Homemade Runza Recipe with Pictures

Today I'm providing another public service announcement for Runza-loving Nebraskans who don't happen to live in Nebraska anymore and can't just drive through the Runza drive-thru on a whim.  (My previous public service announcement on how to re-heat frozen Runzas is here.)

Last week, I started thinking about Runzas and how good they are.  And I realized I didn't have any frozen Runzas in my freezer with which to satisfy my craving.  So, I posted a plea on Facebook, asking my Nebraska friends if any of them had an authentic-tasting Runza recipe they could send me.  Within just a few minutes, a lady from my hometown church sent me a recipe and it was vouched-for by another friend who had used her recipe, so I figured I'd better give it a try.

So, this past weekend, I made Runzas from scratch!  It took about 4 hours of total chopping/cooking time (which would definitely be shortened by buying shredded cabbage!) ...but it was totally worth it.  Please keep reading to follow along with my quest to reproduce the incredible Runza.

RUNZA RECIPE

Dough:
1 pkg active yeast
7 c flour, divided
1/2 c sugar
1 T salt
3 T butter

Mix together:
1 pkg yeast
2 c warm water (120*F - 130*F)
1/2 c sugar
1 T salt
2 c flour
Add 3 T melted butter and 5 c flour. Knead and let rise 2 hours or until doubled. Push down and let rise 5 minutes.  Divide into 15 balls.  Roll thin.

Filling:
2 lbs hamburger, browned
2 c finely chopped onions
5 c chopped/shredded cabbage (1 head)
2 T water
Add water to browned hamburger and put onions and cabbage on top of hamburger.  Steam 15 minutes and drain.
Add:
1.5 t Worcestershire sauce
1.5 t oregano (or less)
1.5 t black pepper
1 T seasoned salt

Put 2 generous spoonsful of meat on each rolled dough.  Roll up. Let rise a short time (5-10 minutes). Bake at 375*F for 20 minutes. Can be frozen before or after baking depending on your preference.

Seasoned salt:
2 T salt
1 t sugar
1 t paprika
1/4 t turmeric
1/2 t onion powder
1/2 t garlic powder
1/2 t celery salt

The ingredients:

The ingredients

When I went to buy the ingredients for the Runzas, I couldn't find any shredded cabbage, and not having ever cooked with cabbage, I wasn't sure if I would need one head or two heads to get 5 cups of chopped cabbage.  Turns out only one was necessary.  (Will be looking up cabbage recipes to figure out what to do with that other head this week!)

Also, yes, that onion is the same size as the head of cabbage.  I think the tag at the grocery store said they were "Colossal Onions".  I just had to take another picture for scale.

"Colossal" Onion

I figured the chopping of the cabbage would take quite a bit of time, so I started with that.  I cut it up, and cut out the core.

Cut up cabbage

And then chaos ensued.

Cabbage carnage

My original plan was to use the shredding blade on my food processor to get the cabbage pieces small enough, but with my cheap food processor, I ended up with big chunks of cabbage in with the shredded cabbage.  So then I tried just chopping it by hand, but that was going to take forever.  So then I ended up using the chopping blade to get it semi-small.  And I took those pieces and chopped them to the right size by hand.  It took a long time.  Next time, I'll drive to a different store and buy some pre-shredded cabbage!

The onion chopping went much more smoothly.  I got out my mini-chopper to make sure that the onion pieces were finely chopped and I ended up only using half of the colossal onion to make 2 cups of chopped onion.

Then it was time to make the dough.  I've never made dough by adding yeast to a mixture of water, sugar, salt, and flour, but I followed the directions exactly and then added the remaining flour and butter and let the stand mixer do the dirty work.

I love my stand mixer!

Dough, ready to rise

And then I took a break for about an hour and fifteen minutes before I started on the filling.  :)

The filling was pretty easy to cook up.  I browned the ground beef and readied the chopped cabbage and onions.

Cabbage/onions ready to go in

And since it said that the cabbage and onions were supposed to steam for 15 minutes, I figured that meant they were just supposed to sit on top of the ground beef.  So I plopped the whole bowl of cabbage/onion on top and put the cover on.

Prepare to be steamed

Sure enough, after (a little over) 15 minutes, the cabbage looked nicely cooked.

I'm steamed!

Time to add the spices.  The recipe called for "Seasoned Salt", which I assumed probably means Lawry's Seasoned Salt, but I didn't want the MSG from the Lawry's, so I hunted up a recipe for seasoned salt and mixed it up beforehand. (recipe included above)  My homemade blend is in the little jar in the middle.

Spice magic

All stirred up.  Looks promising!

Finished filling

By this point, the dough had been rising for 2 hours, so I got it out of the cold oven where it had been rising and punched it down before I remembered to take a picture.

Dough after rising

Honestly, though, it didn't really deflate at all so this is pretty much what it looked like after it had risen.  I had to go back and look at the "before picture" to make sure it had risen at all because I was expecting much more volume.

At some point during the rising of the dough, I figured out that I don't own a rolling pin, so I had to get creative...

Rolling pin, a.k.a. Pellegrino bottle

The recipe says to divide the dough into 15 balls and roll them thin.  Ok, this is the only part of the recipe I didn't follow exactly, I mean, 15 balls?!  Are you kidding me?  How do you possibly divide a huge mound of dough into 15 equal-sized balls?  Instead, I took the dough, divided it in half (or as close as possible), then divided that half into half (or as close as possible), and then tried to make 4 similarly-sized balls out of that.  This then made 16 dough balls of what turned out to be varying sizes, so maybe I should have just gone with 15 anyway...

Now for the hard part: filling the Runzas.  I was fairly worried about how this was going to turn out.  My favorite Runza is the Cheese Runza, so I put some American cheese in each one, too.

Filling the Runzas

Filled and pinched shut

And placed onto a non-stick baking sheet

The husband took some action shots while I was whining about how long this was taking and how I figured they probably wouldn't even taste right and I had done all this work for nothing.

Come on, stick together, you stupid dough!

How many more do I have to do?!

Finally, I finished them all and figured out a way to get them to all fit on the baking sheet!  Into the oven they went and I anxiously waited to see what would come out.

Pretty maids all in a row

They looked pretty good when I took them out...

Well, they look like Runzas, but how do they taste?

I was so worried, taking that first bite.  Could it be possible to have actually recreated the taste?...

YES! I was stunned.  They tasted just as good - dare I say, even better?! - as an authentic Runza.  I ended up eating one and a half of these marvelous creations and spent the rest of the evening flying high about my accomplishment.

And now we have some Runzas in the freezer, just waiting to satisfy those cravings for The Good Life.  :)

The Eyes Have It

As you may recall, Fellan seemed to be having some eyesight problems last year and we took him to have his eyes tested by a special eye doctor.  She determined that his eyes weren't working together correctly and prescribed him some prism glasses to use while he was reading or doing school work.

Well, she wanted Fellan to come back for a follow-up visit sometime in June and we just had that appointment on Monday.  Turns out, his eyes are tracking together perfectly now, and he no longer needs to wear his prism glasses.  Which is good, because he hasn't been wearing them for the past month and a half or so.  I guess he had pretty much figured out that he didn't need them anymore!

She did say that he's a bit far-sighted now, so she prescribed him some reading glasses for that.  We'll have to get that prescription filled pretty soon because Fellan cannot be stopped when it comes to reading.  He's become a reading maniac.  And it's so nice to see.  :)

It's fun to play at the Y-M-C-A!

The summer is upon us and we have been making the most of it.

The kids are in their third week of summer camp this week and they're having a wonderful time.  They have activities scheduled all day long from Monday through Thursday (music, art, cooking, Mad Science, photography, gym games, as well as swimming every day) and every Friday, they have a field trip to a place like Putt Putt Funhouse or Moody Gardens or iT'z.  Summer Camp is all fun all the time!

On top of that, though, we've also joined the YMCA for the summer.  I guess my expectations must have been really low because I've been completely blown away by how nice it has been to have this membership!

They have bicycle spin classes several times a day (plus Yoga, Zumba, Pilates, etc.) and last week we were able to make it to three of those spin classes before we had to take a break from killing ourselves over the weekend.

But we didn't let our tired bodies prevent us from taking advantage of the pool this weekend.  On Saturday, we rode our bikes to the YMCA (almost 5 miles from our house), spent a couple of hours playing around and swimming in the pool, and then rode back home.

I feel like a kid again - happy to have a summer of freedom! :)

Lids

The kids have two containers in their room that serve as their laundry hampers.  One container is for light-colored clothes and one is for dark-colored clothes.

One day, they were being goofy and they wandered into our room with the lids of those containers on their heads.  The husband thought it would be fun to help them with their creativity, so I now present you with a pictorial series entitled "A Father's Pride".  (Seems fitting since Father's Day is coming up on Sunday!)

Bow Ties

Insect Eyes

Bow Head

Uh...

100KON - Houston Memorial Park Picnic Loop Division

This year's 100 Miles of Nowhere turned out to be quite a bit different than last year's...

For one thing, neither the husband nor I are fit enough to attempt riding 100 miles in one day right now.  So, on Monday before we did the event, I suggested to the husband that maybe it would be a good idea to ride 100 Kilometers of Nowhere instead.  The relief that exuded from him was palpable.  He had been thinking the same thing, but was afraid to suggest it.

Once the elephant had exited from the room, we both started looking forward to our 100KON.

And, instead of doing it on the official weekend this year, we thought we'd to try to beat the heat a little bit, so we did it on Friday, May 4.

Car stocked with drinks, food, ice-cold wet towels, and tools

We didn't advertise the event to all our friends this year because we were in such pathetic shape. We even briefly considered doing the "simultaneous relay" division like a couple of our friends did last year just to save us those last 12.4 miles. (they each rode 50 miles together)  But, we figured we should try to be as true to the race name as possible.

Before the ride, I was fresh and full of energy.  How hard could riding 100k be, anyway?  It should be a breeze!

So happy! ...and so naive

When I turned on my bicycle computer, I realized that my suspicions were true: the last time I rode my road bike was last year's 100MON!  I just had to document that for posterity...

Wow! The last time I rode my road bike was last year's 100MON - should this be considered foreshadowing? Yes, it should be.

I also thought it would be fun to document the pains in my body BEFORE the event...
Sara's pains: left knee hurts, back is sore
Husband's pains: lower-back pain, general nausea

Sound like we're in for a fun ride, doesn't it? Har, dee, har, har.

We got about 20 minutes into the ride before this started happening.

We need to find a new trucking company?

The husband is a petroleum engineer who does mostly drilling work, so his job follows him around 24-7.  I've gotten used to it.  Sort of.

By mile 16.5, the pains included the above, plus...
Sara's pains: right hand numb
Husband's pains: left hand numb, hoping to avoid hospitalization this year (back-story: the week after last year's ride, the husband ended up in the hospital with unexplained abdominal pains for 3 days)

But we soldiered on and eventually made it to our break for lunch at just over the half-way mark.  By this point, it was really getting hot and I was beginning my downhill slide.

The heat, my God, the heat!

I tried to make sure I ate enough and drank enough water and gatorade, but the rest of the afternoon was just a blur of pain.  I didn't have the energy to continue to document my pains at each mile-marker, but by the end, my legs were cramping (which has never happened to me before!) and it was all I could do to finish the 100 kilometers.

It helped that there was quite a bit more of this going on...

What now?!

Oh, you decided not to use the trucking company I found this morning?

After stopping with the husband several times, I decided to ride the remaining few miles by myself, so I left him to finish dealing with the rig on his own.  I figured he'd catch up to me by the end, but by that point, I was riding so slowly, he easily caught me within only a couple of laps.

We finished the 100 kilometers with 0.12 miles to spare!

100 km (62.4 miles)

Of course, the husband was still getting work e-mails and texts, but by that point, I didn't care.  I was done with the worst ride of my life!

You keep working, I'll be over here recovering...

 

Feeling much better now!

Breaking out the laptop! This must be serious.

So that's the report of our 100KON this year.  We'll be back next year, but next year, I'm taking the training portion of the ride preparation a little more seriously.

Oh, and I almost forgot, I get to proclaim which divisions we won!

Well, I guess I'll claim that I won the "Houston Women's Happy-I-Didn't-Die Division" and the husband once again took first place in the "Most Billable Hours While Riding Division".  Until next year!

Fellan turned nine!

This past weekend was Fellan's birthday.  We had two parties for him - one with just the family and one with a few friends.

For the family party, Fellan requested a chocolate, chocolate chip cake.  This happens to be our family's favorite cake (and also pretty much the easiest cake to make!), so I happily obliged.

You can never have too much chocolate!

Fellan originally wanted to have another "Mad Science" birthday party with his friends, but we had talked about only inviting his good friends and I didn't want to pay that much for a party with only 6 kids!

So I talked him into having a party at the park with water guns and water balloons.

It turned out to be great weather and the kids had an excellent time.

One of the kids apparently didn't think the water guns got him wet enough...

Water balloon fight!

Fellan's request: Chocolate cake with green letters. "Happy Birthday" in cursive.

A Better Year

It's been awhile since I wrote an update about Fellan and his Dysgraphia and eyesight problems.  I guess I haven't been thinking about it as much because everything is going so much better this year for him in school than last year!

Last year, at the end of the year, his teacher had basically told us that public school was not the place for Fellan.  That sent us into a whole tailspin of testing, touring and applying to alternate private schools, more testing, receiving a diagnosis of Dysgraphia, and eventually MORE testing and determining that he has some vision problems.

Luckily, after all of that, this year has been so much better than last year.

Within the first week of school last fall, we met with Fellan's teacher to explain to her about his problems with Dysgraphia.  The woman who did the testing gave us a list of suggestions for his teacher - such as not forcing him to do writing work and trying to help him to focus better on his work by folding his paper over, etc. She was extremely receptive to the idea and it has shown in Fellan's confidence and enjoyment of school this year.

We've met with her a few time throughout the year, too, and every time we meet with her, she gives him glowing reports.  He still can't sit still, but she's able to redirect him most of the time and he does fine on his tests, so even though it looks like he's not paying attention, he's definitely still learning.

The most significant change we've seen in him, though, has been his reading.  About 3 months ago, it was like a light bulb went off in his head and he started devouring his Percy Jackson books.  He had been slowly, slowly reading The Lightning Thief over the previous three months, but Zoom! In about three weeks, he read the remaining 3/4 of the book!

And he was off to the races from there.  He is now starting the 5th book of the series and I'm thinking about maybe doing a family book club this summer to start reading the Harry Potter books.  None of us have ever read them, so it could be a fun thing for the whole family to do.

I'm so happy and proud to see him finally blossoming scholastically.  We knew it was in there from the beginning, we just didn't know how to get it out!  Maybe it's all the testing we had done and the occupational therapy that he's been doing.  Maybe it's the fact that the teacher is supportive of him as a person this year.  Maybe it's just that he's maturing and all of this would have happened naturally even without the extra work.  Honestly, I don't care what made the difference.  I just hope it sticks.  :)

Proud Cub Scout with the awards and belt loops he earned this year

One year older

This past weekend was my birthday.  I'm getting really old now.

The husband and Fellan went camping (which I had previously given them permission to do), so it was just the girls hanging out on my birthday day.

We went over to a friend's house and she fed us lunch and had cake for me.  I thanked her for not putting 41 candles on the cake and she said, "Oh! I told my mom you were 42!" Oy vey!

Quick trip to Frederickburg

The kids got Good Friday off from school, so we packed up some stuff and headed out to Fredericksburg, TX for some hiking, biking, wine tasting, and brats.

We drove up on Thursday evening so we could get a head start on the fun on Friday morning.  Unfortunately, by the time we actually got up, had breakfast and headed out to Enchanted Rock for the hiking part of our plan, the park was full!  I had never heard of a state park being full before, but since there was a line of cars parked on the highway leading to the entrance, we decided to rearrange our schedule a little and go to the wineries first and come back in the late afternoon for our hike.

On the way to the wineries, we found some bluebonnets to force the kids to sit in and have their pictures taken.  It's a rite of passage for all children living in Texas...

Again, with the Bluebonnets?!

After taking a million pictures with the Bluebonnets, we headed on to the wineries for some wine tasting (and buying) and then made our way to have a late lunch at Alamo Springs Cafe, home of the "Best Burger in Texas".  Well, since I haven't tried all of the burgers in Texas, I can't say it was the best, but it was definitely good!  :)

We finally made it to Enchanted Rock for the second time at about 5:30 - perfect timing for a late afternoon/sunset hike!

The kids didn't let the slope and rocks slow them down at all.

Mountain Goats

It's so pretty in that part of the state that we had to stop and take several pictures on the way up, but it's really hard to capture it.

Yo

'Sup?

We made it to the top in about 20 minutes!  The husband and I were wheezing along behind the kids, who exclaimed something like, "That's it?! I wanted to climb more!"

We had to get them to curb their enthusiasm a little bit, though, because we got there just in time to witness a sunset marriage proposal and we didn't want them to wreck it.  (She said yes!)

We had to re-enact the same picture that we took the last time we were there...

 

 

Some of these feet seem to have grown.

And then we had a little fun with the camera angle on the way down.  ;)

Whoa!

The evening finished by stopping by the Altdorf Biergarten for a beer and a couple of bratwurst, but we were still so full from our late lunch that we had to split an appetizer order.  What a shame.

While we were tasting the wines that afternoon, one of the girls pouring wine for us mentioned that there was a somewhat new bourbon distillery in the area, so we made it a point to stop there for a tour on the way to mountain biking the next morning!

One of the stills - not sure if this one was "Fat Man" or "Little Boy"

Yum

And then we were off for some mountain biking at Pedernales Falls State Park.  But we kind of forgot that the terrain in the Hill Country is actually pretty hilly!  The kids had a hard time riding up the hills in the park.  Plus, it was actually a really hot day.  This picture was taken after a rather long hill.

Our family motto: Torture them early and often.

We made it back to Houston on Saturday evening and on Sunday morning, we headed off to church.

Much happier and well-rested