Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars: A Classic Combo

Love and marriage.
Fred and Ginger. (Brad and Angelina just doesn't have the same ring.)
Pumpkins and fall.
Chocolate and peanut butter.
Some things just go together.

Randy would probably disagree. Peanut butter isn't his favorite. He's never going to choose to eat a peanut butter sandwich or smear peanut butter on a banana. But he will tolerate it in a cookie or quick bread. That's why I usually save the recipes with peanut butter for those times when I'm making a recipe to take somewhere else.

Jill sent me this recipe from a potluck at her work quite awhile ago.  I stirred up the recipe and took a plateful (along with barbecue meatballs) to a family who had gathered to say goodbye to their wife, mom and grandma.

The recipe is definitely going in the save pile.  The creamy peanut butter/sweetened condensed layer provided a burst of extra flavor.

Surely the oatmeal gives it a few redeeming qualities. I can always hope, right? Even Randy thought they were pretty good ... for peanut butter.

If you want to dress them up for a party or make them prettier for a cookie tray assortment, you could substitute mini M & Ms for the chocolate chips. Enjoy!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

2 cups quick-cooking oats
1 3/4 cups light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup butter
1/2 cup chopped peanuts
1 large egg, beaten
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine oats, brown sugar, flour, baking powder and baking soda in large bowl. Cut in butter with pastry blender until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in peanuts. Reserve 1 1/2 cups crumb mixture; set aside.

To the remaining crumbs, add beaten egg, mixing well. Press into bottom of a 13- by 9-inch baking pan. Bake 15 minutes.

Stir together sweetened condensed milk and peanut butter in small bowl until well combined. Pour evenly over partially-baked crust.

Stir together reserved crumb mixture and chocolate chips. Sprinkle evenly over peanut butter layer. Bake an additional 15 minutes. Cool. Cut into bars.

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Today, I am linked to Wake Up Wednesday, a feature co-hosted by Wichita blogger and fellow K-Stater Ashley. Check out what's cooking by clicking on the link.

Kinley K-Stater: A First-Person Report

Hello, all! It's Kinley with a report from my first K-State football game of the 2013 season.

We had to park a long way from Bill Snyder Family Stadium. The parking lot reminded me of Grandpa's pasture, even though there were no cows. Thankfully, my Mommy and Daddy didn't make me walk the whole way. But once we got to the parking lot, I gave them a break. 

I kept getting distracted by all the kids playing football. Hey, guys! Don't you know that there's going to be a game inside the stadium?

We got there just in time for the pregame show. My family knows all the words to the K-State Fight Song and the Alma Mater. I'm still working on them. Itsy Bitsy Spider, anyone?

Then it was time for Willie the Wildcat to lead the football players onto the field.

They came down to the south end zone where I was sitting. Everybody seemed really excited to see them.

Then I saw one guy carrying a flag with a K on it. Was it for me, Kinley? My Mommy said it was for K-State, but I think maybe they were welcoming me to Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

 

My Grandma wanted to take my picture. She is always wanting to take my picture. Not now, Grandma! I'm watching the game!

While those boys were out there running around, I got a little hungry. Shhhh! We weren't supposed to bring in cereal. Maybe they thought the people around me would be jealous. I would have shared. If only they would have shared their purple popcorn with me. Mommy said I couldn't have any this time. (Something about a choking hazard. I wouldn't want that!)

And here's another "Shhhh!!!" Don't tell my Uncle Brent that I was too busy drinking water to join everybody in saying, "Good for a K-State TOUCHDOWN!" He would be SO disappointed. (But he knows I can do it. I've showed him on Skype.) And even though I missed it that time, I did it when the Wildcats scored another touchdown. Really, Uncle Brent!

I liked finding all the Wildcats at the stadium. There was one on my chairback. Mommy had a Powercat on her shirt. So did Grandma. And I had one, too. Poor Daddy. His shirt was defective. It didn't have a Powercat. It was the right color, though. I got an A+ on colors at daycare last week, so I know all about purple. There sure was a lot of it at that ballgame!

As exciting as the game was, I probably liked the halftime show the best. It was Band Day, so the football field was full of kids playing their instruments. Every time they would quit playing, I would tell them, "More! More!"

I was sorry that Grandpa Fritzemeier had to stay home and cut corn, but I used his seat. Thanks Grandpa!

Last year, Grandpa taught me about "Good for a Wildcat FIRST DOWN!" So I knew what to do this year.

September 2012

I think I've grown quite a bit since then.

Grandma Fritzemeier and I cheered the Wildcats on to victory. We beat the University of Massachusetts 37-7! Good job, Wildcats!

I also got to see Grandma Christy and Grandpa Alan at the game. It may be Bill Snyder's family stadium, but I have a lot of family there, too.  It was so crowded that I didn't get to see them all. Maybe next time!

Until then, this has been your Wildcat sideline reporter, Kinley Marie.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone,

 but also on trees,

 and in the flowers and clouds and stars. 

 ~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Martin Luther

A full rainbow welcomed me home. What a beautiful greeting!

I spent the weekend with Eric, Jill and Kinley, along with some 50,000-plus "family" members at the K-State game. (More on that later.)

We only got 0.35" of rain, but it came with a beautiful rainbow. I drove through a heavy storm from Hutchinson to some 10 miles from home. (Of course, Hutchinson got more rain. It was the final day of the Kansas State Fair!) We could have used a little more rain, but the shower will help incorporate the fertilizer Randy had the co-op apply to prepare the ground for wheat planting in a couple of weeks. 

I felt a little guilty leaving Randy behind to work. But I guess I didn't feel guilty enough to stay home and miss Kinley's first K-State ballgame of the year.

While I delivered him to his pickup to move it back home, we saw a full rainbow. What a weekend ... family, football and rainbows. I am blessed!

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes. 

 ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Backyard Beauties

This is my favorite little blue-eyed toddler.

 

 But we have another blue-eyed beauty in the backyard.

The County Line's typical cat population looks more like common barnyard kitten than Siamese. So we're not too sure how this exotic-looking kitten came from our run-of-the-mill cats. She has me singing Crystal Gayle's "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" to myself every time I see her.

One of her litter mates is this black and white cutie, whom we call Boots.

Awhile ago, a big black and white tomcat showed up and started sharing vittles with our cats.

He has apparently now shared a little more than that. He is getting braver. But he still won't let Randy get too close. However, Randy is diligently working on taming his cute little offspring. The shy tomcat has definitely added some diversity to the cat population at the County Line through this latest litter of kittens.

Their other litter mate looks more like their Mom, a calico beauty.

Genetics is a curious business, isn't it? 

Three little kittens
Give us the dickens
In figuring out their "lines"
A calico mama
A black and white papa
The results are quite divine!

(Now you know why I write prose and not poetry. Dr. Seuss, I am not. I could say that I will award a cat to the person who writes the best poem. Any takers? However, I will have to clear the "trophy cat" with the resident cat wrangler.)

Ballet for the Bovines

Click on the photo for a closer look at the "choreography."

It might not be Swan Lake, but there's some fancy choreography in this Ballet for the Bovines. A bright morning sun lit the scene instead of a stage's spotlights. Rather than tiny, light-footed ballerinas in a choreographed dance, three mammoth tractors lumbered in pirouetting perfection. Two rainbows of gold provided the special effects. The audience included several thousand bovines who just might have been licking their lips in anticipation of a visit to the "concession stand" at intermission.

Last week, we hauled several loads of higher-moisture corn to the Haw Ranch Feedlot near Turon. While traditional co-op elevators want moisture content at around 16 or below, the feedlot wanted grain at 24 to 32 percent moisture.

In fact, if the corn was too dry, you got docked. If the moisture dropped below 24 percent, there was a 1.2 percent per point dockage. If it was too wet (above 32), the shrinkage was 1.5 percent per point.

The feedlot is around 15 miles from our farm. When we got to the feedlot, Randy unrolled the tarp covering the truck bed. 

Meanwhile, cowboys had herded some cattle onto the scales, weighing them to determine weight gains after a few weeks of dining on crabgrass pastures. Cowboys and cattle aren't usually part of the scenery when we take a trip to the co-op elevator.

After a moisture test at the scale house, Randy dumped the corn right on to a cement pad. Almost as soon as it was dumped, a big front loader came and pushed the corn into a pile.

Then, they used another front loader to scoop corn into the grinders.

There, the corn was broken down into cattle feed. Augers shot the ground corn into the silo, where the three big John Deere tractors pushed and packed it tight. 

I was glad I went along for the ride when I did because we didn't have to wait very long. Later in the day, Randy was in a line with 30 trucks, mostly semis, waiting to dump. We don't have a semi, so he decided we would quit hauling to the feedlot because of the distance and the downtime.

The big equipment and crew travel from feedlot to feedlot during corn harvest, putting up the corn into silos. The Haw Ranch Feedlot planned to take in approximately 800,000 bushels of higher-moisture corn in about one week's time. In addition, some area farmers sold corn silage to the feedlot. All will be used to feed cattle there at the feedlot, which has a 50,000-head capacity.

 

Ours was not a starring role in the Ballet for the Bovines, but everyone knows that those "bit parts" are important to the overall big picture.

View From the Combine Cab

"Thumping" is not usually a sound a Kansas wheat farmer wants to hear in the combine cab. Too often, it signals a malfunction of the mammoth machine that will likely result in costly repairs and downtime.

But, we Kansas wheat farmers on the County Line are discovering that corn harvest is a bit different. The thump, thump, thump as corn cobs enter the machine is just business as usual.

The quality of this photo isn't the best. It's not easy to take a photo of moving parts. Still, maybe it can give you the idea of what's happening!

This is the first time we've raised corn in our 32 years of farming together. In recent years, there has been some dryland corn planted in our area, but wheat is still the dominate crop around here. For most in this immediate area, irrigation is not an option. Our proximity to Quivira National Wildlife Refuge and its salt marshes is not ideal for quality ground water for irrigation.

This year, instead of planting milo as our row crop, we planted corn. There's a potential for higher yields, and there is more drought tolerance built into dryland corn seeds than previously available.  Additionally, corn is Round-Up ready, and milo is not. We have been having trouble controlling weeds in milo. If there are weeds and grasses in the corn, we can spray with Round-Up without harming the growing plants. 

Generous summer rains have helped us find some measure of success in our maiden voyage as corn farmers. However, extreme heat during pollination has reduced yields in some fields.

There is a learning curve for we new corn farmers. Randy is getting used to running our new corn head, which looks kind of like it has eight missiles attached to the front. He runs each missile-shaped attachment between the rows. The combine strips the corn cobs from the corn stalk, then the cobs are run through the machine.

Randy's reflection in the back window of the combine cab, with corn being deposited in the grain bin on the combine.

The cobs and stalks end up behind the machine. And the golden corn is augered up into the bin.

 Then, Randy offloads it into the grain truck, so that it can be hauled to market.

 

That's the process - theoretically, anyway. However, cutting a different crop means some tinkering with the combine to make sure the grain is getting separated from the stalk and cob, so Randy checks what's left behind the combine and makes adjustments as needed.

Last week, we cut higher moisture corn to take to the Haw Ranch Feedlot near Turon. They want the corn with a moisture percentage between 24 to 32 percent. They then grind the corn into cattle feed. (More on that process tomorrow.)

 

Our local cooperative elevator wanted moisture percentages at 16 or lower.  We hauled several loads to the Turon feed lot Tuesday and Wednesday. However, last Wednesday afternoon, Randy sat in a line of more than 30 trucks, waiting to dump. Since we don't have a semi truck for hauling, he decided that it was no longer worth the time or money to haul 20 miles away and have that much downtime.

On Monday, it had dried down enough to haul to Zenith, so Randy & Jake are back in business and cutting corn. 

Tomorrow - Hauling corn to the feedlot - a new adventure!

If We Are the Body

Maybe, just maybe, the essence of God smells a little like the orange fragrance of Murphy Oil Soap.

In August, I was my church's lay delegate to the Unifying Conference for the Great Plains Conference of the United Methodist Church. It was the final process for joining the Kansas East, Kansas West and Nebraska conferences into one Great Plains Conference as of January 1. We slogged our way through 154 pages of a Plan of Organization. Who knew that the kind of insulation used or the number of GFI outlets available in parsonages would spark such debate? (Not me! I didn't even know what a GFI outlet was until I got there!)

But, tucked in the minutia of parliamentary procedural amendments and votes, the 1,700 conference delegates had the opportunity to Serve Salina. More than 1,000 of us accepted the challenge. Projects included yard and groundwork, minor home repairs, helping the elderly or disabled, sorting food and supplies at pantries and working with children. In all, volunteers completed 50 service projects for individuals, families and nonprofit organizations throughout Salina.

I was among those sent to the Saline County Commission on Aging, which occupies the 103-year-old former Saline County Courthouse. It has soaring ceilings and rich wood trims surrounding beveled glass windows and marble walls. The county allows the Commission on Aging to use the building for a nomimal charge, but they don't have the staff to do deep cleaning projects. They are too busy making a difference in the lives of the aging in the county through program like Meals on Wheels, the Older Kansans Employment Program or Live At Home Solutions.

So there we were - armed with rags and Windex and Murphy Oil Soap - and bolstered by a common cause. Our Serve Salina t-shirts got a little sweaty as we got on our hands and knees or climbed ladders to clean - me a lay delegate from a farm in South Central Kansas and another woman from metropolitan Lincoln. There were pastors who serve the big congregations of Wichita and some who preach at three little churches in rural Nebraska each Sunday morning. Big or small, laity or preacher - we were all trying to make a difference in some small way. 

As I started at the bottom of a wrought iron stair rail and worked up and a lady from Agra started at the top and worked down, I was struck by the symbolism. We could have sat in the air-conditioned Salina Bicentennial Center and stuck to the business of approving mission statements and vision statements. But what's the use of a mission statement without some hands and feet to put them into action? That would be about as effective as hanging a rag over a staircase and hoping it would miraculously get dusted. 

Saline County Commission on Aging and related programs, whose offices occupy the structure. - See more at: http://salina.com/search/Old-courthouse-tour-091310#sthash.T7iXqQsV.dpuf

How do we live out the mission statement of "making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?" Sometimes, it's overwhelming. When you're at the bottom of the hill - or the bottom of a three-level staircase - and staring upwards, it's hard to see the end goal. Likewise, in a world where people are more likely to follow a celebrity on Twitter or check their status on Facebook than they are to attend church on Sunday morning or read the Bible each day, "making disciples" is an uphill climb.

But the only way to finish is to start. You have to get into the nooks and crannies and do the work - one detail and one step at a time.

 

At our evening worship service, organizers showed a video that featured several of the volunteer projects completed during our afternoon of service. Maybe this particular "cleaning volunteer" was a little envious that some of the other volunteers got to experience smiles and laughter while playing with children at a day care center or watched as a Mother walked away from a pantry with a newly-packed box of food so she could feed her children for another week.

But, there's something to be said for dusting, too. After all, Jesus did his own version of "dusting" before He went to the Cross. Jesus was having a final meal with his disciples in the Upper Room. But no one volunteered to clean the dusty feet of the disciples.  Until Jesus…

Jesus “got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist.  After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet.”  (John 13:4-5)  ... Jesus said: “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (John 13:14)

See? Sometimes Love itself comes by washing away a little dust. It may even come when you're comparing the virtues of furniture polish brands with ladies who've come to the Senior Center for an afternoon game of pool. We may be rubbing out apathy and instead shining on compassion as effectively as that bottle of Windex and paper towel takes away grime from a streaked window.

As we ended our work at the Senior Center, a pastor asked the center's director to stand in the middle of a circle. We built our circle from the inside out, each of us grasping the shoulder of another, as we prayed for the ministry offered by the director and her staff and for the people who walk through the doors each day.

Later, I thought about all those hands and hearts joined together in work and prayer. I've always heard there's no "I" in team. It's a favorite saying of coaches. I found it somewhat ironic that I personally was part of an "i" in a banner that decorated the Bicentennial Center. The banner used the photos of every delegate and every pastor who had come together for the Unifying Conference. My face happened to fall in the "dot" of the "i" in the word, "Plains."

In this instance, I'd have to say there was an "i" in "team." And in all the other letters, too.

And, yes, there was the essence of Christ Himself in that orange-scented fragrance of cleaning supplies and in the many hands that picked them up that day ... or helped a nursing home patient clap their hands to a praise song ... or skipped down a sidewalk with a laughing child.

Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which He blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are His body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Teresa of Avila

A Casting Crowns song called, "If We Are the Body," says, in part:

If we are the body
Why aren't His arms reaching?
Why aren't His hands healing?
Why aren't His words teaching?
And if we are the body
Why aren't His feet going?
Why is His love not showing them there is a way?
There is a way.



There IS a way. 

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This post is my contribution to the Lovely Branches Ministries website for the month with the theme, "Serving God, Serving Others." Check out what my friends, Suzanne, and Keva, had to share at Lovely Branches. And, if you're close to Stafford, come by the Taste & See Coffeehouse, another of the LBMinistries.

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This week, I'm linked to MIchelle's Hear It On Sunday, Use It On Monday and Jennifer's Tell His Story. Check out what other bloggers of faith have to say.