Friday, January 23, 2026
Home Blog Page 178

This Kansas city is one of the windiest in the United States. Where it ranks

By
Guest Columnist
-
0

Some Kansas residents may feel the need to dig in for extra traction on the state’s windiest days.

But where do we rank compared to cities across the United States?

A new study from Redfin, a real-estate brokerage company, tried to answer that question. One Kansas city did make the top 10.

Wichita is 5th windiest city in the U.S.

Redfin ranked the 10 windiest cities in the U.S., focusing on cities with a population of 100,000 or more, ranking the cities based on the annual average wind speed.

Wichita made the list at No. 5 with an annual average wind speed of 11.5 miles per hour.

The company noted that the city’s wind follows the same trends as other Midwest cities. Spring is the windiest season while summer is the calmest and strong thunderstorms are common most of the year.

Wichita’s record-highest wind speed is 101 mph. That wind gust came during a thunderstorm in 1993.

These are the windiest cities in the U.S.

Redfin’s rankings of the windiest cities in the U.S. with a population of 100,000 or more are as follows:

  1. Amarillo, Texas.
  2. Rochester, Minnesota.
  3. Lubbock, Texas.
  4. Corpus Christi, Texas.
  5. Wichita, Kansas.
  6. Boston, Massachusetts.
  7. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
  8. Wichita Falls, Texas.
  9. Fargo, North Dakota.
  10. Abilene, Texas.

The 10 least windy cities in the U.S.

Redfin’s rankings of the least windy cities in the U.S. with a population of 100,000 or more are:

  1. Los Angeles, California: 1.9 mph.
  2. Chattanooga, Tennessee: 5.0 mph.
  3. Tallahassee, Florida: 5.5 mph.
  4. Augusta, Georgia: 5.5 mph.
  5. Long Beach, California: 5.6 mph.
  6. Montgomery, Alabama: 5.9 mph.
  7. Macon, Georgia: 5.9 mph.
  8. Gainesville, Florida: 6.0 mph.
  9. Columbus, Georgia: 6.0 mph.
  10. Knoxville, Tennessee: 6.0 mph.

A New Deacon is Ordained

By
tammiehoeme
-
0

Lovina’s Amish Kitchen
Lovina Eitcher,
Old Order Amish
Cook, Wife &
Mother of Eight

This is Monday morning and my week looks extra busy. I will try to not let it bring me any stress though and take one day at a time. Life is precious and we need to treasure every day. It can change so quickly and we never know who will not be here to see when tomorrow comes. We do not know what the future holds but we do know “who” holds it.

Yesterday we had Communion services which is always good to be reminded of the story of Jesus and how he suffered and died so we can be forgiven for our sins. Good Friday is this week so everyone will be off work Friday. We will have Fast and Prayer Day in the morning then the whole family will come for lunch. This will seem extra special to have them here all at once since we don’t get together as often on Sundays with half of the family in another church district now. They have church services on the opposite Sunday then we do. Easter Sunday some of our family will have their Communion service that day.

Communion services usually start at 9 a.m. and end around 3:30 to 4 p.m. Yesterday our church district ordained a new deacon. Our deacon and his family are moving to Montana this month so we had to ordain a new one. When we ordain a new deacon or minister every member votes in private and the men with 2 or more votes are put in the lot. A slip of paper is put in one of the church songbooks. The same number of men in the lot is how many books are set out on a table. Each book has a rubber band around it. Once the bishop calls out the names of the men chosen, they take a book and sit down in the front row in front of the ministry from oldest to youngest. Their wives sit behind them. Yesterday there were six men chosen for the lot. The bishop then starts looking at each book to see if the slip of paper is in there. If not, he hands the book back to them. Yesterday the lot fell on our neighbor Levi. He was the youngest and was the last book opened. There are some intense moments during this time waiting to see who God calls for the new position. No campaigning is done and each member prays for guidance in who to cast their vote for. Once the man is chosen, his wife sits beside him as the bishop reads him his calling. Everyone then goes through to encourage the newly ordained deacon and his wife and family. A potluck supper is then served before everyone heads home. Family members from other church districts can come attend the ordination. The ladies from the neighboring church district brought supper in for the potluck. Next Sunday when their church will ordain a new minister then the ladies from our church will make the food for their potluck.

I usually like to have a bowl of colored eggs for Easter Sunday which I’ll have on Good Friday instead this year. We usually hide play eggs for the grandchildren to find. I will have a grand prize in one of the eggs. We don’t tell them there is an Easter bunny. They know we hide the eggs. I also like to play a few games for our adult children and their spouses. Last year we played a left, right game reading the story of Jesus being crucified. Gifts were passed out to every few persons then as I read the story and whenever I said left or right they had to pass the gift in that direction. When the story ended the person with the gift could keep it.

Easter is always a reminder that hope should never be lost for as dark as the road may seem there is always light at the end of it. May all your prayers be answered and my wish to you and your loved ones is that God will shower you with his many blessings. Have a Blessed Easter!

Lovina will have a book signing at Kankakee Public Library, 201 E Merchant St, Kankakee, IL on May 2 from 3-5 and at Shipshewana on the Road, Lake County Fairgrounds 4H Building, 889 S Court St, Crown Point, IN on May 3 from 9-3.

Chicken Bacon Ranch Tater Tot Casserole

2 pounds frozen tater tots

4 chicken breasts or 4 cups diced chicken

5 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour

1 1/2 cups milk

1 ounce package ranch salad seasoning

6 slices bacon

2 cups shredded cheese of your choice

Cook chicken in a skillet until done. In a large casserole dish place frozen tater tots on bottom. Place chicken on top. in a small pan to make gravy melt butter and then gradually add flour and milk until it slightly thickens. Stir in the Ranch seasoning and pour over the chicken.  Crumble bacon and sprinkle over gravy. Top with shredded cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. 

Lovina’s Amish Kitchen is written by Lovina Eicher, Old Order Amish writer, cook, wife, and mother of eight. Her three cookbooks, The Cherished Table, The Essential Amish Cookbook, and Amish Family Recipes, are available wherever books are sold. Readers can write to Eicher at Lovina’s Amish Kitchen, PO Box 234, Sturgis, MI 49091 (please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply); or email [email protected] and your message will be passed on to her to read. She does not personally respond to emails.

 

 

Digital Edition 04.16.25

By
tammiehoeme
-
0
digital edition

Digital Edition 04.16.25

Sittin’ At The Counter

By
Lee Pitts
-
0
lee pitts

When I was a traveling man whenever I got the chance I ate at the counter of a diner or a Truckstop. I liked the counter because you could talk to interesting people and have fun with the waitress. And yes, they were always female SO I’M NOT BEING SEXIST! My favorite counter was at Little America in Cheyenne because their counters were in the shape of a “U” so you could eavesdrop on all sorts of people at one time.

The main thing I learned sittin’ at the counter was, whether it was truckers or carpenters, they all have their own specialized lingo and I think the occupations with the most colorful lingo are cowboys and waitresses. And surprisingly a lot of times the waitress and the cowboy’s lingo intersect. Both groups call eggs cackleberries, beans are bullets, biscuits are sinkers, butter is axle grease or cow paste, onions are skunk eggs and shredded wheat is baled hay. So after the waitress takes your order she might yell to the cook, “Two cackleberries, a sinker with cow paste and some baled hay.” And that was your breakfast in secret code.

Often times a food has several names. A sinker or a brick (biscuit) to a waitress might be a doughgod or a hot rock to a cowboy. Both groups also have Son Of a Bitch Stew or SOB stew in their vocabulary, although it has different ingredients. For the cowboy it contains everything but ‘the hair, horns and holler’ consisting of the brains, sweetbreads, etc. from a freshly killed calf. But to the waitress it might just mean bossy in a bowl. (For some reason the cowboy also referred to SOB stew as District Attorney.) Cowboys refer to pancakes as splatterdabs while a waitress calls them blowout patches. If it’s a real tall stack of pancakes a waitress calls it a Jayne Mansfield, a curvy actress from my parent’s generation who was really “stacked.”

By sittin’ at the counter for nearly 50 years and having friends in the food business I picked up on a lot of food slang that was specific to a region. Southwestern cowboys also referred to beans as musical fruit, rib stickers, or Mexican strawberries. While cowboys call doughnuts bear sign to a waitress they are life preservers. Both waitresses and cowboys call coffee belly warmer and in addition cowboys also called it scared water or Arbuckle’s. If a waitress calls for a shingle with a shimmy and a shake she means buttered toast with jam.

Here are some more euphemisms that I like in the restaurant world: if a waitress tells the cook to “burn the British” what she really wants is a toasted English muffin. Bow-wow refers to a hotdog whereas a frankfurter is called bark, as in woof-woof, and a bloodhound in the hay is a hot dog with sauerkraut. A poached egg is a dead eye while two eggs either poached or scrambled on a piece of toast is called Adam and Eve on a raft. To a waitress ketchup is called hemorrhage, mustard is yellow paint, on the side is in the alley, a well done burger is a hockey puck and prunes are called looseners.

If a waitress yells at the cook to let it swim she means add extra sauce and make it cry means to add extra onion. If it’s a to-go order she says put wheels on it. If a customer wants their eggs scrambled the waitress tells the cook to wreck ’em. If a patron wants American cheese on their burger the cook is instructed to wax it. And here’s one I really like… If the waitress says to burn one, take it through the garden and pin a rose on it the diner wants a BLT. So much for waitress lingo being used to save time by shortening up an order!

Heart attack on a rack is biscuits and gravy, French fries are frog sticks, spareribs are called First Lady, a cup of Joe is mud, but if you want that with cream and sugar it’s blond with sand. Water is dog soup, moo juice is milk, Noah’s boy is Ham, on the hoof is rare, and turn out the lights and cry is liver and onions.

I think a better term would be “YUCK!”

Lettuce Eat Local: Really Risen

By
tammiehoeme
-
0

Amanda Miller
Columnist
Lettuce Eat Local

“So the white of the marshmallow can be a picture of how Jesus was clean from any sin,” I explained above the clamor of excited 7-year-olds as I opened the bag. I tossed everyone their own piece of fluffy sugar; “Oh hey, he was sweet too…and maybe squishy?” 

At some point every illustration breaks down, some just sooner than others. 

I love making “empty tomb rolls” for Easter week activities, both for nostalgia for me and for potential connection points with children, but crescent dough and Jesus’ resurrection are not a perfect match. 

Next I showed the kids how to dunk their marshmallow in melted butter and coat it in cinnamon sugar, kind of like Jesus’ body was prepared for burial — but no no, guys, they did not use butter. 

We’ll see what the first-graders tell their parents they learned from the snack; hopefully it isn’t quite as confusing as the year one little boy was scratching his head about how Jesus came out of a chicken egg. I had tried explaining the symbolism of chicks, new life, and Jesus busting out of the tomb, but this age is at such a complex stage of rich imagination coupled with solidly concrete thinking that it’s always interesting.

If you’re not familiar with these rolls, they are both very simple and a little bit magic — perhaps a little like Easter in fact, both straightforward and completely mindblowing. Crescent dough wedges get wrapped around marshmallows, with cinnamon sugar adding tantalizing flavor throughout. The admittedly somewhat abstract main point is that while the rolls bake, the marshmallows melt away, leaving a hollow center like an empty tomb. 

I tried valiantly to explain the major idea to Benson when we made them at home, too, but he may have been too busy licking the cinnamon sugar off his fingers to pay much attention. That said, he often later repeats phrases or ideas I was sure went in one ear and out the other (sometimes from conversations I wasn’t even having with him), so we’ll see. Similar also to the zinnias, peas, and radishes we’ve been burying in the garden and flowerpots, we do our best to plant the seeds and tend the ground, and wait to see what grows. 

I’m guessing some of the far-too-many plastic eggs we’ve filled and plan to hide this weekend will be lost and end up growing things too, but that’s different. 

Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter, invites us to take a hard, honest look at the painful things in life, to sit with the weight of being human; we are dust, and to dust we shall return. It isn’t typically described or experienced as a party — but though we can’t just skip to the good part, the good part does always come and hope is always here, for Easter is just about the best party imaginable. 

So we’re over here partying it up, knowing the Lord is risen; Jesus got not dead. And yes, there are marshmallows.

Risen Round Resurrection Rolls

“It smells like 1st grade!” exclaimed a previous student — while that wasn’t what I was expecting, cinnamon sugar is definitely better than some other options that demographic provides. I quietly enjoyed using a risen dough to celebrate the risen Savior. You can also pipe a simple icing in the shape of a cross on top of the rolls once they are cooled, but ours didn’t last that long. 

Prep tips: do not skip the parchment paper, unless you want the experience Brian had scrubbing caramelized marshmallow off the baking sheet. 

¾ cup warm milk

⅓ cup + ¼ cup sugar 

1 tablespoon instant yeast

½ cup butter, melted

1 egg

a small splash Mexican vanilla

3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more if needed

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

12 large marshmallows

Whisk milk, ⅓ cup sugar, and yeast in a measuring cup; let set for a few minutes while you gather the remaining ingredients. Whisk in ⅓ cup of the butter, the egg, and vanilla.

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, and half the cinnamon. Add in the milk mixture, and knead for several minutes, until cohesive and soft. Cover and let rise for 1-2 hours. Combine remaining sugar and cinnamon and set aside.

Once risen, divide dough into 12 portions; roll each out into a ¼” thick circle. Dip a marshmallow in the butter, then roll in cinnamon sugar, and place in the center of a dough round; fold and wrap around until the marshmallow is completely sealed. Place on a parchment-papered rimmed baking sheet, and bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes, until rolls are golden and marshmallows are fully melted.

1...177178179...4,782Page 178 of 4,782

Kansas News, Auctions & Classifieds

Trending

Categories

© Rural Messenger