A Halloween Spooktacular

We love Halloween at our house. We decorate the inside of our house and the yard outside. Heck, we even decorate our food to get in the spirit of this spooky season. Daughter Sara went all out with these ghoulish recipes on her TV show Aprons Optional. You can watch her latest episode on YouTube, but first here's a sneak peek.

Whether you are entertaining friendly ghosts or goblins, or serving up a frightfully good meal to your family, I know you will enjoy these recipes.

These "Jack O'Lantern Stuffed Peppers" are filled with ground beef, brown rice, and PARMESAN CHEESE. I love the colored peppers!

"Tator Terrors" are a fun addition to a meal or as appetizers, and your young little prince or princess can help you decorate them! They are stuffed with MOZZARELLA CHEESE.

Don't be scared by these "Halloweeno Poppers" made with Jalapeno peppers, CREAM CHEESE, and PEPPER JACK CHEESE. These little mummies are delicious.

Show off your artistic flair with "Spider Web Dip". It's taco inspired flavor pairs perfectly with the cute black olive spiders. It can be eaten year 'round if you spread the SOUR CREAM and SHREDDED CHEESE rather than making the web design.

This one is my favorite! The "Pumpkin Cheese Ball" is dairy delicious with CREAM CHEESE, SOUR CREAM, and SHREDDED SWISS and CHEDDAR CHEESE. It will make another appearance after Halloween since I think it will look perfect on our Thanksgiving table too!

And now- on with the show!

Aprons Optional

You can find the recipes on Sara's  Aprons Optional Facebook page.

As you can see, we at Bremer Farms use a lot of dairy foods when we are cooking. Our refrigerator is always chock full of dairy because of its flavor and flexibility. 

What dairy foods are in your fridge right now?

Sum-It-Up Saturday

"That about sums it up." 

Have you heard this phrase, or is it a Minnesota thing? 

"Crazy busy!" That sums up our week.

We finished combining corn this week. You can  learn about the process here. It is a huge job to cross off our to-do list. Now Farmer John is baling corn stalks to use for bedding.  Learn about stalk bales here.

Daughter Sara's community TV show premiered this week too. Aprons Optional is all about preparing 3 recipes; one easy, one medium difficulty, and one more time consuming. By the look on Sara's face, this is not the easy one!

Speaking of TV, my other local television star, son Michael (aka. Take A Hike, Mike!) and I handed out candy to over 550 kiddos at a local Halloween Community Event. So fun, and lots of Frozen costumes! You can see Michael's show Take A Hike, Mike visits Bremer Farms  here.

Our week began with my mom having colon cancer surgery. Through God's guiding hand, mom's surgery went well. Thank you Lord for giving me a mom who is stubborn, and always willing to fight whatever battle is set before her. Love you, Mom!

Our week ended with an addition to our family. A big welcome to the family to Porter, my mom's first Great-Grandchild, and my first Great-Nephew, and Mommy and Daddy (Dena and Aaren's) first child. I'm hoping to hold him, and spoil him real soon!

Lastly, congratulations to Cindy Q. You are the winner of my latest giveaway, and this addition to your herd, cow bank, will be in the mail next week.

So that about sums it up. See you soon!

This and That Thursday - 7

A little bit of this and a little bit of that- here's what we've been up to. 

Yes, I get it. It is not Thursday. I know that. And yes, I know that I have not posted twice this week, as I usually do. But please forgive me as I update you on my faith, family, friends and farming.

Love and hugs to my mom

You may remember that my dad passed away in September. What I haven't shared with you is that exactly one month prior to my dad's passing, my mom suffered a stroke. She is a tiger and has been fighting fiercely to recover, but this past month an infection slowed her recovery and she is recovering in the hospital (damn diabetes). Please add her to your prayers as she continues her battle.

We are officially half-way finished with our corn harvest. We have 10,000 bushels of corn harvested, and drying in our storage bin. Two things are holding up our completion of the project- We have had three days of rain this week which does now allow combining to continue, and our supplier ran out of propane. Propane is used to fuel our corn drying facility. Without drying the stored corn, it will rot and not be usable to feed our animals. We are not-so-patiently waiting for a delivery.

This photo did not make the cut.

Speaking of patience...we are waiting to see when and who will be visiting our farm from the Show Your Pride contest. Which Minnesota Viking do you think it will be?

Meet Trudy. She is one of six new calves to join Bremer Farms this week, including a set of adorable, healthy twins from one of our favorite cows, Weezy. What a perfect treat for Halloween!

Learn more about farming and our dairy way of life at Dairy Makes Sense

This And That Thursday - 4

A little bit of this and a little bit of that- here's what we've been up to.

Recently I attended the Minneapolis Public Schools Farm To School BBQ. You can read about it at my post  Farm 2 School. That night I met Kyle Larkin, who races at Elko Speedway. During our visit he told me his race car and racing attire is decked out in cow spots! "Send me a photo," I said. I'm all about sharing my love of dairy, and it appears that Kyle is too!

Sara has been busy preparing the front yard for our trick-or-treaters. When shopping, it seems she can't pass by the Halloween decorations without bringing a few home with her. My favorite is the big jack-o-lantern that sings. Trust me, it looks a lot spookier at night.

Good news! Our silage project is finished. Learn about silage here. Our bunker is completely full, and ready to feed our "girls" so they can continue to produce good-for-you milk. We are now back to baling hay, and combining corn will begin soon. Never a dull moment here!

Have you voted yet? Our Show Your Pride photo needs you. We are hoping to win the grand prize, a visit to our farm by a National Football League player. Please click on Show Your Pride and vote for our Minnesota Vikings photo. Just look for the purple pride. You can't miss it.

Learn more at Dairy Makes Sense

Whoooo Goes There?

Milky Way, Milk Duds, Cow Tails, these are some of my favorite candy treats. (Notice the dairy theme here?) Wash them down with a cold glass of milk. Yummy!

Since we live in the country, there are not many Trick-Or-Treaters that haunt our house. But the few that visited were too cute not to share their photos.

You butter believe Sara and Michael love Halloween!

Cooper, the cowardly lion, brought mom and dad.

Alex and Scott, as Boba Fett and Mario, say cheese!

I Want My Mummy!

 

Halloween at our house has always been a family celebration. This simple spook-tacular recipe (found on Pinterest) is a perfect way to have your little goblins help prepare a meal.

Happy Halloween!

These Fun Halloween Ingredients
 English muffins
Pizza sauce
Black olives
Scallions
Red or green pepper
Cheese sticks or slices
Instructions
1. Heat the oven to 350º F. For each mummy, spread a tablespoon of pizza sauce onto half of an English muffin (toast it first, if you like).
2. Set olive slices in place for eyes and add round slices of green onion or bits of red or green pepper for pupils.
3. Lay strips of cheese (we used a pulled-apart cheese stick) across the muffin for the mummy's wrappings.
4. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the muffin is toasty.