Sunday, September 29, 2013

Indian Tacos Recipe


Indian tacos (also known as Navajo tacos or Native American tacos) are a must if you ever visit the Pendleton Round-Up. Of course fry bread (the base of Indian tacos) with some honey or jam is delicious, too. The people who set up stands at Roy Raley park next to the Round-Up grounds have been making fry bread for a long time and their recipes are tried and true.

Naturally, I love fry bread, so I wanted to find a recipe that I liked as much as the fry bread from my home town. There are so many variations of the recipe, and they're all very similar, but sometimes a little tweak here or there can make all the difference in the texture. Isn't baking cool? I found one that's almost as, if not as good as the Round-Up staple.

So first, let's start off with the recipe for the fry bread. I got the recipe from this website and tweaked the amount of salt: 

Ingredients:

  • Oil for frying (around two cups)
  • 4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3 tablespoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt (the recipe called for 2 TABLESPOONS!!!)
  • 2 1/2 cups warm milk (more or less)
First mix your dry ingredients together in a large bowl. If you have a sifter, sift them. If not, use an egg beater. Warm up your milk (I used a microwave) to a bit hotter than body temperature and stir it into the dry ingredients bit by bit until your dough comes together. If it gets too sticky, add a little flour. Then cover your bowl with a towel and let it rise for about 15 minutes.

While your dough is resting, heat up your oil. You'll know your oil is ready if you splash a little bit of water into it and it sizzles. But don't go too hot or you'll burn your fry bread! If you're not sure, test a small amount of dough. It should brown fairly quickly (about a minute, maybe two). Then adjust the heat as necessary. 

When your dough is finished rising, tear off a small chunk and roll it into a ball and then flatten it out with your hands. It should look something like this:


The size of each piece of dough will depend on how big you want your fry bread to be. When I make Indian tacos, I make them a bit bigger than when I make fry bread just for eating with honey or jam. 
Place your dough pieces gently into your oil. You don't want it to splash back at you! Don't crowd your pan. Put two if they will fit, more if they are small, but try not to overlap each piece. 
With tongs, flip each piece so that both sides are a nice golden brown. When this color is achieved, place the hot fry bread onto a plate or bowl with a paper towel covering the bottom to catch the grease.

If you are making Indian tacos, prepare your taco meat. I used hamburger and those nice cop-out taco seasoning packages you find at the grocery store. I also had these toppings: 

  • diced tomatoes 
  • shredded lettuce
  • chopped onions
  • sour cream
  • taco sauce (we also had salsa) 
  • canned black beans (drained) 
  • shredded cheese 
Once everything is ready to go, top your fry bread with any or all of the taco toppings and enjoy!

The Indian tacos I've had at the Round-Up have some kind of chili instead of seasoned ground beef, but I personally find the seasoned ground beef to be just as good.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Honeymoon Part B

Once upon a time on our honeymoon part A, I got sick and we ran out of money so we had to go home early. So we decided to do a honeymoon Part B almost 8 months after the fact. Here are some pictures about it.

Columbia River Gorge

Here's us on the way to the Oregon coast! We drove in our little 91 Geo Metro all the way there. FYI, it has no air conditioning. So we were sweating like banshees the whole time.

Columbia River Gorge waterfalls

This is me at some pretty waterfall by Multnomah Falls. Maybe it's Horseshoe Falls?

Foliage

Have you ever noticed how beautiful leaves look when the sun is shining through them? It's one of my favorite things. (Along with raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens...)

Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Falls! This was Matt's first time seeing it! There are no pictures of us once we got to the coast because we were so tired from sweating all day. Once we got to the hotel, we basically just went to sleep.

Sea Lions

But don't worry! The next day we saw some cool things! Like these cute Sea Lions at the Newport bay. My favorite part is when they push each other off the docks and yell at each other.

Beach smooch

Oh look! My face is being squished by a kiss! Also, meet my favorite sweater. I found it at D.I. and I wear it all. the. time.

The Keyhole

This is Matt's cutest face! Awwww...

The Keyhole

We had a fun time at the beach. It was really foggy the whole time we were there.

Devil's Punch Bowl--Oregon Coast

We got up really early one morning to look at some tide pools! This is Devil's Punch Bowl!

Devil's Punch Bowl

So I always like to touch the creatures in the tide pools, right? You know, like feeling the anemone tentacles stick to your finger and stuff like that. Matt would NOT touch anything. He kept saying, "No! It's full of pus!"

Tide Pools

I believe this is a Heron! It's probably just getting some breakfast or something. Also, I think those orange spots on the rocks are sea stars.

Oregon Coast Aquarium

Then we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. My favorite part is going in the tunnels with the fish and the sharks! Matt's not so sure about it...


You know you can't go to the aquarium without getting one of these pictures...we obviously couldn't resist.

Siletz Bay harbor seals

We went to Siletz Bay on the edge of Lincoln City. This is a pile of harbor seals. Just loungin'.

Foggy Beach Oregon coast

Foggy, but beautiful day. I took a bunch more pictures, but not all of them looked good. So this is all you get to see. We also got to see my brother, his daughter, and her mom! My niece is one and she's as cute as can be! I was glad to see her and her mom one last time before they moved to the east coast. I also got to see my brother and his kids from Utah! And of course the fam that lives in Pendleton/Athena. 

CWI vs. BYU

Hello! It's been a very long time since I've posted anything. So I just started school again, right? I used to go to BYU in Provo, but now I'm going to College of Western Idaho in...Nampa. Nampa is kind of the bum-hole of the Boise area, in my opinion. Some parts are okay, but other parts are kind of creepy and weird. I would find a picture for you, but nothing can do it justice. So let's set aside the fact that Nampa is weird and talk about CWI vs. BYU.



So here's BYU. It's beautiful, and it's large. There's lots of pictures you can look up about it, so I'll let you do that if you really don't know what it looks like already.



In BYU, you get some classes of this size. But in CWI...

File:Spanish classroom photo 3.png

...it really looks a lot more like this. Except maybe not so enthusiastic.



Here is one of the few buildings we have.

Sometimes I feel like this at CWI:



But at BYU, I felt more like this:



And during tests:



(P.S: Please watch Good Burger if you haven't. It's one of the finer pieces of film literature.)

So anyways, yeah, both schools have different pros and cons. For me, CWI is great right now. It's cheap and it's close and I can become a nurse quickly and then work my way up the nursing ladder. Parfait! Also, I like have smaller class sizes! The professors actually care about me so I don't feel like I'm drowning in anonymity.

Another thing that's contributing to my liking school better now is that my study habits have changed. After a year at BYU of just trying to scrape by doing the minimum amount of work, I've decided that I'd like to really gain something from my education. What's the point of spending all of this time and money just for a piece of paper that says I'm educated without any knowledge to back it up? So I'm working hard! And so far it's paying off.