St. Patrick's Day

For us St. Patrick's Day started on Monday night when Jared called and said he wanted make make duck tape hats for the parade. I'm starting to think our lives are being consumed by duck tape so this may be the last duck tape thing we make for a while. We spent a good hour and a half perfecting the hats and then began our quest for matching green shirts. Somehow we ended up at Hy-Vee around 11pm and found some sweet Shawnee Mission South gear which worked perfectly. St. Patty's day was awesome, it started out with Tracie running an hour behind because like all girls she is slow, but we finally made our way to the parade. The parade was lame like most parades but afterwards we went to Burrito Brothers (The greatest burrito shop in KC) which proved to be a great start to the afternoon. After plowing through our burritos we picked up Jenny and went to see The Von Bondies and Silversun Pickups for a free show in downtown KC. This show was badass. I wasn't really a fan of either band before the show but now I'm sold. Overall the day was a great kick off to spring time in KC.

Duck Tape Underwear

A week or so ago I made a duck tape wallet in my spare time and it ended up turning out pretty sweet, but it got me thinking, what else could I make with duck tape, are my talents being under-utilized by making silly wallets? The conversation eventually made it into the office and Jared's brother Josh told us about some duck tape socks that he saw once and somehow that gave us the idea of duck tape underwear. We all had a good laugh at the thought of some idiot wearing duck tape underwear and then the idea morphed into duck tape thongs. Well on Saturday night, after a round of McGangBangs, Jared and I realized just how talented we really are. As you can see from the picture we made our first pair of duck tape thongs, we even made holders for... well you get the point. Jared's is the black one with red stripes and mine is the lifegaurd suit.

McGangBang = McSuckWich

Tonight we finally decided to give the "McGangBang" a try. The name "McGangBang" has more bang than the actual sandwich. As it was stated in an earlier post, the McGangBang is a double-cheese burger with a McChicken sandwich in the middle. Sounds large, looks kinda large, but the taste is bland, the texture is strange, and the filling is well, sorta weak. For the value, about $2.00 the McGangBang is an extremely good buy, but overall it was a disappointing experience.

The Ultimate Bread Recipe

Over the last two years I've been searching for the perfect bread recipe and tonight I finally found it. Bread is super easy to make but good bread is another story. I've been trying to create bakery quality, light, fluffy dinner rolls and my biggest problem has been with the light and fluffy part. No matter what I tried my rolls always seem to come out dense. Tonight though proved to be a nice change of pace. I tired a new recipe that went against everything I knew about bread baking and it gave me the lightest fluffiest bread I've ever made. With this recipie you do not activate the yeast with warm water and you do not let it rise for an hour and then punch it down and let rise for another 30 minutes, instead you let it rise for 15 minutes, punch it down, then let it rise for an hour or so and put it right in the oven. Below is the recipe and I promise you if you have problems with dense bread this is the recipe you've been looking for.

Ingredients: 4C flour, 1C warm milk, 1pkg yeast, 6 tblsp butter, 1/2c water, 2 tblsp honey, 2tsp salt

Directions: In a large mixing bowl whisk together the flour and yeast. Add the butter and mix on a low speed with a dough hook, add milk water, honey and salt. Once all four is moist crank the mixer up to medium and let knead for 7 minutes.

After kneading pull the dough out of the mixer and place on a floured surface. Shape the dough into a football, flour the top, cover in plastic and let rest for 15 minutes. After resting push dough down lightly and form into a 12X5 shape. Next I cut the dough in half, to make a half loaf and shaped 6 dinner rolls but you can shape the bread however you would like. After you shape the bread, place into a greased pan or pans, cover in plastic and let rise in a warm place for 60-90 minutes.

After dough has risen, place in the oven at 425 degrees on the lowest rack. For dinner rolls cook 10-12 minutes and for a half loaf cook 20-22 minutes. If the top is browning too much cover in tin foil while baking.

The McGangBang

One of my buddies was telling me about this new sandwich at McDonalds called the McGangBang and it pretty much sounds like the greatest food creation that I have heard of lately. The concept is easy; a double cheeseburger with a McChicken sandwich inside of it but the name is what sells me. Click here to see a website that can give you a little more info. Lately I've been very excited with all of the new food concepts that have been coming out. Food can be an artistic expression and going out to eat takes away from the artistic value but by creating these new takes on classic fast food dishes it ads some excitement back into eating out.

Lately my friends and I have been creating ways to make dining out fun and the latest has been what we like to call the trifecta. There is an awesome burrito joint in Lawrence, KS called Burrito King and they serve giant burritos for about $3.00. We used to make the drive down, eat a burrito and call it a night but lately we've been adding more and more food to the line up. The trifecta is composed of a burrito from BK, a pizza from Pizza Shuttle and tacos from Taco Johns. If you are ever in Lawrence you should see if you can handle the trifecta. Next up on my list though is the McGangBang, it just sounds too good to pass up. Happy eating!

Duck Tape Wallet

Yesterday Jared and Josh were lucky enough to score a couple of tickets to go see our Jayhawks secure the Big 12 title against Texas. Unfortunately this left me all by myself to watch the game at home. While sitting at home I was thinking that I could use a new wallet so I decided to pull out a roll of duck tape and put together my very own duck tape wallet. I've always heard stories about people making these but I never knew how badass one would actually be to own and how easy they are to make. Below are a few pictures and the directions incase you would ever like to make your own.

Step 1: Make an 8.5in x 7in sheet of duck tape. Rip a strip of tape at least 8.5 inches in length and place sticky side up on your working surface. Get a second piece of equal length and place sticky side down half way over the first strip. Fold the rest of the strip facing up over the second strip. Flip over the two strips and place a third strip sticky side down covering the remaining sticky part of the second strip. Flip the sheet again and continue this process until you have an 8.5in x 7in sheet.

Step2: Trim edges and fold in half creating an 8.5in x 3.5 in rectangle. This step creates the pouch that holds the bills, just tape the two open ends and move to step 3.

Step 3: Create Card Pockets Create a 4in x 3.5in sheet of duck tape using the same method as step 1. Trim edges and fold up 1.5in from the bottom and tape edges to create a pocket. Create as many of these pockets as you need and tape together in a layerd format.

Step 4: Attatch Pockets to Wallet Tape to the inside left panel of the wallet.

Step 5: Create ID Holder Using the same method as step 1 to make a sheet of tape but using clear packing tape, create a window for your ID. Make a duck tape border around the edges for extra durability and attach to the inside right panel of the wallet. Tape down the left, bottom and right edges leaving the top open to slide in the ID.

Step 6: Decorate the Wallet Using other colors of duck tape create patterns or designs to accent your wallet.

Jared's Brother Josh Hitting it Hard in LV