Since leaving Kansas, I've reacquainted myself with one of it's culinary treasures, the Runza. How this Russian-German pocket full of goodness ended up becoming a staple of home cooking in The Sunflower State is interesting. Generations ago, the small farmers who came to the land must have brought the recipes. Runza makes sense because the pocket sandwiches could be taken to the fields by the men for lunch and the women wouldn't have to stop their own work to make lunch. As eating lunch in the field became a thing of the past, the runza moved on to the dinner table where it has remained. I fondly remember eating them in our school cafeteria where they were made from scratch and every student in my class loved them. Probably the only way the school could ever get cabbage in our tummies.
Though there are many recipes for runza, I make mine by memory of taste. Prepared in a large kettle, the filling consists of ground beef and onions seasoned with salt, pepper, and dijon mustard, cabbage, carrot and cheese. I stuff and form my sandwiches "Kansas style" into what looks like a hamburger bun using store-bought yeast dough because I'm no good with the bread making. While easy to make, they are considered laborious by today's standards (god forbid we wait for dough to proof and hand-form individual servings) so I make big batches and freeze them. They are super handy to take to my "field" for lunch or to grab for a snack or quick dinner.
I think I would like to purchase a digital camera or some basic photo editing software. The photos taken with my iPhone are fine but the colors don't show true on the computer. With all the built-in wonders that apple has designed for my laptop, iPhoto kind of sucks.
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