Happenings of our lives

I made these pizzettes at the motel.  They were so good, probably my favorite pizza we’ve made.  The crust would probably work with any topping but the cheese and onion is amazing (I think feta would also be really good).

Title: Gorgonzola cheese and onion pizzettes
Servings: 6
Cooking Time: 10 minutes
Preparation Time: 2 hours
Category: Entree
Cuisine: Italian
Rating: 5/5 stars
Source: Bread; from sourdough to rye

—
Ingredients
—
3 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 t salt
1 t italian herbs
black pepper
1 tsp yeast
1 T olive oil
3 T oil
4 large onions
1 T fresh thyme
6 oz gorgonzola cheese
1 1/4 cup water

—
Instructions
—

Mix the flour, salt, herbs, black pepper, and yeast.  Add the oil and
water and mix and knead until supple and elastic.  Let rise until 1
hour.  Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces.  Roll out thinly  and let
proof for 15 minutes.  Turn oven to the highest setting.  Add the
toppings (onions and gorgonzola cheese.  Cook for 8-10 minutes until
crisp and browned.
Heat 3 T oil and stir in 4 large, finely sliced onions, 1 T fresh
thyme leaves, and 1 bay leaf.  Cut a disk of waxed paper to fit inside
the skillet, then press it down on top of the onions. Cover with a lid
and cook over low heat for 35 minutes.  Uncover, stir well, and cook
until light golden brown and not watery.

—
Nutritional Information
—

*Nutritional information reflects amount per serving.**
CALORIES 428
TOTAL FAT (g) 17
Saturated Fat (g) 7
CHOLESTEROL (mg) 21
SODIUM (mg) 1087
TOTAL CARBOHYDRATE (g) 53
Dietary Fiber (g) 2
Sugars (g) 0
PROTEIN (g) 13

This is a good recipe that we found on the Kraft foods website.

Title: Easy feta chicken bake
Servings: 6
Cooking Time: 50 minutes
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Category: Entree
Rating: 4/5 stars

—
Ingredients
—
2 lb chicken breasts
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
4 oz feta cheese
1/4 cup red pepper
1/2 cup chopped tomato
2 tbsp chopped basil

—
Instructions
—

PREHEAT oven to 350°F. Arrange chicken in 13×9-inch baking dish.
DRIZZLE with 1 Tbsp. of the lemon juice. Season with salt and black
pepper. Top with feta cheese; drizzle with remaining 1 Tbsp. lemon
juice.
BAKE 35 to 40 min. or until chicken is cooked through. Sprinkle with
red pepper and parsley.

—
Nutritional Information
—

*Nutritional information reflects amount per serving.*
CALORIES 222
TOTAL FAT (g) 5
Saturated Fat (g) 3
CHOLESTEROL (mg) 105
SODIUM (mg) 482
TOTAL CARBOHYDRATE (g) 2
Dietary Fiber (g) 0
Sugars (g) 2
PROTEIN (g) 38

We  made this a couple of times at the motel.  The best thing about it is you can put about anything.  Mushrooms are good in it too.  We also like kalamata olives in it along with some black olives.  Also, the more feta cheese, the better in our opinion although that will increase the calories a bit.  We sometimes put cooked chicken in it as well but I prefer it without it.

Title: Pasta salad
Servings: 8
Cooking Time: 15 minutes
Preparation Time: 40 minutes
Category: Entree
Rating: 5/5 stars

—
Ingredients
—
1 lb pasta
1 can olives
3/4 cup feta cheese
1/4 bell pepper
1/2 chopped onion
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp dried basil
3 tsp oregano
2 tsp red pepper flakes

—
Instructions
—

Combine and eat!  Yummy!

—
Nutritional Information
—

*Nutritional information reflects amount per serving.**
CALORIES 309
TOTAL FAT (g) 9
Saturated Fat (g) 3
CHOLESTEROL (mg) 13
SODIUM (mg) 347
TOTAL CARBOHYDRATE (g) 46
Dietary Fiber (g) 3
Sugars (g) 2
PROTEIN (g) 10

I made these on Monday the 26th at the motel.  I’ve made them again with twice the number of red pepper flakes and it was even better.

Title: Red hot cheese roll-ups
Servings: 9
Cooking Time: 35 minutes
Preparation Time: 2 hours
Category: Bread
Rating: 5/5 stars
Source: Bread; from sourdough to rye

—
Ingredients
—
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 t salt
2 1/2 red pepper flakes
black pepper
1 1/3 cup water
1 tsp yeast
1 T oil
3 1/2 oz feta cheese
1 cup aged cheddar cheese

—
Instructions
—

Mix 1 t yeast with flour, salt, chile flakes, and black pepper in the
kitchenaid.  Add the water and knead into a very smooth and elastic
dough.  Let rise until doubled in size, about an hour.  Roll out the
dough to a rectangle about 16×10 inches.  Crumble the feta and 2/3 cup
cheddar.  Starting with the long side, roll up the dough like a jelly
roll.  Cut into 9 pieces and arrange them, cut side down in a 10-inch
round cake pan, greased.  Let rise again.  Add remaining cheddar on
top.  Bake at 400F for 35 minutes

—
Nutritional Information
—

*Nutritional information reflects amount per serving.**
CALORIES 259
TOTAL FAT (g) 8
Saturated Fat (g) 5
CHOLESTEROL (mg) 23
SODIUM (mg) 662
TOTAL CARBOHYDRATE (g) 35
Dietary Fiber (g) 1
Sugars (g) 1
PROTEIN (g) 10

So, I’ll be posting the recipes we had while at the motel.  As has been the custom of late, Emily and I do most of the cooking while we are there and Mom buys everything.  It’s a good tradeoff.  Stay tuned for recipes.

Sunday: BBQ sandwiches
Monday: Pizzas
Tuesday: Steaks
Wednesday: Hamburgers
Thursday: Pasta salad
Friday: “Panini sandwiches”
Saturday: Pasta salad

In addition to the main entrees, we also did a lot of baking of different breads and such that I will also post.

Just as a reminder, you can just look at the pictures by clicking the “Picture Albums” link in the upper left-hand corner.

We went to visit Jordan’s parents Memorial Day weekend and stayed for a week. We had so much fun, we went swimming and hiking almost every day.  Here’s a digest of what we did each day:

Saturday-May 24

We left Provo with Justin and Julie at about 7am and drove to Orofino. This trip seemed to go faster than the trip at Christmas. When we got there Robin and Joel were there with their kids. We didn’t stay up too late because most of us were tired from the long car trip. All the kids went swimming almost as soon as we got there. Jordan went swimming too. Two really funny things happened that night.  Jordan and I got switched to a room with two full sized beds (Jordan’s parents sold our room, and we have a queen sized bed at home). Those of you that know Jordan know that sometimes he sleep talks and walks. Well, we went to sleep in the same bed and when I woke up the next morning it was to Jordan saying, “where are you? why did you leave me?” Jordan had gone over to the other bed in his sleep! The second funny thing that happened was my fault. Jordan and I were getting ready to go down to his parents’ apartment, and we were looking for our key. We couldn’t find it anywhere, so we proceeded to go outside. Well, when we opened the door, the key was still in it, oops.

Sunday-May 25

Sunday was an interesting day. Jordan’s parent’s big washer broke so Jordan, Jordan’s mom and I went to a laundromat in town and did laundry for a couple of hours. That night we had pulled pork sandwiches on homemade buns, they tasted phenomenal. Jason and Ella came to the motel that night. We played Scatagories and had a ton of fun. The best part was that Ilana and Taylor were getting more words than the rest of us, no joke.

Monday-May 26

Monday we did more laundry and went swimming. Aspen and Ronan played in the sprinkler (mostly Aspen). Jordan and I went on a really pretty hike at Big Eddy near the dam. There were so many wildflowers and mushrooms and it was so green! We found a little peninsula beach that is usually covered by water (you can tell from the pictures that the water is really low this year).  Jordan went swimming (sort of, he pretty much walked out into the water and came back).  We saw some really scary spiders that blended into the sand really well (if you look at the picture that looks like sand, there is a spider in it). We made pizza with everyone on Sunday. That meant that everyone got to put what they liked on their pizza.

Tuesday-May 27

We went swimming with Justin and Julie’s kids and when Aspen was sleeping we went on a hike with the older kids. There are railroad tracks behind the motel and we decided to hike to the tressel. Jordan ran back to the hotel when we were about 2/3 of the way done with the hike because we didn’t remember if we locked Justin and Julie’s room (we saw some people playing with the kids’ pool toys when we walked by). He ran all the way back and we (Emily and the kids) kept walking. When we finally got there it was so pretty. We stayed a while and hung out in the shade (the track has no shade).  We started to walk back and we caught Jordan, so we walked back to the tressel. We had steaks for dinner. I (Emily) ate a whole steak and felt pretty cruddy the rest of the night. We books and runs that night and Julie pretty much creamed all of us.

Wednesday-May 28

We went swimming pretty much all day.

Thursday-May 29

We went on another short hike with everyone. We drove a little away from the motel and hiked on more abandoned railroad tracks. All the kids had so much fun. Jordan climbed on a bridge that was broken and got a bunch of slivers in his arm that hurt and were really hard to get out.  The water was so pretty and it was so green. Just a note, Jordan and I hiked this before, during Thanksgiving 2007, and it looked so much different. The best part about the whole hike was seeing the cows after we got back to the cars, they were so cute! After we were done with the hike, we drove on the scenic loop that goes up the mountain. You can see the entire valley when you get to the top, you can even see the motel. Later that afternoon we went to Big Eddy and played at the picnic area and playground with the kids. The water is so low right now (you can see a picture with buoys in the album and another from last summer to compare).  We had so much fun with everyone there. The kids had a great time playing on the playground and really didn’t want to leave when we needed to go home.

Friday- May 30

Friday we decided to do the same hike that we went on Monday. This time all the older kids, Justin, and Julie came too. It was great, this time most of the wildflowers that we saw on Monday were gone. We went to the same beach and played in the water. When we were walking down to the beach we saw a snake (Taylor and Benson were really excited about that). Forrester said that he didn’t want to get in the water so he was playing by a rock and we saw some bugs that we thought were getting eaten by a dragonfly, but the dragonfly was actually coming out of the bugs! It was really exciting, we watched it for about 10 minutes. We hiked back and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.

Saturday-May 31

We went swimming and had a lot of fun. ( I can’t really remember what we did this day).

Sunday- June 1

We drove home.

Well, so Emily is going to be able to move out with me to Missouri which is great.  The current plan is that she’ll move out with me with her little brother Jared and they will be there for two weeks.  Then they both fly back and Emily works another two weeks to finish our her contract.  Good so far.  However, we were originally told that the department will pay for her plane ticket; however, we found out today that they won’t so we have to pay for that.  I also found out that our insurance from Dairiconcepts won’t start until October 1st whereas Emily’s ends on August 31.  So if anyone has any solutions besides Cobra (or information on how Cobra works) please let us know.  We don’t really want a lapse in insurance.  We’ve heard too many horror stories about that.  So moving is going to be a lot more than we thought but we’ll be ok.

UPDATE: (this is Emily) So my boss told me today that they would pay for my plane ticket . I just have to stay the first week in September, so it’s a little longer, but not too bad.

Emily made these coconut cowboy cookies after we had them at my parent’s motel.  They are really good.

Title: Cowboy cookies
Servings: 60
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Category: Dessert
Rating: 5/5 stars

—
Ingredients
—
2 cups brown sugar
2 cups sugar
2 t vanilla
1/2 cup milk
4 cups flour
3 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
2 cups butter
4 eggs
3 cups rolled oats
2 1/2 cups coconut
1/2 cup peanut butter chips

—
Instructions
—

1.   Beat together the sugars, butter or margarine and eggs.
2. Stir in vanilla and milk and mix well. Add in the flour, baking
powder and salt and mix well.
3. Stir in the oatmeal and coconut. Add in the chocolate chips and
nuts (optional) and mix well.
4. Drop by teaspoon on cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F (175
degrees C) for 8 to 10 minutes.

—
Nutritional Information
—

*Nutritional information reflects amount per serving.*
CALORIES 187
TOTAL FAT (g) 8
Saturated Fat (g) 5
CHOLESTEROL (mg) 30
SODIUM (mg) 124
TOTAL CARBOHYDRATE (g) 26
Dietary Fiber (g) 1
Sugars (g) 16
PROTEIN (g) 2

On May 16-17, we went to Capitol Reef with our friends Reed and Amber.  Reed is another graduate student in food science here at BYU.  We had a ton of fun.  We hiked along a little river the whole time and had a blast.  It was really hot so the water mostly felt good on our feet (with the exception of in the morning when the water got cold and the sun hadn’t gotten hot yet).  We used our new tent again which we loved.  We found a fun little cave as the pictures show.  Capitol Reef has got to be one of the best national parks.  Not very many people (I think we saw 3 small groups of people, none of which were actually backpacking), the backcountry permits are free, and everything is beautiful.  We also hiked the chimney rock trail which was pretty as well and found some viewpoints that we took pictures at.  We were all wearing chacos so we couldn’t pass up the moment taking some fun pictures of our feet.  Overall, it was an incredible weekend.

Emily and I went up Big Springs Hollow on May 8th to the 9th. We took our new tent and instantly fell in love with it, especially compared to our old tent.  We brought cards and played some games and were able to sit up in our tent!  Amazing!  We didn’t see too many people.  We only hiked probably less than a mile up the trail, just far enough to get into the national forest as opposed to the city park.  It’s up provo canyon.  We had fun.  It got way cold at night though; fortunately we brought clothing but we ended up putting on every bit of clothing we brought.