Life Lately w/ Food Friday Bonus

Blog, oh blog how I’ve missed you.  You know what I stink at?  Balancing  real life with, you know, blogging about it. 

A few highlights of what I’ve been up to in my prolonged absence (again) before I give you the best recipe EVER.  I mean, like, EVER.  EEEEVVVVEEEERRRR.

We went to Tennessee and Florida for Spring Break (oh and the states in between Iowa and FL too since we drove).  It was perfect and fun and warm and the kids got 3^rd degree sunburns because I fail at momhood and did not slather them with the appropriate level of sunscreen.   And while normally they never burn and instead just tan no matter how long we’re out or if the sunscreen gets worn off or even if we forget the sunscreen altogether, apparently their skin wasn’t prepared to come out of Iowa winter hibernation.  So yeah , oops.  But that didn’t stop us from going back to the beach the next day (and perhaps a day or two after that ), I mean HELLO we drove 20 hours to hit the beach we are not sitting in a hotel playing cards when there is an ocean nearby.  So we lathered up with super high spf and all was well and my soul was at peace.  I love the beach so much. 

 

On our 3^rd, fine 4^th day at the beach, not consecutively mind you but 4^th nonetheless, the kids informed me that I *may* have ruined beaches for them because we go to them so much and could we please go back to the mountains and Yellowstone sometime?  Well EXCUSE ME, last time I checked there was no ocean in Yellowstone or the Rocky Mountains and mama needs her beach time.  Aren’t they such deprived children that you feel sorry for?  Not.  We also hit Sea World while we were there and I really really REALLY wanted to bring home a dolphin but alas we had to settle for just feeding them.  Oh and the kids had to settle for GI Joe and I rubbing it in that we got to SWIM with dolphins on our cruise last November.  Yes, they loved us for that.  Here wanna see?    

 

 

 

 

I’d settle for  a killer whale too, they’re just harder to smuggle out of Sea World.  Darn security. 

 

We spent a couple days on the panhandle of Florida in this super cute beach town where our friend David, best man in our wedding, lives with his wife and son.  We had so much fun hanging out with them (it had only been 13 YEARS!) and eating the Florida seafood feast that David prepared for us.  Grouper, clams, shrimp, scallops, we had it all and it was so SO good. 

 

 

I don’t know if you guys know this or not but Florida has some dang good seafood and we made it a personal goal to eat as much seafood as possible while we were there.   Mission accomplished.  And now my mouth is watering.  Yum.

 

Our very last day in Florida, a Friday,  we spent on Daytona Beach because we’re crazy and brave like that.  I mean, Daytona Beach on Spring Break?  Recipe for disaster and/or a whole lot of life lessons for the kids such as “See that right there?  That’s why we’re NEVER letting you go on a spring break trip with your friends without us when you’re in high school”.  But it really wasn’t as spring break crazy as I’d thought it would be so we had a fantastic day of the boys playing football on the beach while Dakota looked for shells intermittently asking if we could leave yet (13 is a fabulous age ya’ll) and I sat on a blanket soaking up the sun and ignoring texts from our family back in Iowa telling us about the winter storm that promised to bring 4-7 inches of SNOW that weekend.  It was like they didn’t want us to come home and believe me GI Joe kind of had to DRAG me off of the beach kicking and screaming.  But before we left we took some pictures and some accidentally inappropriate ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My apologies to any beachgoers @ Daytona that day that I may or may not have flashed.  Also, my family is weird.   

Then we started the journey home by way of Tennessee because duh.  Why would I pass up another opportunity to see these faces?  So what if we’d just seen them the weekend before on our way down to Florida?  There’s no such thing as too much time with these cuties.

 

Then we decided to leave earlier than planned from there so as to beat the storm home.  We hadn’t anticipated driving straight through til we got home but that’s what we ended up doing.  We pulled in our driveway at 4:00 a.m. on Sunday morning only to discover that we were locked out of our own house.  I never carry a housekey with me and our neighborboy that had been taking care of the farm and the dogs while we were gone had GI Joe’s keys.  So there we were just wanting to crawl in our beds and we couldn’t even get in.  We tried calling and texting the neighbor kid to get our key back but of course he didn’t answer because again, 4:00 IN THE A.M.  GI Joe tried breaking in without actually breaking anything and couldn’t so finally we resorted to calling his mom who I was sure I had given a key to at some point.  She answered right away, probably with her heart in her throat because usually a call at that time of night is bad news, and we promptly drove down the road and retrieved a key.  And we all fell happily into our beds and proceeded to sleep til mid morning.  The rest of the day is kind of a blur.

But the next day I did venture out to take Dakota to a doctor’s appointment where I accidentally walked into some stranger’s exam room when I thought I was exiting the office.  So that was awkward.  Oh and then THIS happened.

 

I ran out of gas…again….right in front of the gas station. 

GI Joe had me on speaker phone as it was happening so his whole office heard the whole sordid thing where I was saying things like, “NO NOOOOOOO JUST A LITTLE BIT FURTHER!  GOOOOOOOO GO! “ trying to urge my PMobile just a few more feet to the pump.  As it turns out the employees at Casey’s took pity on me and lent me a gas can that I filled and then walked the (very) short distance back to my truck and put it in.  then I was able to drive it to the pump and fill it up.  Except by fill it up I mean put $45.00 aka half a tank in because who wants to stand there for 15 minutes so it can fill all the way up.?  BORING. 

Then I wore my Easter dress backwards to church on Sunday.  So there’s that.

After those kinds of days, sometimes you just need a treat like this. 

Oreo Filling Dip

THE. MIDDLE. OF. AN. OREO.

Which is really the ONLY part of an Oreo…that I’ll eat anyway.  Just ask my family.  They love finding just the cookie part (yuck it doesn’t even taste like chocolate!)  left in the package of Oreos after I’ve scraped the filling out with a knife and eaten it.  The only good part I tell you.  Imagine my delight when I saw this recipe.   I was a bit skeptical because how could it taste JUST LIKE OREO FILLING as she claimed?  But you guys, IT DOES.  And now that I’ve made this no less than 5 times for various events and functions since discovering it, I feel like one of life’s great mysteries has been solved.  Next up, making my own Twinkies.  I have the magic pan now let’s see if I can match the rest.

Here it is.  Make it.  Impress your friends, neighbors, coworkers, kids, the mailman.  Let them think that you actually scraped out the filling from 100 Oreos.  It’s fine. 

From Cookies and Cups

½ c. vegetable shortening as in Crisco as in that weird white stuff

½ t. vanilla
1 t. sugar
3 ½ c. powdered sugar
3 T. hot water.

Mix all ingredients with mixer for 2 minutes.  Store in an airtight container for a week, doesn’t even have to be put in the fridge.  Dip mini Oreos, pretzels, animal crackers, chocolate chip cookies, your spoon, and ENJOY.  And don’t worry about the Crisco content in here, all good things come from Crisco, haven’t you watched The Help?

Have a wonderful weekend!