Storm

We had a doozy of a storm blow through here last week on Thursday.  The wind was whipping the trees around like crazy!  I was at the Y when the storm blew in, and I could see the sky getting scary-dark and then it opened up and buckets of rain came down.  The power flickered at the Y, which was inconvenient since I was on the treadmill, but luckily it didn’t stay off.  That strong wind blew the front through pretty quickly so that when it was time for me to leave the Y, it wasn’t raining any more and it had cooled down drastically.

The McHusband got home before it started raining, and he shot some video of the trees going crazy in the backyard.

And some of the aftermath.

The storm made a bit of a mess, but the McHusband and Monte got it all cleaned up on Saturday.  We lost a couple decent-sized limbs and there were lots of leaves and twigs on the ground, but luckily no trees fell on the fence or the shed (or the house!), and we didn’t lose power except for a brief outage.

It could’ve been worse, that’s for sure, and I’m glad that this storm blew in and out as quickly as it did.

{Recipe Recap} Butterscotch Bars

Good morning and happy Monday!  Hope you all had a great weekend and, to the dads out there, a wonderful Father’s Day.  In case you’re wondering, Morgan and Monte didn’t get the McHusband anything, but he did get the dinner he requested – Crockpot Beer Barbecue Chicken.  I made it with a new barbecue sauce we’re liking – Guy Fieri’s Bourbon Brown Sugar Sauce.  It’s tasty, and we’re not the only ones who like it.  Patio Daddio says:

Bourbon Brown Sugar Barbeque Sauce
Chef Guy’s sweet, sticky Bourbon Brown Sugar BBQ Sauce rocks on just about anything. Smoky bourbon, sweet brown sugar and a hint of spicy black pepper create off-the-hook flavor that’s a perfect complement to everything from beef to chicken, pork and seafood.

But enough about our dinner.  It’s Monday, you deserve some regular sugar baked into a treat.

(I apologize in advance for the bad pictures.  I wasn’t going to take any but these bars were so good I knew I had to share so I snapped these real quick in the kitchen at night.)

These were very simple to make.  The hardest part was melting the butterscotch chips and sweetened condensed milk together.

The recipe called for 3/4 of a cup of sweetened condensed milk, which is roughly 3/4 of the can.  So I used the whole can and instead of 1 cup of butterscotch chips, I used the whole bag, which amount to just less than 2 cups.

The recipe calls for 3 cups of the oat mixture for the bottom layer, but I felt like that wasn’t enough/left too much for the topping.  I used 4 cups on the bottom and wouldn’t recommend using any less.

 

You could make these with chocolate chips or peanut butter chips if you weren’t a fan of butterscotch.  In fact, I’ve made some bars where the fudge layer is chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk.  Such a wonderful combination.

These were very sweet thanks to the butterscotch, but the oats help to temper that.  They also help assuage some of the guilt you’ll feel eating the second bar after you realize you really want more once you’ve finished the first.

Hope your week’s off to a good start!

{Recipe adapted from here, and it turns out it was originally a Cooking Light recipe}

Bye!

No, I’m not giving up this blogging gig, although I do feel like I haven’t been on my game lately.  I’m trying to step that up and write real posts and not depend on the internet or a baked good to pull all the weight around here.

Last Friday, I hosted a special Women’s Night for the ladies of the ‘hood. 

See, Tawnya and Steve are abandoning us moving to Florida for Steve’s job so we needed one last Women’s Night with our favorite redhead in attendance.

I knew as soon as I started planning this party a few weeks back that I wanted it to have a Florida theme with the food and decorations.  I already knew about Key Lime Pie, but I really wasn’t sure what else screamed “Florida!”  Thanks to my pal Google, I found lots of yummy inspiration like avocados, oranges, grapefruit, hearts of palm (okay, maybe those aren’t so yummy by themselves…) and shrimp.

My neighbor Kara contributed the Wholly Guacamole,  and I baked some Gator Bites, a.k.a. Chicken Poppers, and thawed some shrimp. 

I made:

Orange Creamsicle Cookies

Bunko Punch

Hearts of Palm Dip (Awesome!  Will definitely make this again.)

Pool Cake

What, you’ve never heard of Pool Cake?  It’s a cake that’s decorated to look like a pool. 

Granted, mine looked better in my head, but it was still obvious what it was, and Tawnya loved it.  The reason for the cake is that she mentioned she’d have a pool AND pool boy in Florida (well, in a perfect world she would) so I staged the cake with some borrowed dolls, a diving board made from a lasagna noodle, and some pool noodles made Twizzlers.

That glass of wine?  It’s a wine bottle stopper.  As you may have noticed, my cake isn’t exactly done to scale, but I don’t think the guest of honor minded.

Also, I wasn’t really feeling the blue Jell-O as far as the flavor went, so I used white chocolate pudding and tinted it blue.  And the frosting?  It’s Cool Whip Frosting.  If you like Cool Whip, you’ll love the frosting.

The diehard partyers in our group, the last five standing, went up to the Aviator for a change of scenery around 12:30.  We got there just as the band was finishing up so we listened, chatted with some fellow patrons, and finally grabbed ourselves a table for the last bit of visiting.

We will really miss Steve and Tawnya in general as well as their parties and their contributions to our parties.  Remember Halloween and the Trailer Trash Bash?

Good luck in Florida!  And Tawnya, tell Emundo we all say hi.

Happier than a camel on Hump Day

This might be my favorite commercial ever.  I watched it three times last night in the process of embedding it here and I laughed out loud each time.

Hump Day

It’s only 30 seconds.  It’s definitely worth half a minute of your time.

Wednesdays are my favorite weekdays.  I eat Subway for lunch, go to spinning, which is one of my favorite classes, and I snack on a big bowl of popcorn at night. 

Happy Hump Day!

Should have been…

Last night around 9:30…

I should have been painting my nails.  I had to cut them all off so I figured the silver lining is that a fun summer color will look cute and not gawdy on my short-for-me nails.

I should have been blogging about the going-away party I threw for my neighbor this past Friday.

I should have been drinking water instead of leftover Vodka Slush from the aforementioned party.

I should have been in bed catching up on lost zzz’s instead of sitting here on the computer, in front of the TV, until it’s time for bed, a.k.a. at least 10:00.  (That means I have 27 minutes until my date with the Sandman.)

I need to either figure out a way to get more hours in the day, or else I need to figure out how to motivate myself to take better advantage of the free time I do have.

{Recipe Recap} Mudslide-Glazed Brownie Donuts

Remember on Friday how I mentioned a new obsession?  It’s the Mudslide flavor of the Bailey’s Coffee Creamer. 

Now, I’m not a coffee drinker.  In fact, I hardly like coffee flavor at all, although a little with some chocolate is okay.  But this creamer?  It could convert me.

I used it as part of the glaze for my donuts. 

I wish the flavor of the creamer had been stronger in the glaze; if I could’ve figured out a way to glaze-ify just the creamer, I would have.  This stuff is uh-may-zing.  The McHusband and I both agreed that we could’ve drank the whole container, passing it back and forth between us like two bums sharing a 40.

I wanted to make my donuts from scratch, but I didn’t have time so I used a Duncan Hines Milk Chocolate  brownie mix and threw in some mini semisweet chocolate chips.

I only used a couple tablespoons or so of the creamer.  I think I’m going to make ice cream with the rest and hope that the flavor comes through in that treat.

Yep, Mudslide Ice Cream blended with some Bailey’s Irish Cream and sucked down through a straw, that sounds pretty tasty to me!  Talk about a good way to start the week.

PS  Happy Birthday to Nate!

A special TGIF

Guess what else today is besides Friday?  It’s National Doughnut Day!

And since I happen to have a donut pan (Thanks, Chelle!), it was a no-brainer that I was going to bake up some round treats.

More on them and a new find that I’m now obsessed with next week.

Hope you guys have a great weekend!  If you’re on the east coast, try to stay dry.  Andrea’s doing her best to ruin Friday around here, but hopefully we can salvage the rest of the weekend.

{And a very happy early birthday to Heather, whose birthday is on Sunday.}