The Summer Cooking Series....Bacon Recipes Vol. 1

Bacon Wrapped Grilled Corn on the Cob: The ultimate decadent corn on the cob

• 8 ears corn.
• 1 pound bacon.
• Gently pull back the husk exposing the corn. Do not remove the husk.
• Remove the corn silk and use a brush to make sure all the silk is removed.
• Soak the corn with the silks removed in water for 30 minutes. This will prevent the husks from charring.
• Preheat a grill to medium heat.
• Remove from the water and pat dry.
• Take a strip of bacon and wrap it around the corn. Fold the corn leaves back over, covering the bacon and corn.
• Tie the leaves with butcher string and repeat the process for each ear of corn.
• Place the ears of corn on the hot grill and cook, turning occasionally until bacon is cooked and corn is tender, approximately 15 to 20 minutes.

Keith and Kirsten sittin' in a tree...

Here is a good picture of Keith with a lady named Kirsten. They have been dating for a few months. This picutre was taken at a recent Gold & Green Ball in their stake or ward. Pretty nice for a church dance, eh?

Letter from Mark 27 March 2006

Dear Family,

This comming week is going to be a bit hectic, in about an hour we are leaving and will spend the day with the platteville elders, then stay the night there and go to zone conference on tuesday, after zone conference we are going on exchanges with the zone leaders and will be driving back to madison to switch back, then saturday we are going to platteville againg and staying over night for general conference because we do not get it at our building. we estimated that i will be in the car about 14 hours this week, and will get to work in my area about 13 hours. it should be interesting. I am looking forward to conference.

Friday we stoped by a guy that we had met tracting, a few weeks ago we saw him driving his tractor down the road, we wave, and he slammed on the breaks, and got out and talked to us, he had talked to missionaries before and invited us over sometime. we talked a little on friday and h said that next monday he is going to take us to pikes peak, which is just over the mississippi from us, and gets a good view of most of our area. we also talked ot him about going back saturday night and helping him milk his 70 cows. he has a thing where he milks 12 cows at a time on one side, and rotates another 12 in on the other side and a pit in the middle that we were in, and milking machines that swing from one side to the ther. It was tons of fun. we will probably go back and do it again before i leave. elder stahl grew up on a small farm, and had a family milk cow so he loved it, he had missed milking cows, but had never done it on that level. before we left on friday he said "hold on, we have a tradition around here." and ran inside his house, then he came out with two t-bone steacks from cows he raised then had butchered. they were awesome.

the branch here averaged 44 people this month, which officialy qualifies them to buy land for a building, they are getting closer to their gaol of a building, when i got here they were averaging about 35-37 each week, now we are breaking 40 every week. It has been an awesome expienence serving in a branch this small, there are only about 85 people on the ward list. transfers are the 6th of april, so yesterday was probably my last sacrament meeting here. the area is slowly starting to pick up, but i am glad to be moving on.

Thank you for all of the support that you have given me, I appreciate it very much. I love you all.

Elder Lundberg

More Bacon, Please!

Cloned pigs are porky and best, say scientists

Sun Mar 26, 1:15 PM ET

PARIS (AFP) - Researchers say they have created cloned piglets that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the oil that is prized as being beneficial to the heart.

Omega-3 is mostly found in fish, but this supply is threatened by overtrawling and clouded by worries about mercury pollution, which accumulates in fish livers.

A team led by Yifan Dai of the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine transferred into foetal pig cells a gene called fat-1 that had been identified in a well-studied lab animal, a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans.

Fat-1 converts the abundant but less desirable omega-6 fatty acids into the coveted omega-3.

The nucleus of pig eggs was then removed and substituted with the nucleus from these engineered cells, following the now-classic method of animal cloning that began with Dolly the Sheep in 1996.

The research's prime aim is to gain a better understanding of cardiac function, where hog and human are strikingly similar, the team reports on Sunday in the specialist journal Nature Biotechnology.

"We would use these animals as a model to see what happens to heart health if we increase the omega-3 levels in the body. It could allow us to see how that helps cardiovascular function," said co-author Randy Prather, a specialist of the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Given that the animals are experimental -- not to say extraordinarily expensive -- no one knows what their meat tastes like, whether it is safe to eat and whether the piglets will retain high levels of omega-3 when they reach adulthood.

If, eventually, the transgenic hogs go to market, there could be double benefits, argued Prather.

"First, the pigs could have better cardiovascular function and therefore live longer, which would limit livestock loss for farmers. Second, they could be healthier animals for human consumption."

Genetic manipulation of animals and plants for agricultural purposes is fiercely opposed by environmentalists as being potentially dangerous to health and the ecology.

Their concerns are shared by many experts, who urge extensive testing to obey the so-called precautionary principle when introducing novel technology.

Animal cloning, with the present technology, also results in many failures, as shown in Dolly's premature demise in 2003.

The endeavour to create the world's first omega-3 pig entailed the creation of 1,633 cloned embryos, which were implanted into 14 sows.

Only 12 pregnancies resulted, of which five came to term, delivering just 10 live piglets and two dead ones.

Of the 10 survivors, only six had the fat-1 gene -- and three (including two with fat-1) had a heart defect and had to be killed at the age of three weeks.

The demand for omega-3 has surged in recent years because of their deemed benefits in cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.

But a review of the evidence, published on Saturday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), casts doubt on this.

It looked at 89 studies into omega-3, and said there was concern that people who have angina might suffer a higher risk of a fatal heart attack by taking supplements of the oil.

In 2002, Prather's team created pigs designed to produce organs that were more suitable for transplantation into humans.

Pig organs are coated with sugar molecules that trigger acute rejection by the human immune system. The modified piglets lacked one of the two copies of the sugar-making gene, thus marking an important experimental step towards so-called xenotransplantation.

Letter from Mark 20 March 2006

Dear Family,

This week has been good, on saturday chuck McCullick ( a less Active member) and Liz Anderson( an investigator) got married. that was great to see. Liz still smokes, and is pregnant, so she has been told to cut down slowly, but be careful quitting because the baby could suffer from withdrawls. she has cut back on smoking a bunch, it will probably be a while before she can be baptized, but they are making steps in the right direction.

The last few weeks we have been getting about 40 people at sacrament meetng, and close to 50 one week, if they average 40 this month they can buy land to build a building on, so far I think they are doing it, attendance is slowly going up, the branch here is getting very excited and wants a building bady. general conference will be interesting, our building can supposedly get audio, but we have to go to platteville to watch it, we are trying to get it approved to stay the night there saturday night to save us miles and so we can watch all 10 hours.

my companion and I spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday, we both spoke for 20 min on teaching by the spirit, it went well. I spoke first, I was glad about that because i wasn't sure i would take 20 min, but i eneded up speaking almost exactly 20 min. so it went well. Elder stahl ended up cutting a few stories to keep his to 20 min. he was planning to do that anyway though.

Elder Stahl and i have been doing a lot better this week, he started getting up at 6:30 (he usually was in bed till about 7:30.) he has said that he has not been able to get to sleep after i get up, and i think the fact that it is lighter outside in the mornings now is heling him get up, it has made it a lot easier for me in the mornings.

It dropped a few inches of very wet snow earlier in the week, but most of it is melted now, it has been slowly warming up, and i don't think it will snow much if at all.

Thank you all for the support that you give me, i appreciate your prayers, and have been praying for you. I love you all.

Elder Lundberg

Letter from Mark 13 March 2006

Dear Family,

This week has been nice. it was in the 60's for a few days, it has cooled down to the 40's and is supposed to drop some snow later in the week. It was warm enough earlier that i didn't have to wear a coat, my suit was fine. It has been a mild winter here, but i am ready for spring.

My companion, Elder Stahl, is from hermiston, Oregon. it is in the north west corner. he has been out for 15 months. as far as junior and senior comapions I am the junior right now and it is all up to the mission president on when you go senior, there are some that i came out with that are already senior companions. and for driving the senior usually drives, unless he doesn't have a lisence or has gotten in an accident on his mission, when we go on exchanges i can drive, but other than that i don't. Hope that answers all or you questions.

We had a few pretty cool experiences this week. tuesday was interviews with the president, and because we have a large area and we live on the edge of it, he approved us to go camping to save miles when we are on the far edge of our area. we are going today to cabelas (the have a big store/factory here) to get stuff. we probably won't go untill the end of the transfer when it is warmer, but we will go before i leave, which is most likely on april 6th.
tuesday night we stayed the night in plattevill with the elders there, then worked our way back home. around 5:30 we decided to go a bit further into our area than we had planned to see an old referal from salt lake for a video. Her name was kathy edwards, she has a member daughter in arizona, and a grandson in mexico on a mission. she is mostly nice to us because she has a granson on a mission. when we stopped by she had a daughter that had a baby about a month ago. the baby had a whole in its heart, and on tuesday she was talking to her sister in arizona( who has our number after visiting here in december.) her sister said she could call us and send us over to give the baby a blessing even though they are not members. we had not even been home since they talked, but we were able to give the baby a blessing. it was great, the spirit was very strong there, and I think we left a good impression that might open the door down the road, after the blessing the mother was crying. It was amazing.

Friday night we found out that an excommunicated member was being re-baptized on saturday. we got a ride to platteville saturday night to see the baptism. Eizabeth Hull, the lady that was baptized has come to church the whole time i have been here, she plays the piano every week. we were shocked because we had nothing to do with teaching her or the baptism, but it was great to see her be baptized, her son baptized her.

Things have been tough the past few days with elder stahl, but after interviews i am almost posative that I will be leaving. he is a nice guy, but we have conflicting personalities, he is the youngest, a bit spoiled, and very hard headed. so far we have been able to work everything out, but i will be glad to get a new companion

i love you all, and appreciate your support. I am trying to work hard and have been praying for you.

Elder Lundberg

Letter from Mark 06 March 2006

dear family,

This past week has been good. It snowed about 8 inches yesterday. most of the snow here is a very dry snow, this was a wet snow, so it was heavy. and they don't plow much until it stops snowing, they mostly just salt, that made it hard to drive in. we had a member that lives on top of a hill in farm country invite us to eat right after church, they also invited the 1st counselor in the branch presidency and his wife. we were driving on snow that had not been driven on, and pushing some snow with our bumper, when we got to the hill we got about half way up, and couldn't make it, so we turned around. the 1st counselor saw us and was following for a litle while in a suburban, they said they would tell the family we couldn't make it. we called when we got back, it took us a little over 2 hours to do a trip that would normaly take half hour. It has warmed back up a little but today, and will probably gradually get better.

My companion and I are getting along alright, we aren't best friends, but we get along. he works hard a times, but isn't always obedient. he has had a hard time adjusting to the area because he doesn't like how the missionaries that opened the area in the summer worked it. he has a few idea's of how to get the area going well, onone of them is he wants missionaries to rotate through quicker to get new faces that haven't worked the town too much. tomorrow we have interviews with the mission president and said he is going to ask to have me transfered at the end of this transfer, and him transferred the one after that.

Our lesson with Judy and laura this week went well. It is nice to have Elder Stahl there, I was doing almost all of the talking, and explaining the chapters of the book of mormon that we read. elder stahl has been doing his share of talking, and has been giving his insight on the chapter as well, it was a great lesson. they have been meeting with missionaries for a while, so we are going to start to try to get the point accross that it isn't just a weekly scripture study that we come over for. both of them love the book of mormon, laura especally feels its power, so we are going to try to get them to start doing more and comming to church. the branch president's wife told us that she is going to invite both of them to enrichment night this month. laura has been a bit hesitant comming to church because se doesn't like large crouds, or that was the excuse she gave us, so we are hoping she will go to enrichment.

We met a guy just after elder stahl got here that we have taught a few times, he is a bit slower, so we will have to go over every thing a few times before he fully grasps everything that we are telling him, but he is very interested in religion, adn so far has liked to talk with us. he told us he is a catholic, but after talking with him, he has some conflicting views with the catholic church.

Thank you for all of the support that you give me. I love you all.

Elder Lundberg