Fine Dining

This qualifies as fine dining. It may not look it to we humans. But 34 cows discovered that the grass really is greener on the other side of the road. (Or, in this case, the volunteer wheat is greener.)

The cows spent most of the summer at the Rattlesnake Pasture before the drought-stressed grasses forced us to move them home two months early. Since then, they had been in a dusty corral eating year-old baled CRP grass, with a little silage for dessert.

But as the volunteer wheat emerged, the guys fenced off the field. 

 And the cows arrived for a little fine dining.

Randy thinks they look happy. And since they've stayed within the confines of the electric fence, I'll take his word for it.

Cheeseburger Pie

Shhhh! Don't tell Randy, but sometimes having a guest for dinner motivates me to find something new to try. I just may get stuck in a rut from time to time. I have a "go-to" list of quick and easy meals that I can put together quickly, usually without pulling a cookbook from the shelf.

Now that I think about it, it's kind of counter-intuitive to make a guinea pig of your guest. But this Cheeseburger Pie didn't disappoint Randy or Jake, who ate with us at noon during wheat planting time as a time-saving measure. I used this recipe on a day when they came to the house to eat, but I think it could be transported to the field, too.

The recipe came from my Journey Toward Excellence: Skyline Schools 40th Anniversary 1967-2007 cookbook. Skyline is updating that cookbook with a new supplement with even more recipes. I'm looking forward to it because my alma mater has a bunch of good cooks. Thanks to Brenda Piester and her son, Andrew, for this yummy meal idea. Randy commented several times about how much he liked it. I think he'd like it added to the rotation! You will, too.

Crescent Cheeseburger Pie

1 lb. ground beef
1/2 cup chopped onion (opt.)
1 8-oz. can tomato sauce
1 4-oz. can chopped mushrooms, drained (opt.)
1/4 cup chopped parsley (or substitute dried parsley to taste)
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. dried oregano
1/8 tsp. pepper
2 pkgs. (8 rolls each) refrigerated crescent rolls
3 eggs
6 slices American cheese
1 tbsp. water

Brown the ground beef with onion until onion is transparent. Drain well. Stir in tomato sauce, mushrooms (if desired) and seasonings; set aside.

Unroll 1 package of rolls and separate dough into triangles. In lightly greased 9-inch pie plate, arrange triangles with pointed ends to the center and press edges together to fom a pie shell.

Separate 1 egg; beat together 2 whole eggs plus 1 white and pour half of the beaten egg mixture over pie shell. Spoon meat mixture into shell, and arrange cheese slices on top. Spread with remaining beaten egg.

Mix reserved egg yolk with water and set aside. Unroll second package of rolls. Take triangles and put points together. Press edges and perforations to form a circle to cover pie. (I put the dough between two sheets of waxed paper and used my rolling pin to get the dough to stick together. It wasn't perfect, but it helped.)

Place dough on top of filling. Trim, seal and flute edges. Cut slits in top crust.

 Brush top with egg yolk/water mixture.

Loosely cover edge with foil strips to prevent overbrowning. (I used pie shields.) Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, then cover the center of the pie loosely with foil and bake 20 minutes longer. Let stand 10 minutes before serving. Yield: 6 servings.

Notes:

•  I did not use the mushrooms. 
• You can substitute the sheets of crescent dough instead of putting together the crescent rolls to further simplify this recipe, but my small grocery store doesn't have that, so I used the crescent rolls and put them together as the original recipe indicated. 

Curves Ahead

A wheat crop can have as many twists and turns as the end of this field.

Farmers like their neat, straight rows. They may not admit it. But they do.

If "Fred" farms along a well-traveled road, he doesn't want "Harry" commenting at the coffee shop about his inferior planting skills based on irregular rows.

With today's GPS technology, maybe there isn't as much coffee shop talk about straight rows. Or the teased farmer can blame any perceived deficiencies on a technological breakdown. (Hey, anybody who has ever used technology will believe that claim. And, just for the record, we don't yet have GPS equipment on the County Line.)

But as I walked past a small lot planted to wheat last week and saw all the twists and turns at the end of the field, I thought it was a good analogy for a wheat crop anyway.

Our 2013 wheat crop is emerging. It got a good drink of water with anywhere from 0.80" to 1" of rain early Saturday morning. But there are a lot of calendar days between the late September-early October planting and next June's harvest.

There are sure to be plenty of twists and turns in the 9-month growing season.  Will we get the rain we need to break a two-year drought? Will there be a late freeze? There's more mystery there than in a bestselling thriller.

But, no matter the twists and turns, it's continues to be a miracle, no matter how many times you see it. 

Rock hard seeds no bigger than a freckle are tucked away an inch or two into the earth. It's nourished with a bit of moisture and fertilizer, and a tender plant sprouts. And it doesn't matter that the ground is a million times the weight of the seed. It still pushes its way toward the light and emerges from the ground in brilliant green.

And we pray the plants somehow survive and thrive despite drought and wind and disease to produce the crop that Kansas is famous for.

Let's hope the twists and turns of this just-begun story produce a happy ending come Harvest 2013.

Success Is Relative

from Google Images. No it's not a photo from our farm, but I could have had a leaping cow photo yesterday, minus the dolphin and the water. I was a little busy and didn't get the shot.

Our cattle working venture was a success yesterday. No one broke their wrist. No one had bruised ribs. No one broke their toe.

However, that's not to say that everything went perfectly smoothly as Dr. David Harder did pregnancy checks and vaccines on a small group of cows. Number 41 decided to try out for the high jump team and hurdled the wooden boards in the lane instead of patiently waiting for her turn with the veterinarian. I know that ob/gyn appointments aren't a favorite, but that was a little extreme.

I wasn't fast enough to get the right gate shut to prevent her escape into the next pen. See how quickly you think with 1,200 pounds of cow racing toward you. Remember? The goal was to keep all important parts of the body intact and in working order. So I let her go.

But we rounded her up again. During the rodeo, I told Dr. Harder that it would be OK with me if Number 41 was not in the family way. If she wasn't, she would be on her way to the sale barn.

Nope. Not that lucky. She was 5 months along.

"She's a champion," Dr. Harder said with only a touch of sarcasm.

We aren't intentionally breeding cattle with Olympic high jump aspirations. That's not a genetic trait we are looking to perpetuate. 

For the record, this is not No. 41. It does, however, demonstrate the pregnancy checking process.

We left the bull for last. He wasn't thrilled to be visiting the doctor either. I must admit I'm a little more cautious after Randy's run-in four weeks ago. That purple cast might as well be a flashing neon sign to say, "Proceed with caution. This could be you."

Mr. Bull got his front legs over a higher barrier in the catch pen. I heard a crack as 1,800 pounds of bull leaned on the old wood. But it held. Dr. Harder and his assistant waved their arms and the bull decided to come down from his high horse and go down the lane.

You'll just have to take my word for it. While I'm never without my camera, it stayed in my fanny pack most of the morning. A rodeo is no place for a camera. That's especially true when one tried-and-true member of the crew isn't there. Randy was baling. With his right arm in a cast, he couldn't do his customary job running the chute anyway. So it was Jake, me, Dr. Harder and his assistant. The vet team did their normal jobs. Jake and I adjusted to the new game plan.

And no one ended up in the emergency room.  Success is relative.

Wicked Good Treats

I know homemade Halloween goodies are frowned upon in most circles. Was the whole razor-blade-in-the-apple story fact or urban legend? Or was it "leaked" from a candy company who wanted to sell more hermetically-sealed mini treats during the Halloween rush?

It's not like I get any Halloween visitors anyway. If I bought a bag of candy, it would just sit there tempting Randy and me. So, on the off-chance I have a Halloween visitor or two, I just might wrap up a homemade treat. (Yes, those kind of treats sit around tempting Randy and me, too. Let's not get hung up on that, OK?)

Since we live 11 miles or so from town, we don't get much Halloween foot traffic. My neighbor trick-or-treaters are now in high school, and we haven't had any little ghosts or goblins stopping by for years.

But, on the off chance that someone drops by, I just might have a homemade treat. Back in my Halloween excursions trick or treating for UNICEF, my favorite treat was a homemade popcorn ball from my Grandma Neelly. Homemade treats weren't out of the ordinary back then. (No, I wasn't of the generation that walked to school 3 miles one way through snow, but it's starting to sound like it, isn't it?)

I promise I'll label any homemade Halloween treats with my name and phone number. These bars aren't wicked. Then again, maybe they are, if you're counting calories. 

Or save the recipe for a holiday cookie tray. As a bar cookie, they go together quickly. And you can leave them as plain as an uninspired middle school trick-or-treater who's just in it for the candy. Or fancy them up like that little girl in full princess regalia, complete with high heels (who just might swear that she'll never wear high heels again. I speak from experience).

These freeze well. So you can make them now and pull them out for trick or treating or Thanksgiving guests. Enjoy!

Brown Sugar Toffee Bars

Adapted from Cookies and Cups blog

1 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tbsp. vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
1 8-oz. bag toffee bits (can use plain or milk-chocolate coated)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9- by 13-inch pan with cooking spray. Cream butter and brown sugar together about 2 minutes on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add in eggs and vanilla; continuing to mix until well incorporated. Mix together dry ingredients. Turn mixer to low and add in dry ingredients, mixing just until incorporated. Stir in toffee bits until evenly combined.

Spread batter in prepared pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden and center is just set. Don't overbake. Cool on wire rack. Cut into squares when ready to serve.

If you'd like to dress up these bars for a cookie tray or for a special treat, you can add a glaze (see photo at the top of this post).

Combine:
2 tbsp. butter, melted
2 tbsp. Biscoff spread (You can find it in the peanut butter aisle)
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp. milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Combine all ingredients until well blended. Add a little more milk or powdered sugar to make it the desired glaze consistency. Spread over cooled bars and immediately sprinkle with additional toffee bits. Let glaze set before cutting into squares to serve.

If you don't have Biscoff spread (I just bought my first jar after reading about it on other blogs), you can increase the butter.

Consider the Wildflowers

Yellow splashes the fields of CRP grasses as the summer turns to fall. It's as if the color of sunrise has been leached from morning skies to brighten even an overcast day through smidgens of bright yellow on Earth's palette.  The goldenrod is not alone in its exuberance. The sunflowers in all their variations join in the
symphony of color. 

The goldenrod is beautiful, even at a distance. But a closer look reveals that the blooms are exquisitely detailed in miniature.

It's as if you could play the old children's game, "He loves me, he loves me not" with the petals, though they aren't much larger than the head of a pin.

Like fingerprints and snowflakes, not one is exactly the same. Each is exquisitely detailed. And I realize that, yes, He loves me.

I know the familiar "Consider how the lilies grow" passage from Matthew. But I decided to look at it in The Message:  

Matthew 6: 30-34, The Message

^30-33 “If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
³⁴ “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Thankful today for the lessons all around me. They are lessons I need to remember. It's just more pleasant to contemplate when they come in yellow and purple.

Deja Vu, All Over Again

It was deja vu all over again for this Grandma. Kinley is quite the little kitchen helper.

She will even attempt to climb into the dishwasher to complete her unloading duties.

The dishwasher and kitchen cabinets provide a never-ending supply of diversions while Mom is cooking dinner. Who needs toys when you can crinkle the purple plastic covering the formula scoop then put it in a basket conveniently found in the cabinet?

It sent me in search of photos of another little girl who used to like to play in her Grandma Marie's kitchen cabinets.

And believe it or not ...

... I found them. Jill was closer to 15 months in these cabinet photos.

So I also had to find one that showed her at about 9 months old, Kinley's current age. I think this one of Jill was after a spaghetti meal. Kinley found out that she liked lasagna last week, so I guess they have more in common than their big blue eyes. Italian food is tasty, mother and daughter agree.

Jill - 9 months

Who can resist those eyes? Not me!

Kinley - 9 months

I had a few other favorite snapshots from the weekend.

Once she tired of the dishwasher, Kinley had to check out what was happening in the backyard while she waited on her Sunday morning pancakes before church.

She will be ready to play outside with this cute hat crafted by Eric's cousin, Jana. The trick will be keeping it on her head.

I have some cute photos of Kinley in her Halloween costume, but they have been embargoed until October 31st, Mommy's orders!