Abel Skievers

Joe's family makes these amazing ping-pong ball shaped pancakes for breakfast during conference weekends. You have to have a special pan to make them and plenty of good stuff to dip them in! This year Joe and I decided to try and make these delicacies for our own little family out here in Texas. They were wonderful!! Jadyn wasn't so sure about them (Mostly she just licked all of the powdered sugar off of them....oh wait, that's what I was doing!) but we had a great time cooking and eating them together while we waited for conference to start. Thanks so much Christensen fam for this great tradition!!

The Rodeo!

This year we decided to make it a priority to attend at least one rodeo. Jadyn and I have never been to one so we were quite anxious to experience it. Sadly though, Cleveland held their rodeos the weekend after we left Ohio and Alpine held their rodeo the weekend before we arrived. :(

Jadyn and I were very saddened by this awful twist of fate until we learned that Sul Ross would be hosting their own rodeo the first weekend in October. Yea! We went to the rodeo both Friday and Saturday nights and had a blast! It was so much fun. Nobody died and all of the goats/calves/steers seemed to survive being first charged, and then rudely trussed up by the cowboys and cowgirls. We even got to see the next rodeo queen crowned! Haha it was really fun and Jadyn sat/danced through all of it. (she likes to shake her stuff when the music is going).

Awesome Hamburgers!

So I had quite the hankering for hamburgers the other day and decided to take inventory of the items in my fridge/pantry to see if would be even remotely possible to create these wonderful delicacies. Hamburger? Check! Condiments? Check! pickles-tomatoes-cheese? Check! Buns? Che....Oh...no buns. Not even a loaf of bread to improvise with. :(

Now I could of just packed Jadyn into the car, driven to the grocery store, and purchased the buns necessary to fulfilling my hamburger craving. But that would have been MUCH to simple. Instead I decided to undertake the oh-so-extensive project of making my own hamburger buns from scratch. Whew! I began by locating the recipe in the Abel Family cook book. I scanned the ingredients list to check that I had everything on hand and began cheerfully mixing away...only pausing once to notice that the recipe called for 2 tablespoons of salt...a bit extreme but oh well...What did I know about hamburger buns? I finally got to the last step of the process (the flour) and discovered that two tablespoons of salt would definitely be necessary to compensate for the 12 cups of flour!

1 1/2 bags of flour and two mixing bowls later, Jadyn and I were up to our elbows in wads of sticky hamburger bun dough. This delightful concoction has thus far created 24 hamburger buns, 8 scones, and a giant calzone...only 10 more lbs to go....

On the bright side, The hamburgers were AWESOME!!