and before serving toss again.

(Side note: I'm not sure what the 3/4 cup of water was for. I didn't use it)


Browning the hamburger and adding the onion soup.

Mixing the other ingredients.

All mixed together.

I crushed Doritos on top.

Pouring on Dorothy Lynch.

I would mix everything right before serving instead of letting it set in the refrigerator because the lettuce goes limp and the chips get soggy.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Muddy

Big piles of snow on the road turn into very muddy roads.

While the Tahoe is bad.
Mike's pickup is worse.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Mennonite Monday - Runzas

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.
~
This week Runzas were voted as the recipe I should make for Mennonite Monday. Over on the right side of my blog, you will see a spot where it says "What should I make for Mennonite Monday?" Each week there are four options. Place you vote every week and see if that is the recipe I make next week.

This recipe for Runzas is first recipe in the yellow church cookbook on page 62. There are several Runza recipes between the two cookbooks and they are all a little different. I hope to try one of the other recipes in the future to compare them.

Runzas


1/2 cup scalded milk
1/4 cup shortening
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup warm water
1 package or 2 tablespoons dry yeast
3 1/4 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Scald milk and mix with sugar, salt, and shortening. Add one cup four to milk, together with yeast and egg. Continue adding four. Let rise 1 hour.

Hamburger mixture:
Brown 1 1/2 pounds of hamburger and onion
Add:
1/2 head cabbage, chopped
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon oregano

Mix and simmer for 30 minutes. Roll out dough, cut in 4 inch squares. Put a spoon of meat mixture on the square, fold corners and pinch together. Turn over on pan with fold underneath. Bake 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes.

It didn't say to let the yeast set for 5 minutes in the warm water, but I did that because the new years cookie recipe had me do that with the yeast.

I was a little worried about scalding the milk. I had asked for advice a few weeks ago and all I could remember was something about bubbles around the edge of the pot. So I googled it. After skimming the information about scalding milk, I gathered that you need to stir and the milk should be around 185 degrees. So between looking for bubbles, stirring and measuring the temperature I think the milk was scalded.

Then I added the sugar, salt and shortening.

and mixed in the flour

I used the big mixer for the rest of the flour even though I could have done it by hand because the dough didn't get very tough.

I put my dough in a bowl and set it by our space heater for an hour so it could rise.

I made my Hamburger mixture ahead of time, so it could set in the refrigerator to cool. This way when you spoon the mixture onto the dough, the hamburger juices don't run all over.

For Christmas I received this nice pastry mat, so it was easy to make squares of dough. However we do like our Runzas a little bigger, so my square were 5-6 inches instead of 4.

We also like the middle to be full, so I used about two spoonfuls.




My first batch of Runzas were pretty brown after 20 minutes in the oven, so for the second batch (shown above) checked them pretty often after 15 minutes and took them out when I thought they were brown enough. So you may need to adjust the bake time according to your oven.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Snow Tunnel

Both of our road are finally open today:)

This is our road going south. It is pretty deep and very long, but it is hard to tell in this picture because everything is white. I haven't driven down this road yet, because they just opened it this morning, but it was deep from the last snow storm, so it will be worse now.

This is our road going north. I have seen one or two other drifts around town that are as deep as this, but I haven't seen any that are deeper.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Detour

For the last five days we have been taking a detour to get to our house through a cornfield.

This is where we turn off of the road into the cornfield (the opening to the right).

Our path was 3/4 mile into the cornfield up this hill.

It flattened off at the well (on the right) but this part was really bumpy, so you couldn't drive over 5 mph.

Then we passed from the driveway on our neighbors ground to the driveway by our field.

Made a right turn.

From here we angled 1/4 mile back towards the house.

It was a trek and added about 10 minutes of travel time to any trip we made.

Even though the snow stopped blowing on Friday, we still have a lot of digging out to do.

This drift is as hard as a rock.

This is where our road should be going south.

The road going north was blown shut going up the hill.

In anticipation of being able to use our driveway, when the road is opened and having corn hauled off of our yard by semi, we started salting the driveway on Saturday.


Today our road was opened to the north so we don't have to drive through the cornfield anymore, which makes us happy. We just hope our mail man will come tomorrow. It has been 7 days since we received any mail.

I will be posting pictures of the tunnel of snow we now drive through to get home shortly.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Mennonite Monday - Neighborhood Chocolate Chip Cookies

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.
~

This is one of the best chocolate chip cookie recipes that you will find if you want soft cookies. This recipe is from the yellow church cookbook on page 27. I really like this recipe because it makes a really big batch, so the cookies last a little bit longer than the normal size batch, plus they are very soft cookies.

Neighborhood Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cream together:
1 1/3 cup shortening
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup white sugar

Add:
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbl water

Stir well and add:
5 cups flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix well and add:
2 cups chocolate ships (or more)
1 cup nuts

Drop by teaspoon. Bake in 350 degree oven for 12-15 minutes.

Kelsey's Tip: Use butter flavored shortening. I'm not sure why, but it makes the cookies much better.

When you cream the first three ingredients together it looks like this.

Adding the next set of ingredients makes the consistency much smoother.

As you add the flour mixture it becomes much thicker.

I omit the nuts and only stir in the chocolate chips.

Kelsey's Tip: Refrigerate your dough overnight. This slows down the baking process making the cookies much softer. I don't really like crunchy cookies, but you can decide what you like better. If you bake them right away it will result in a fluffier dry cookie (not crunchy, just dry).

Also, this cookie dough is awesome if you eat it by the spoonful. Yes I know raw eggs are bad for you, but I haven't gotten sick from eating this dough yet and it tastes so good. I know you want to try it.

I always use my Pampered Chef medium cookie scoop and never use regular spoons. I just like how uniform they look when you use the scoop.

I made about 65 cookies from this batch, so you can feed a good group of people with these cookies. Or serve half right away and freeze the other half for a cookie emergency.