Had wonderful idea to make these Runzas for SuperBowel – turns out that it was a lot harder than anticipated. The Runza is a midwest  item that whenever back in NE/IA have to make sure to eat at least once. So damn excited to make them for gathering! Found a couple slow cooker recipes, but those involved those Pilsbury crescent rolls & always think they have a too sweet/buttery taste & wanted to do the original style. Cue the ominous music.

Night before slow cooked the filling so didn’t have to cook day of & could focus attention on my hangover & final vacuuming of ever present dog hair before guests arrived.

Filling Ingredients:

• 2 lbs hamburger
• 1 head of cabbage (sliced up semi-thin)
• 1 medium onions (diced)
• 2 tblsp salt and pepper of each to taste (only added 1 tblsp of salt – read on)
• 2 tblsp red pepper flakes

Cooked on LOW for 4hrs (overcooked a tad cause was out drinking, oops)

Directions for Dough:

• 4 loaves bread dough (really didn’t need this much)
• Thaw loaves of frozen bread dough overnight
• Let dough rise a bit, then punch down and roll a portion to 1/4″ thick (ha, this was not easy at all let me tell you)
• Cut dough into 4in. x 8in. pieces
• Add 1/2 cup or so of meat mixture
• (if you want mushroom-swiss / add some canned sliced mushrooms & handful of grated swiss cheese – this is my fav)
• Fold dough pieces over and seal the edges
• Place sealed edge side down on a greased cookie sheet
• Let rise 20 min
• Bake in pre-heated 375 degree oven for 20 minutes or until brown

Well, they weren’t what was expected, but guests ate them with grace & the only grievance was that more salt was needed. Lessons were learned (a bit more prep time on the dough working) & flour from rolling them out was freaking everywhere upon clean-up.

Needed some sort of party punch/drink & had had this at a restaurant so tried hand at making this one.

Party Drink – Paloma

• 1 bottle silver tequila infused w/ 4 jalapeños
• 4 fresh squeezed limes
• 1 2lt bottle of Squirt
• 6 pinches of salt

How to infuse:

• slice up 4 jalapeños lengthwise
• de-seed
• pour some of tequila out of bottle (drink immediately!)
• put in jalapeños & let sit for at least 24hrs
• after 24hrs use cheese cloth to strain out particles

This is the bomb my good friends. Might have been my downfall, but libation is a bit spicy & sweet/sour enough. Didn’t really hear a complaint about this one.

Birthday Cookies:

Don’t know how they were made, but my son turned 17 this week & Josefiend was kind enough to bake some Zombie cookies for the occasion. There was a good mix of present day humanistic & naturalistic evolutionary biology zombies.

Other hilights:

Artichoke Jalapeño Dip (via Josefiend the party organizer) – very rich & delicious on sliced baguette.

Bacon Wrapped Figs (or was it dates?)[confirmed it was dates] & Cottage Cheese Ranch Dip (via NE friends Mary/Heavy) – your dip “one up’d” mine.

Loads of beer & wine left at my place – although don’t know if this is a blessing or a curse.

All ‘n all –  was excellent to have a fantastic group of folks over to enjoy a lot of talking while football sporting event was going on ( I won’t name names, you know who you are) with great food/apps.

Finalize that with some Downton Abbey – quite a day.

BTW: Giants won & I assume Madonna did somehow.