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. 

1:37.03

Mike finished his first half marathon, which is 13.1 miles, today in 1 hour 37 minutes and 3 seconds. He ran the Lincoln Half Marathon with 8,000 people and an additional 2,000 people who went on to run the full marathon.  It was a crazy experience for him, as the runner, and me, as a spectator, with that many people participating.

For as many events as I run, it was amazing to see how organized this event was considering the number of people running, let alone the volunteers along the course, and the timing of events.  It is also amazing that 10,000 are willing to run 13.1 or 26.2 miles.

Here is my perspective of the day (2 hours).

Mike actually saw a girl from Henderson in his same starting group so he was able to run the first half of the race with her.  (She was not the lady wrapped like a baked potato)

Mike decided to run with the 1:40 group(those planning to finish the race in 1 hour and 40 minutes), so he was lucky enough to be in the first wave of people to cross the start line.  When you have 10,000 running it takes a long time to start, so some people didn't even cross the start line until 30 minutes after the canon started. 

 When the race started the whole group started moving at once in the first wave of people, but when I walked farther back towards the slower groups, I saw long lines of runners waiting for the bathroom because they wouldn't start running for another 10-15 minutes as the large group in front of them filtered through the starting gate. 

 In a matter of seconds it was almost impossible to see Mike with thousands of people filling in behind him. 

 This is the group of people in the 8 minute mile group waiting to start. 

 People waiting for the crowd to move even though the race has already started. 

 10,000 runners is a lot of people. 

During the race I walked downtown to get something to drink to warmup.  Some people try to go to different points in the race to cheer on their runners, but I was worried that I would miss seeing Mike cross the finish line, so I headed straight to Memorial Stadium to wait for him to finish.  

 On the big screen, they had a camera view of runners entering Stadium Drive, when they were close to the finish, which was nice because I could see Mike a head of time and knew I wouldn't miss seeing him finish. 

 At this point in the race the crowd of runners was fairly thin, after about 20 minutes this stretch was at least twice as full as this. 

 Mike entering the stadium in the back to the right. 

 Finishing strong. 

 Crossing the finish line.  While the clock above Mike says 1:38.25 that is the time from when the canon went off, since Mike didn't cross the start line until almost a minute later, his time was fast than the time shown here. 

The Cosmo

I'm interrupting this "Mennonite Monday" because I keep forgetting my camera at work which has my Mennonite Monday pictures on it I need to finally post the pictures of our hotel in Vegas, since that trip was over a month ago.   

 We had an amazing room at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.  This hotel opened in December and was very modern.  One of my favorite things was when you walked in there was a button that said "Hello" when you pressed it all the lights came on.  The other button was "Goodbye" when you pressed it, all the lights dimmed until it was dark.  

The above picture was the sitting area when you entered our room. 

 This was the desk and TV in the sitting area. 

 Across from the TV/Desk. 

 The bedroom. 

 Across from the bed.  To the left you see a window into the bathroom. 

 The bathroom

 The walk in shower

 The bathtub 

We had a little balcony, which was nice.  It didn't face the strip, but we could see a lot of people in the adjacent hotel rooms getting ready for bed. Which provided some free entertainment.

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Every week I plan to do a better job of blogging and every week life gets in the way.  Hopefully this week I can actually do a better job of posting more than once.  

Mennonite Monday - Breakfast Bundt Cake

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 I needed a coffee cake to take to a morning meeting, so I used this opportunity to make the Breakfast Bundt Cake (pg 59 W).  It was a great recipe that went together quickly and was very moist.  

Breakfast Bundt Cake 

1 pkg yellow cake mix

1 pkg vanilla instant pudding

3/4 cup corn oil

3/4 cup water

4 med. or 3 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla

 1/2 cup chopped nuts

2 Tbl sugar

2 Tbl cinnamon

Grease bundt pan. Mix nuts, sugar and cinnamon.  Combine cake mix, pudding mix, oil and water.  Mix well.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each egg.  Beat 6-8 minutes on high speed.  Layer batter and cinnamon mixture, starting and ending with batter.  Bake at 350* for 45 minutes.  Cool in pan for 8 minutes remove and glaze with the following: 

 1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp oleo

1 Tbl milk 

1/2 tsp vanilla

 I started out by mixing this in a bowl and then I realized that I was going to need to beat the mixture for 6-8 minutes, so I decided to switch to the mixer. 

 The batter was really smooth, which I would not have been able to do by hand. 

 The recipe never stated when to add the vanilla, so I added it after the eggs.  

 Fully mixed batter. 

 I used the Pam for baking, which was a great product for this type of baking. 

 The cinnamon, sugar, nut mixture went much further than I thought it would. 

 After baking. 

 Following the flip.  I had no problems with the cake sticking to the pan.  

 I mixed the frosting the night before, so all I needed to do in the morning was pour it on. 

 The final product. 

The layers of cinnamon, sugar and nuts made a nice swirl in the cake.  

Mennonite Monday - Chuck Wagon Burgers

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 I decided to pick a main dish that would go together quickly, so I decided on Chuck Wagon Burgers (pg 168W).  They were a nice change up from sloppy joes, as so known as bbq sandwiches, because they had a different flavor but are the same concept.  

Chuck Wagon Burgers

1 lb hamburger, browned

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/3 cup chopped green pepper

1/4 tsp chili powder

2 tsp worcestershire sauce

1/4 tsp pepper

3 Tbl flour

1 tsp salt 

2/3 cup ketchup

1 cup 7-up

After the hamburger is browned add the onion and pepper and then the remaining ingredients and cook for another 5-10 min.  Serve on hamburger buns.  

 Mike and I had been out of ground beef for a few months and we just go a half of a beef and it is so nice to have ground hamburger again.  

 I skipped the chopped onion and green pepper and just added minced dried onion. 

 Browned and ready to go. 

 Adding chili powder

 worcestershire sauce

 flour, pepper and salt 

 ketchup 

 7-up

 Mixed up and ready

We added some melted cheese to our sandwich, which was a good combination.