Doughnut Recipe

Ingredients:

2 pkg. yeast

1/2 cup luke warm water

1 1/2 cup hot water (I use the water that I used to boil the potato)

1/2 cup powdered milk

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup riced potato (usually 1 large potato boiled then grated very fine)

3 tsp. salt

2 eggs slightly beaten

1/2 cup soft shortening (Crisco)

6 - 8 cups sifted flour

Add the yeast to the luke warm water and let grow.

Mix the hot water, powdered milk, sugar, potato, salt, eggs, shortening in a large bowl.

Add yeast/water mixture and 3 cups flour

Mix well and let rest 15 minutes

Add enough more flour to make a soft dough

Let rise until double in bulk in a draft free space. I cover with plastic or put in large tupperware. (about 1 hour)

Pour out onto floured counter and kneed in more flour until it forms a soft ball.

Let rise again (about 1 hour)

Place on foured counter and roll out to about 1/2 to 1/4 inch thick (I only do about 1/2 of the dough at a time). Cut into doughnuts and let rise. Usually by the time I get all of the dough cut out the first ones are ready to cook.

Cook in hot oil (about 375 - 400  you know the oil is hot enough when a small piece of dough floats to the top and the oil bubbles around it) - turn over when lightly browned and cook the other side. Be very careful not to get the hot oil on you or anyone else. Don't let it spill over onto the burners of the stove. I like to use my electric fry pan. It keeps the heat more even and I can control it better.

While hot either dunk in glaze (powdered sugar mixed with little butter, vanilla, and hot water) or cinnamon and sugar mixture.

Dear Utah

Hello Utah, and people/things associated with Utah. I hope that you know how much I like you, because I have committed to doing the most horrifically boring thing in the world in order to pay for plane tickets to come see you. I have to enter 400 surveys to cover the cost, and I'm currently at 25. Let me just say that I would rather perform manual labor than have to input surveys. It is almost torture. And it takes away from time I could be doing more productive things, like surfing Pinterest. But I know all this will be worth it when I step off the plan in less than two weeks now into that dry Utah air!!! Things I am excited about:

- Family and friends (duh, goes without saying)
- Dry air
- Fry sauce
- NORMAL streets and intersections
- People obeying traffic laws
- Not being honked at .5 seconds after the light turns green
- MOUNTAINS!!!!! Mountains mountains mountains mountains MOUNTAINS MOUNTAINS MOUNTAINS MounNTaiNS mOUnTaiNs MOUntaINs MOUNTAINS MOUNTAINS MOUNTAINS!!!
- Having an opportunity to sleep in
- Not being in charge of a household
- Not having to bring my own Dr Pepper when we go out to eat (yes, I actually do that here)
- The Temple

And many many more things. What am I not excited for? Missing my husband, and flying alone on a plane with a 9-month old..... I think if she starts crying and people are annoyed, I will literally start crying, so please pray for us!
Thank you Utah for being so wonderful, I will see you on November 6th!

Love, Alli and Haddy

Wonderful long weekend!!!

What a great weekend this has been (and it's not even over yet!!) I will start with Saturday, ahem:
SATURDAY: Well, I went shopping on Saturday. Yep! That's right! Shopping!!!! There's this new mall whatever place in Springfield that I am in love with, and I was planning on it being a quick trip, but this place has a pull....and, you know, lots of stuff to shop for. So! I bought some new boots for me.

Woot! It was between these creamish ones, and the gray ones below

I actually liked the gray ones a lot more, but I already have gray boots....and I sent out a text to my mom and sister and husband, and they all liked the cream ones better, so cream it was! And I am a happy new boot owner! There is also another happy new boot owner in our family.....Haddy! She got 3 new pairs of shoes! One for Church, and two just to keep her feet warm when we are out. Ta Da!

So cute. I love baby stuff.
Well, I also bought some new pants because my favorite pair have two large holes in a very unfortunate spot...that I won't mention...and I'm not putting a picture of them, so there. But I also bought some hair dye... I know what some of you may be thinking.... "Haven't you tried dying your own hair before? And didn't it turn out to be a disaster?" Well, yes. And yes. BUT I went to Sally's and talked to the girl there and told her all the problems I'd had the times before (yes, times, you'd think I'd learn) and she was very helpful and told me what to do and what to get. So I did! And I dyed my hair blonde! But it turned out brown, somehow. Hmm... So I have weird brown hair, and no I don't like it, but it was ten bucks, and you can't be ten bucks, and I don't have roots anymore. But I don't like the color, so I'm thinking about actually going darker because blonde is too hard, and I like dark hair, I just don't know how it will look on me. I don't know. Oh, and what's that you ask? Can you see a picture of my new brown hair? No. And I'm not even sorry. You should be thanking me actually.
Anyways, so when I got home from shopping I got ready because we had been invited to go to Linvilla on a halloween hayride!!! And I ate an apple cider doughnut, and it was delicious. Here are some pictures from the orchards:

It was so fun! And it was so nice to get out of our apartment.....I don't leave here often.
SUNDAY: Well, Justin and I decided to attempt some doughnut-making on Sunday. I was nervous because I'd never even made something simple involving yeast before, but I was starting off with doughnuts! Yikes! Well, after a very long day of adding flour and kneading and using up yeast packets because we thought we were doing it wrong, we finished our delicious doughnuts!!!

Glazed. (There are also some leaf-shaped ones in there)

Cinnamon sugar.

Sooooooooooooooo good!!! If I do say so myself! Mmm. Mmmmmmmmm. Also, I tried a new recipe for dinner, it's called Dijon Chicken Pasta and we LOVED it! Here's a picture:

Justin even nicknamed it because he liked it so much, he nicknamed it Troll Chicken (umm, I don't know why, he's funny) and if he nicknamed it that means he wants me to make it in the future. I highly recommend this food, here's a link to the recipe: http://rockrecipes.blogspot.com/2007/10/dijon-chicken-linguine-with-chanterelle.html You're welcome!
MONDAY: Justin had the day off and I gave him my pouty face so that he would do something fun with Haddy and I instead of do homework all day, and it worked! He took us on a tour of campus and afterwards we ate lunch at the famous Bobby Flay's Bobby's Burger Palace and let me just say....DELICIOUS!!!!!! So delicious. This weekend was pretty much filled with delicious food. They had this fry sauce that  rocked our socks, and with their onion rings and sweet potato fries? Can't go wrong! Pictures of the day:

This was some fancy area for the Wharton kids....I kept looking around and thinking "All of these people are going to be filthy rich one day"

One of the things I love about PA? Squirells!

This is Justin in front of College Hall. It's a beautiful building!

College Hall is green and it's next to the fine arts library which is red. I love the contrast!

Fine arts library

Penn coat of arms.

 Food: ( I didn't think to take the pictures until we had already delved into the food)

Sweet potato fries and onion rings. Mmmmmmmmm

Dallas burger: bbq sauce and cole slaw, weird? Yes. Delicious? Yes.

Philly burger...it was very spicy! Glad it was Justin's and not mine

And the day's not over!! In about a half hour we are to continue our annual Fall Harry Potter Marathon! We watch one Harry Potter movie every week until Halloween. Tonight we are watching the 4th one. Yay! I love this weekend!
Also some other things, here are some pictures of Haddy in her cute halloween shirt her gram sent to her (you can't tell in the pictures but it says "Be afraid, be very afraid")

Also some more awesome things: I bought curtains for our living room! I'm so excited for them to get here! And I bought a new shower curtain, which I am also very excited for (our bathroom is so dark and our current shower curtain is super dark, so them combined makes the whole thing very dark). Um, Justin would disagree with me, but I really don't buy stuff this much, this weekend was an exception (a wonderfully fun one!) Here are some pictures of my curtains that should be coming this week:

White: simple yet elegant, and light!

The website wouldn't let me save the image of the curtains in the color I bought them, so I just did this one, but the ones I ordered are actually tan.

Well, gonna go watch some Harry Potter now! Peace out!!