Breakfast Burritos for a Crowd

Ingredients:

·         54 large eggs

·         ~3/4 c low fat milk

·         2.5 pounds diced ham

·         2 fresh green bell peppers, diced

·         1 fresh red bell pepper, diced

·         1 large white onion, diced

·         1 medium fresh tomato, diced

·         ~1/4 cup mustard

·         ~2 t garlic powder

·         ~2 T hot pepper sauce

·         ~2 t salt

·         ~48 flour tortillas

·         ~2.5 lbs, various shredded cheeses (I used 1.5 lb “Mexican”, .5 lb queso quesadilla, .5 lb hot pepper blend – these are the Kroger names, no idea what they translate to with other stuff)

·         salsa, if desired (for serving)

·         aluminum foil (optional – helps with reheating and travel)

Directions:

1.       Preheat oven to 350F (175C)

2.       In the largest bowl that you have, combine milk, ham, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, mustard, garlic powder, hot pepper sauce, salt, and as many eggs as you can fit. Whisk the extra eggs together in a separate bowl, if needed. (I did.)

3.       Pour egg mixture into casserole dish(es). Cover tightly with foil.

4.       Bake egg mixture for 60 minutes, or until no longer runny.

5.       While baking, clean up kitchen prep utensils and shingle tortillas in a baking dish or casserole dish or something, placing a damp paper towel every 4^th or so layer.

6.       Throw those tortillas in the oven for about five minutes, or until more pliable.

7.       Scoop out egg mixture into your newly cleaned mixing bowls and fold in cheese until melted.

8.       Fill the tortillas with a good sized scoop of burrito contents, and roll them to your desired shape. (wrap in foil, optional)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go roll someplace dark and quiet to take a nap. :)

News

I should mention that I am actually in the Mechanical Engineering school now. It was a long and dreadful journey. The real nightmare was scheduling. A good moral for this story is: try hard your freshman year, especially if you plan on changing majors at any point in time.

So now I'm working harder than before, but it's ok. I just got back from Panama City Beach for Spring Break. I know that it's stereotypical, but I wanted to do that just once before I graduated. It was pretty crazy, but nothing TOO bad. I went with about 40 guys from my fraternity and we played a lot of sand volleyball and football and general games on the beach. It was also very relaxing and I got a lot of quiet downtime in.

But now I'm back at school and pretty stressed out already. Back to the grind!

first day

first day of school. i feel pretty motivated this year. i have things set in place so that i do well. all of my classes are in the morning and the latest that i get done is 1:30, so that i have all afternoon to work.

it should be alright.

Home again, Home again, jiggity jig

Not sure where the title came from. An old children's nursery rhyme, maybe?
I am in my final week of my internship. I'm staying with friends from church until Friday. Some of my other friends that I made here are throwing me a going away party on Friday, and then Saturday morning I will head home. I am definitely ready to go home. I miss my family and friends. I've enjoyed my stay here, and I spent entirely too much money on gas driving home entirely too often, but overall, it's been a fantastic summer. I've become pretty successful at budgeting and short-term financial planning. I've become more fiscally responsible, and have learned a fair amount about business. I can't say that I'd take this job again next summer or anything, but it's definitely been alright.

Home again, Home again, jiggity jig

Library Posting

In a last ditch effort of frugality, I canceled my cable to my apartment. It will only save me about $54.44, but hey. I heard that the Rockford Public Library had free wifi. With a stroke of very uncharacteristic luck, there's a branch .8 km from where I live. So now I just bike there whenever I need internet, like now, so that I can upload my pictures from Jackson Hole this last weekend. The internet here is unbelievably slow, so it's taking me awhile.

The trip was amazing! The rest of my family is still out there (they're there from last Friday until this Friday), where I could only be there from Friday night to Tuesday morning. It stinks, but I'm grateful that my boss let me take off any days at all. Plus, it was well worth the short amount of time that I got to spend there! We went whitewater rafting, hiking, and of course, sightseeing in Yellowstone and Grand Teton NP. I definitely want to go back someday.

If I have the patience to upload some pictures on this painfully slow connection, I will. Otherwise, you can see them on facebook (if you have one). There are some pictures of our rafting group here.

Well, some friends here are playing live at a coffee shop just outside of town. I better leave if I want to get there on time. Biking is fun, but sometimes slow in the city if you obey all traffic laws (i do.).

so soon?

An unprecedented 2 posts in a month (I think)?! CRAZY!

I suppose that I should offer a little more insight into my job.
My job description says that I am a "Process Flow Analyst," though I may have made that up a little bit too. I am essentially a glorified detective. The president or production manager will assign me a production line to analyze, and then I look at the machinery, the people, and the flow of parts and such to figure out how to make it run more efficiently. Then I get cost estimates for what each project should cost and compare that with how much the company would save in variable costs (electricity, labor, downtime, etc.) Based on that, I can determine how beneficial it would be to invest in the idea.

So far, it's been pretty good. The machines are run painfully inefficiently, so I've found oppurtunities to save the company a total of over $550k with a total initial investment of $65k with no reoccuring costs. Not bad for my first time doing this stuff.

This weekend I have a wedding to go to. One of my high school classmates is getting married. People are getting married like crazy these days! Yikes! I guess that it means that I'm getting older, I suppose. Bummer.

Although, I haven't seen my family for well over a month. It will be nice to see them again. Apparently, they basically built a big deck on the back of our house in two or three days. I think that these are the dangers when you have three guys (that like to do things with their hands) get bored. There are pictures on Dad's facebook page here.

I have also rekindled my love for "How I Met Your Mother." I feel like the show has a very divided audience in that you either love it or hate it. As stupid and occasionally raunchy as it it (though never in action, only in words) it covers a lot of issues and makes for some good tv if you really get into it.

"It's gonna be LEGEN -- wait for it -- and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is DAIRY!"
-Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris)

Summer Lovin' or lack thereof

So I accepted an internship with the Testor Corporation located in Rockford, IL this summer. For the most part, it's been great. The people are mostly friendly and easy to work with. The workload is tolerable, and the city isn't THAT bad, so it all works out.

I'm finding that sticking to a budget is annoying, at best. When I'm at school, I just don't spend money because I don't have it. When I'm working and living at home for the summer, I never have to worry about food, rent, electric, cable, etc. I realize that this probably seems childish to all of you older than me who have been doing this for quite some time (see also: everyone I know that blogs.), but I'm just finding out quantitatively HOW much it stinks, so cut me some slack.

That being said, I've been toying with Google Calendar trying to figure out how to make a public calendar viewable so that my parents can see where I'm going to be. I may just embed it in this if I have time.
[edit: I got it to work, but it's at the bottom of the page. Sorry.]

I just got back from a weekend in White Pidgeon, MI with a good friend I meet through Greek InterVarsity. His family owns a lakehouse and so we went tubing and hung out for the week. It was incredibly relaxing and fun. It makes me want to buy a lake house when I get older. At least I have something to hope for now, I suppose...

Last week, I found someone who's going to let me borrow their bicycle for the summer. I may try to buy it off of him at the end of the summer if he doesn't want it. I need to run to Wal-Mart and buy a bike pump tonight, so I'll let you know how that goes. It's an older road bike, but after playing with the deraileurs some, it shifts like a dream, so hopefully the tires hold air.

In the meantime though, I should probably get back to work. They don't pay me to sit here and blog. (Though I guess technically they are right now...)

p.s. - I'm not just exactly where the title of this post came from. I think it may be because I miss everyone from back home a lot, mainly my family and Tori (gf). I mean, I've made friends here, but it's not the same.