It's that time of year again

I bet you thought this was going to be a Christmas post...

Well, even though I spent the weekend decorating for Christmas and baking Christmas cookies, I thought I would first post about ways I can tell it is time to get ready for Christmas.

 The "drift" of corn leaves is as high as a snow drift should be in front of our shed. 

 Mikes hunting trophy is on display on our radio tower. You can compare the rack to last years deer displayed below. (I'm sorry to any animal lovers out there that you had to see this, but it is a truth of the farm)

 My fall display has dried up and is ready to be thrown away.  

Ironically, my mums stopped growing while a gourd displayed in a glass jar on my dining room table decided to start growing.  

I guess it is time to move on to the next season because fall has decided to be done at my house.   

I did it

I completed my first race and boy can I pick them.  This morning Mike and I decided to participate in a 4 mile (according to GPS it was only 3.78 miles) trail run race at Quarry Oaks Golf Course near Ashland Nebraska.  While the overall experience was fun and I trained well for that distance, I did not train well for the hills this course contained.  Mike and I decided there was less than a 1/4 of a mile that was flat the rest of the race was either up or down.  Mike decided to run the race "for fun" and ran my pace, which was really nice because I would have ran much slower and probably would have walked if it wasn't for him.  I may have uttered the words "I can't" at one point, but we kept going and made it the entire way.  The craziest part was running through ankle deep water twice about one mile from the end and having to finish with wet socks and shoes.

The good news is we both had smiles at the end of the race and both felt it was a good experience. It would have been smarter to choose an easier race for my first time out, but all and all I'm happy with my time and am pretty sure I gave it everything I had.  If I run this race again next year I will definitely run more hills that are steeper for my preparation.  

Lately

As you can tell, lately I haven't been posting as much.  While some people have a break over the summer and are able to post more on their blogs, my summers are usually the opposite until Community Days is over.  So here is a run down of what we have been doing lately.

• Irrigating (or as Mike likes to call it, irritating)
• Henderson Farmers Market
• Adult swim over the noon hours
• Sunday afternoon naps
• Mod Reunion in  Oklahoma
• House warming party
• Stockham 4th of July celebration
• Hosts at a wedding
• Church meetings
• Visiting friends 
• Wednesday night wings 
• Trips to Sweet Treat
• Gardening
• Pulling weeds (yes there were so many it deserves its own bullet point)
• Hosting friends 
• Grilling
• Sitting by a fire pit 

Our summer has included alot of other activities as well, but these are some of the bigger and more consistent events. 

With that said, our summer meals consist of BLT Sandwiches, watermelon, cucumbers, and corn on the cob, so my cooking especially from the church cookbooks has been rather lacking.  However, I do intend to start cooking more again, so Mennonite Monday will return even though it has been a little sporadic this summer.  

It is a bird, its a plane, its actually a plane

 This time of year, there are a lot of planes flying around the country side spraying fields.  One evening I was in the garden pulling weeds (the only thing I have "harvested" from my garden) and noticed that a plane was starting to spray the field around our house.

For those of you who have never experienced this, I will let you know that this is very loud.  I thought about going inside to wait for them to be done, but decided it would be fun to catch some pictures instead.

 One thing that makes the spraying so interesting is how low to the ground the plane gets.

 It makes sense that they stay so low because they want the spray to go into the corn and not up in the air, but it is amazing how they barely rise up to go over the yard.  The picture above isn't very good, but you can see the plane is well below the top of the shed as it goes over the corn.

 It almost skimmed the top of the shop door as it flew over our yard.

 And it just missed the wire running from our barn to the light pole.

 It is really pretty amazing to watch these planes fly, if you can get past the sound they make.

Mennonite Monday - Cinnamon Rolls-Big and Soft

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.

~

I finally have my cookbook back, so I have the long overdue recipe for Cinnamon Rolls-Big and Soft (pg 23W) for Mennonite Monday.  

Cinnamon Rolls Big and Soft

1 1/2 cups scalded milk

1 stick margarine

2/3 cups sugar

1 cup cold water

3 pkg yeast

3 eggs, well beaten

2 tsp salt

7 cups flour

Scald milk and melt margarine in milk.  Add sugar and cold water.  Mixture should be lukewarm, Add yeast, stir well and let stand 15 minutes or until it bubbles.  Add beaten eggs, salt and flour.  Dough should be firm, you do not knead this.  Stir well.  Let rise one hour.

Filling: 

1 stick margarine

2 tsp cinnamon

1 cup sugar

raisins - optionals

Roll out dough and spread with softened margarine, then sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and raisins.  Roll up.  Divide into fourths.  Make 6 rolls from each fourth.  Put onto greases pan.  Dip hand in flour and smash down.  Let rise one hour. Bake 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees.  Cool. 

Frosting: 

1/2 cup water

1/4 stick margarine

1 tsp vanilla

powdered sugar

Simmer water and margarine.  Add sifted powdered sugar to make firm frosting.  

 Scalded milk 

 Adding margarine. 

Adding the Yeast

Beating the eggs

Adding salt to the flour to mix before adding it to the rest of the ingredients.

Adding the bubbly yeast mixture to my bowl.

Mixing in the flour.

The dough almost completely mixed together.

Before the dough had time to rise.

I still put the dough infront of the heater when it isn't very hot in the house

After rising for an hour

Rolling out the dough. It was nice to use my pampered chef mat, but I forgot to flour it, which made it harder to roll. 

Adding sugar for the filling.

Ready to roll with butter, sugar and cinnamon.  I skipped the raisins.

I had to deal with the dough sticking alot since I didn't flour the mat, but after some work I got it rolled.

The dough does expand when you start rolling, so you will need a large space for this part.

I cut my cinnamon rolls with a knife, but I have heard that people use unscented floss, but I didn't have any on hand, so I didn't try that route.

Before the rolls have time to rise they look a little rough.

Pushing them down with flour before letting them rise for an hour.

After baking. 

Water and margarine for the frosting.

Adding vanilla

Adding powdered sugar.  You will need a good amount of powdered sugar.

Once the frosting was thickened.

Fresh cinnamon rolls with a lot of frosting.

In my experience, making cinnamon rolls was not very hard, however it is a long process with letting the dough rise twice. If I were going to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast, I would start the process the night before. 

Henderson Night at the Saltdogs

Sunday evening we had Henderson night at the Lincoln Saltdogs games.  It was a great evening for baseball and a fun little community event.  Here are some of the pictures from our evening.

 Ava Tessman was the Mini Manager, so she hung out with the team before the game and they signed her baseball. 

 Steve Michel threw out the first pitch.  

 This wasn't your normal lob pass, he threw a fast ball that was a strike. 

 The Saltdogs coach talking with A*MEN before the national anthem. 

 The team lined up.

 A*MEN singing the National Anthem.  They did a great job. 

 Ava saying "Play Ball"

Homer liked giving Kellen a hard time before the game.  

Homer at the Farmers Market

Don't miss the Henderson Farmers Market tomorrow night, June14,  and bring your kids to meet Homer the Haymarket Hound Dog.  He will be hanging out at the Henderson Farmers Market promoting the upcoming Henderson Community night at the Lincoln Saltdogs Games on Fathers Day, June 19.

Don't miss the opportunity to meet this mascot up and personal on Tuesday, June 14, from 5-7 p.m. in at the Henderson Farmers Market in the Downtown Park.  

Oops

I wanted to post the recipe for Big and Soft Cinnamon Rolls for Mennonite Monday today, but I don't have my cookbooks, so I have no way of typing out the recipe.  In an effort to work on the Bethesda Preschool cookbook, which has over 100 dessert recipes, I let someone else use my cookbooks so I can't post my recipe today, but it will be coming soon.

Be sure to check back Wednesday for things I liked in May.

I Need Your Recipes

The Bethesda Preschool is creating a cookbook and we need your favorite recipes. In order to create the best cookbook possible, we need as many recipes as we can get to meet our goal of 500 recipes for the cookbook.

If you have a favorite recipe that you would like to share, here are a few ways you can submit them through my blog.

1) Send me an email with your favorite recipes at kelsey12184@hotmail.com

2) Leave a comment on this blog post with your recipe.  Type out the full recipe and put your name (so I know who it is submitted by) or if you are suggesting a recipe from either the white or yellow Bethesda Church Cookbook, leave a comment with the recipe name, page number and which cookbook it is found in.

3) Use the following Linky tool by posting your favorite recipe (or linking to a recipe you have already posted) on your blog and then linking it back to my blog below.  Be sure to include a link to this post so others can view the recipes and include their own.

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.

~

With Mike training for a half marathon, I have kept a large number of bananas on hand, but the problem is that once in a while you can't eat them fast enough before they go bad.  I decided to use the opportunity to make Banana Bread (pg 28W).  This was a great quick recipe that created three small loaves of bread. 

Banana Bread

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

2 cup flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup milk

1 cup chopped nuts

3 bananas, mashed

Cream together shortening and sugar.  Add eggs on at a time.  Add flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla and milk.  Mix thoroughly.  Add nuts and bananas.  Pour into 3 small prepared bread pans.  Bake at 350* for 30 minutes.  

 Unfortunately these pictures aren't very exciting because all the ingredients are about the same color, but you can at least see the texture change.  This is the shortening and sugar. 

 After adding the egg. 

 Adding the flour. 

 Adding the powder, salt and vanilla. 

 Milk. 

 My mashed bananas.  I did not put nuts in my bread because I didn't have any on hand, but I was thinking it would have been nice to add nuts to one or two of the loaves. 

 Mixed and in the pans.  I only had two pans so I had to wait to make the third loaf until these were done. 

The final product. It was amazing how fast these loaves disappeared.   One we gave as a thank you to someone for tilling our garden, and the other two went to coffee with Mike.