'Harvest' Some Rock and Roll Beef Wraps

Beef: It's often what's for dinner around here. That makes sense when beef from our cattle herd is in the freezer.

Quinoa is usually not for dinner around here. Quinoa (keen-wa) is one of those trendy foods that ends up on lists like the 10 Top Food and Health Trends in 2013. Quinoa has been a staple of peasants in the high Andes for more than 3,000 years, but now it's peaked the interest of American cooks. U.S. imports of Peruvian quinoa more than quadrupled between 2007 and 2011.  It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal or grain, and it packs 8 grams of protein in a cooked 1-cup serving.
Rock and Roll Beef Wraps inspired me to try quinoa for the first time. Jill made the recipe first and recommended it. It was one of five new lean ground beef recipes developed with Beef Checkoff dollars to use in school lunchrooms to meet the USDA requirements for healthy school meals. K-12 students from five states participated in a pilot test of the new ground beef recipes developed to meet the revised USDA guidelines.

(photo on blue lunch tray was from the Beef Checkoff kitchen. Every school lunchroom needs those blue trays, right?!)

Spinach tortillas would have made a prettier photo, I suppose, but both Randy and I enjoyed the beef wraps. The recipe will likely make a repeat appearance on the Harvest 2013 supper rotation, and we'll see what Jake thinks.

All five recipes developed by the Beef Council can be found by clicking here. The Kansas Beef Council is encouraging Kansas school food service directors to try one of the new ground beef school lunch recipes at home this summer and then add it to their school lunch rotation for 2013-14. As an incentive, Kansas Beef Council is offering to reimburse, up to $10 through September 1, school menu developers for ground beef purchases to try one of the new recipes. I don't qualify, but if you do, you should take advantage of this promotion.

I may try out a couple more recipes, too, and will let you know what I think. But I do recommend Rock and Roll Beef Wraps. Try it and tell me your verdict!

(And, since I'd already bought the quinoa, I tried a salad recipe that I'll share with you soon. Stay tuned!)

Rock and Roll Beef Wraps

 Developed by Beef Checkoff Dollars

Total Recipe Time:  35 to 45 minutes.

Serves 4.

1 lb. ground beef
1 cup water
1/3 cup uncooked quinoa
2 tbsp. dry ranch dressing mix
1/4 tsp. black pepper
2 cups packaged broccoli or coleslaw mix
4 medium whole grain or spinach tortillas (7- to 8-inch diameter)
Optional toppings: apple slices, red bell pepper strips, cucumber slices, carrot slices, sliced almonds, chow mein noodles

Cook ground beef in large nonstick skillet over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes, breaking into crumbles and stirring occasionally. Remove drippings.

Stir in water, quinoa, ranch dressing mix and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 10 to 15 minutes or until quinoa is tender. Stir in slaw; cook, uncovered, 3 to 5 minutes or until slaw is crisp-tender, stirring occasionally.

Divide beef mixture evenly among tortillas. Garnish with toppings as desired. Fold over sides of tortillas and rolling up to enclose filling.

Nutrition information (without toppings): 418 calories, 12 g fat (3 g satured; 3 g monounsaturated fat), 76 mg cholesterol; 695 mg sodium; 41 g carbohydrate; 6.8 g. fiber; 31 g protein; 6.4 mg niacin. This recipe is an excellent source of fiber, protein, niacin, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, iron, selenium and zinc.

Notes: Romaine or iceberg lettuce leaves can be substituted for tortillas.

***

I'm linked today to Ashley's What's In Your Kitchen Wednesday. Click on the link to check out other tried-and-true recipes from food bloggers.

Ten Days

June 6, 2013

Ten days doesn't seem like much time in the scheme of things. It hardly makes a dent in the span of 365 days. It's about a third of a month. But as the 2013 wheat crop nears harvest, 10 days was long enough to shift a predominately green landscape to a golden hue.

June 16. 2013

Look more closely, and there's still plenty of green in the fields. It will likely be several days before the combines begin rolling through the fields here in south central Kansas. But the transformation is still pretty remarkable in the span of only 240 hours. 

We scouted some fields as Father's Day 2013 came to a close. As Randy rubbed wheat heads into his palm, he found some variation in the amount of wheat berries separated from chaff. It will likely vary from one variety to another.

This field has two different varieties planted - Stout and Everest. We'll see which is the winner in the yield category this year.

Wheat isn't the only crop impacted in 10 days.

June 6, 2013

Another 1.4 inches of rain over the weekend has helped get the corn off to a good start.

June 16, 2013

The two corn photos above were taken in the same spot, 10 days apart. We've been fortunate to receive some timely rains for the corn crop, our first dryland corn venture here on the County Line.

The corn planted in the photo in the upper left was planted earlier than the other corn, so it's even bigger.

We're glad to have the rain on the corn crop, alfalfa and pastures, even though it slows down the start of Wheat Harvest 2013. We're not turning down rain after the past two summers, that's for sure!

Broken Chords

 

I'm a musician. No, it wasn't my major at college. I chose journalism after my Dad wisely suggested that being a music teacher was probably not the best career choice for my DNA.

I thank him every so often for that. He was so right. Last month, I completed my 18th year as an accompanist for the Stafford School system, most in middle school choir. Let's face it: The majority of middle school kids would much rather be in gym class than music class. As a middle school music director, I would not have survived my natural bent toward perfectionism and order in the midst of the adolescent hormones.

However, I do love music, so that's why I accompany. I certainly have no illusions that I am the most competent accompanist around. Mrs. Lighter, my childhood piano teacher, would be amazed that I am the one of the three Moore sisters who now gets paid to play the piano.

As I thought about the Lovely Branches Ministries theme for June, "Music for the soul," I remembered a time when my "job" didn't have a thing to do with my time on the piano bench. Instead, it happened in a bathroom after class several years ago. The encounter forever changed how I looked at the time I spent at school.

On that day, I ducked into the bathroom after the bell had rung. A middle school girl was there, washing her hands, but she waited until I came out of the stall and said, "Mrs., I have a question."

"Sure," I told her.

She was standing in front of a full-length mirror, pushing her long hair back and adjusting her clothes.

"What's wrong with me? Is my hair a mess today? Am I wearing the wrong thing? Do I smell?"

"No," I told her. "You look great. I think your hair looks really pretty today. Your outfit is cute."

She stopped me. "No, I really want you to be honest," she said. "Tell me the truth! When I come close to some of the other girls, they look at me and say, 'Oh, __________, get away.' Or they will turn their back, and I can hear them whispering."

I said again, "I am telling the truth. I am being honest. I want you to hear me. Even though it's really hard, you need to realize that sometimes other girls can be mean. I don't know why that is, but it is. So it's not about you. It's about their need to feel better than someone else. If they can put someone down, then maybe, for just a little bit, they can feel better about themselves.

"Try to remember it's not about you, even though it hurts."

I could not get that girl out of my mind. I remembered my daughter's middle school years. They were the absolute toughest for me as a parent (and no doubt for Jill as well). I will never forget how mean they were to one another. For several years, I saved a note that I found one day in Jill's pocket. It was from a girl who was supposed to be her friend. It said something about Jill looking like a pig in her cheerleading outfit.

I don't know why I saved the note. Was it to remind me of the power of words? Was it to remind me to really listen to my kids - whether they shared the hurts of the day vocally or exhibited it with a quiet, sullen mood?

Am I naive enough to think Jill was never mean to another girl? Of course not. I'm sure she had her moments even though my constant soundtrack with both my kids was, "Be the bigger person."

So I worried about this girl who I didn't really know. She was a face in the crowd on the risers before I heard the anguish in her voice that day. On the night of the concert, I made it a point to find her and tell her how nice she looked in her dress-up clothes. When I would see her at ballgames, I would stop and visit with her - even after she graduated from middle school and became a high schooler.

You see, I have been that girl. I wasn't the thinnest girl or the prettiest in my class or the girl every guy was clamoring to go out with.

But as I've gotten older, I've realized that most women have felt like that. Even those girls who from the outside looking in have it all - the thin girls with the perfect hair and just the right fashion flair - have that nagging feeling that they just aren't good enough.

It's been kind of a revelation for me as an adult.

But it doesn't change the hurt of a 13-year-old girl peering at herself in the mirror of a bathroom.

So, I hope she heard me - really heard me. If she did, it was worth all the time commuting to town ... practicing at home ... being annoyed at the noise ... the nervous stomach before festivals and concerts.

It was worth every second. If she heard me.

Not long ago, this arrived in my email devotional:

God has a beautiful way 

of bringing good vibrations out of broken chords. 

--Charles Swindoll

Christian pastor, author and educator

And I again thought of that girl. And I thought about myself. And I thought about all of we women who are so quick to be critical of ourselves.

But then I thought about it a little more. By definition, a broken chord is any chord whose notes are not played simultaneously; a chord played with separated notes. A broken chord is the way an accompanist gives each part of a choir its assigned note before we put all the parts together. Each and every part - soprano, alto, tenor and bass - is important for a harmonious chord. Through the brokenness of our lives we can become the strong chord - or cord - that God intended us to be.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10 New International Version (NIV)

⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

It's in His perfect love that we are made whole, even in our weakness and brokenness.

***

Note:  This is an adaptation for my Lovely Branches Ministries post for June. My friend, Suzanne's blog, will have you whistling as you work in  your garden or sit on the porch with a glass of lemonade.

***

I'm also linked today to Michelle DeRusha's Hear It On Sunday, Use It On Monday  and Jennifer Dukes Lee's Tell His Story. Click on the links to read what other bloggers of faith are writing about today. 

A Treat for Dad

This cookie has oatmeal in it. It's a regular health food.

Well, maybe not. It also has sweetened condensed milk. That ingredient may be the elixir of the kitchen, but don't look at the calorie count. When you add in some chocolate chips, toffee bits and coconut, you get a dynamite bar cookie. But it's no health food, despite a little oatmeal.

I saw the recipe on the blog, Mom on Timeout. Randy loves coconut. So does my Dad. I figured they were the perfect Father's Day treat for both of them.

I love the ease of bar cookies, but while I had the kitchen heated up, I figured I might as well get a stockpile of cookies in the freezer for wheat harvest. 

 

I made my go-to  drop cookie recipe, divided the dough and made four variations. I tripled my basic recipe (find the recipe and add-in ideas by clicking the link), then I divided the dough into four parts before I added any "extras" to the dough. This time, I made:

• White Chocolate Macadamia Nut (white chocolate chips and coarsely chopped nuts)
• Almond Joy (Almond Joy pieces and flaked coconut)
• Chocolate Chocolate Chip (About 1/4 of a cup of cocoa powder and semi-sweet chocolate chips)
• Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip (I used cinnamon chips for the first time. They are in the baking aisle by the chocolate chips. I didn't think they tasted that good separately, but they were good mixed in the cookie dough with about 1 cup of oatmeal.

I didn't really measure the add-ins. I just add until I think it's about right (which I know is not very helpful for less experienced cooks.)  If you're adding dry ingredients - like oatmeal or cocoa powder - to an already-prepared dough you can always add a tablespoon or two of milk to get the dough back to the right consistency, if needed. Yesterday, though, I only had to add the milk to the oatmeal cookies. The dough is a science, but there's some latitude to the "extras."

Noah's Ark animals aren't the only two-by-two matches. I packaged the cookies and bars two-by-two and have them in the freezer, ready to pull out packages for harvest suppers.

But, some of the cookies will be doing double-duty as a Father's Day gift for the special Dads in my life. Happy Father's Day to my Dad ...

Me and my Dad in 1957

and to Randy!

Randy, Jill and Brent - 1988

Coconut Toffee Chocolate Chip

Cookie Bars

From the blog, Mom on Timeout

Crust:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup oatmeal
2 cups flaked coconut
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 egg, lightly beaten
12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Filling:
14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup light corn syrup
8 oz. toffee bits

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 13- by 9-inch baking pan with cooking spray.

Crust: Combine butter and brown sugar in large bowl of electric mixer. Combine well. Add egg; mix well. Add flour, oats and coconut, and combine until it makes a crumbly dough. Stir in chocolate chips.

Reserve 1 1/2 cups of the dough for topping. Press remaining dough into bottom of the prepared 13- by 9-inch pan. Bake 10 minutes.

Filling: Combine sweetened condensed milk and corn syrup and mix until combined. Pour evenly over hot crust. Sprinkle evenly with toffee bits. Top evenly with reserve crust mixture. (There will be places that aren't covered. Just do your best.)

Bake 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown. Cool on wire rack. I cut them into bars while they were still slightly warm, making it easier to cut through all the layers.

I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane

"I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane" was the theme song dancing in this small-town girl's head as Lisa, Abby and I went through the short security line at Manhattan's "international" airport.

OK. Maybe it more "puddle jumper" than big jet plane. But we were leaving the plains of Kansas for the big city of Chicago to visit my sister, Darci, for the weekend.

Yes, I was the person clicking the camera as we flew. (Lisa and Abby gave me a good-natured ribbing about my tourist-y photo taking. Since they were sitting in a different row, I told them they could pretend they didn't know me.) It was too pretty to ignore. And it's not like I get this camera angle very often. For you rule-followers like me, I was using my regular camera - not the cell phone camera.

Anyway, we arrived in Chicago, where we traded our prairie skyscrapers for the real ones.

One of our first stops was Glazed and Infused Doughnuts. (In our defense, we had an early morning, and we took two days to eat them.) I loved the name and the logo. We chose a maple bacon, old-fashioned, blueberry lemon and a toffee-topped doughnut. We saw several other doughnut shops, most of them with lines. Is a doughnut trend replacing the cupcake fascination? You heard it here first.

While in Chicago, we ate lots of yummy food. (And I promise I didn't take a photo every time. Really.)

In photo above, starting at the upper right: Brunch at The Paris Club was Norwegian Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon for me. I didn't care for the oysters at GT Fish and Oyster Bar, but everyone else loved them. Our meals there were biscuits and lobster gravy, smoked whitefish quiche and shrimp and grits. The other photos are from Glazed and Infused.

Our waiter at GT Fish & Oyster Bar doubled as our photographer.

Left to right: Me, Darci, Lisa and Abby

Saturday afternoon, we went to two street art fairs. Along the way, several homes were open for garden tours. It appears I was more entranced by the gardens than the artwork. However, artists tend to prefer you not take random photos of their art.  There's that rule-following thing again.

On Sunday, we saw "The Book of Mormon" at the Bank of America Theatre. Let's just say that I prefer old-fashioned musicals like "The Sound of Music" and "West Side Story." The theater was gorgeous, and it's always fun to watch the quick costume and set changes. The content was a little racy for my blood. (I was unintentionally a rule breaker at the theater. At Century II, you can take photos before the show starts. But the usher yelled at me, "No photos," as I took a photo of the stage before the musical started.)

I lucked out and was on the correct side of the plane as we flew into Manhattan on Monday.

It was a whirlwind weekend of walking, eating, talking, shopping, laughing and irritating Abby with our Sunday-night deck time when all three of us "old people" knew every word to "Hair," The Carpenters' "For All We Know" and several others songs from the '70s.

As Lisa says, "Let's make some memories." And we did.

Commuters: Of Men and Mosquitoes

The telephoto view from Darci's deck - including the Sears Tower, now called the Willis Tower

I spent the weekend in Chicago, visiting my sister, Darci. My other sister, Lisa, was my unofficial travel agent, booking the tickets and making the arrangements for me and her youngest daughter, Abby. (More snapshots from our trip to come tomorrow.)

On Monday morning, Darci flew out of O'Hare at 7:10 for work. A little while later, we three Kansans walked several blocks away to the Blue Line, dragging our suitcases behind us. As we tried to figure out how to purchase train tickets to O'Hare, we heard the transit workers warning: "The trains are very crowded today. Expect crowded platforms and long waits."

When we got to the top of the stairs, there was a sea of people stretched on the other side of the platform. Thankfully, they were all going toward the city, and we were going the opposite direction toward O'Hare.

We watched as a train pulled to a stop. Through the windows, as the train slowed, we could see people squished together. Standing and sitting, shoulder to shoulder, we wondered how anyone else could squeeze in.

As the first train departed and our airport-bound train arrived, we saw that most of the people on the other side were still waiting.

 

Then, as our Blue Line train zoomed its way down the elevated tracks toward O'Hare, we saw highways that seemed more like parking lots than expressways as they, too, were clogged with commuter traffic. I said a prayer, thankful for my little spot on Planet Earth where there aren't a couple million people.

But you know what? There are a couple million mosquitoes. And I think they're all in my neighborhood. Yesterday morning, I went outside a little after 6 o'clock to celebrate being home and to watch the sunrise in solitude.  I took three photos before I leaped back into the car so I wouldn't get eaten alive by mosquitoes. None of the photos will win any awards. The sky was pretty enough, I suppose, but I was too busy slapping mosquitoes to really see it.

And Monday night, there was a broken baler when Randy was ready to bale more hay than we've had in several years.(It's since been fixed, and he's back on the tractor this morning.)

We all have our challenges, whether our skyscrapers are like this ...

... or on the plains of Kansas.

And we can find beauty whether it's planted in narrow townhouse gardens ...

... or in fields of hundreds of acres.

There are challenges and joys no matter your zip code.

Herding Cats by Kinley Marie

Herding Cats

By Kinley Marie

Meet my friend, Smoky. He is one of my Grandpa's kitties. I suppose he's my Grandma's kitty, too, but let's face it: Grandpa is the one who thinks Smoky is the cat's meow.

And speaking of meows, I got lots of practice with my meows when I visited the farm last weekend. I'll have you know that I was already advanced in animal sounds. I had my Mommy call Grandma a couple of weeks ago to tell her that I was the very first one in my daycare class to know what a cow says. Well, of course! I saw the cows and baby calves at Grandma's and Grandpa's the last time I was there. The cows must not have realized I was coming back to visit. They had gone on their summer vacation to the pasture. I know they wouldn't have wanted to miss me.

Anyway, Grandma says I'm a regular Dr. Doolittle and can talk to the animals. I don't know who this Doctor Doolittle is, but Grandma says it's an old movie where a guy talks to the animals. All I know is that I impressed my friends with my life-like meows when I went back to daycare this week.

It did take me just a little bit to warm up to the kitties. I wasn't so sure I liked them crawling on me, so I had to have Mommy protect me.

I helped Grandpa feed them every morning.

 Smoky was so silly when he got in the dish with the food.

Just before we left to go back home, I got a great idea. I decided the mama cat needed a beautiful necklace.

My Daddy was packing the car, and I found this old toy from my baby days. It looked like the perfect summer accessory to spruce up a mama cat's day. I don't know why the kitties hid. But, let's face it, sometimes I wanted to hide from them, too.

Grandma says following a toddler is kind of like herding cats. That must mean it's a whole lot of fun.

Until next time,
Kinley

Grandma tried to do a video of me with the kitties. You'll have to turn your head sideways to watch it. I guess she needs more practice. I know all about that.




dscn5166 from Kim Fritzemeier on Vimeo.