My Batteries Have Been Recharged

I am having a really hard time knowing that the view outside my window no longer looks like this.

We escaped the hustle and bustle of life this past week and headed down to the Gulf for a few days of R and R with both of our families.  First stop?  OBA (Orange Beach) of course! We headed South on Friday afternoon to spend a couple of days with Eric's brother, his wife, and our precious nephew.  The (grownup) boys spent Saturday out fishing while my SIL and I spent the day bike riding and doing a little retail therapy with my nephew. It was the perfect relaxing start to our vacation!

I mean seriously....how stinkin cute is this kid!?

Sunday we headed East to another beach....Panama City Beach to be exact to spend a few days with Mom and Dad. This was my first trip to PCB and Eric had not been since high school so this was a new beach experience for us and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! The place we stayed at was right on the water so we could sit on our balcony and watch the waves roll in. Our days were perfection....a long walk for Mom and I in the morning down while Dad and Eric golfed, followed by laying out on the beach all afternoon and fresh seafood for dinner.  It can't get much better than that!

The Pier and Pier Park were just about a mile from our condo so we took full advantage of the proximity and made it our shopping walking destination every morning.

Clockwise from top left: 1) My drink from dinner the first night....I think it was called WTH Punch...I just know it was full of rum and raspberry juice and it was delicious!  Runaway Island was our dinner destination the first night partially because it was recommended to us by the concierge and partially because it was a short walk down the beach from the hotel.  Dinner was fantastic and we introduced Mom and Dad to Ahi Tuna which they both enjoyed (or at least said they did). The atmosphere was perfect as it was right on the beach and they had a ton of outdoor seating.  2) The second night we stayed in and cooked our own fish that Eric and his brother caught.  Dad showed us his new watermelon cutting trick he learned online.  It involves making several cuts into the sides of a watermelon and dumping it out already cut up.  It was pretty amazing!  3) Dinner our last night at Saltwater Grill.  This was also recommended by the concierge and it did not disappoint!  I had the Grouper Macadamia. Yes, that's right. Macadamia nut-crusted fish along with the most delicious garlic mashed potatoes and green beans. I stuffed myself silly that night because I could not bear to let this dish go uneaten. 4) Because we ate so much the night before we were not even remotely hungry for breakfast when we left the next morning. We figured we'd get an hour or so down the road and grab a bite at a Hardee's or something.  What we did not account for was the route we took home had 0 fast food joints on it for the first 2.5 hours...and maybe 10 gas stations! We finally found a gas station/restaurant combo in Elba, AL and decided to see what Barb's Country Kitchen had to offer.  It ended up being a delicious, good old fashioned homemade county breakfast complete with hand cut potatoes and salt cured bacon.

I stared at this view at all hours of the day for 3 days and never once got sick of it.

Mom and I conned the boys into playing a round of Putt-Putt the last night we were there and they begrudgingly agreed. Check out the score card and you'll see why....they got their butts beat! And they'd been practicing every day at the golf course!  And those other three pictures?  Those would me Mom's and my Holes-In-One...as in multiple Hole-In-Ones (2 for me and one for Mom!)

There's that dog-gone gorgeous view again!

In addition to conning the boys into Putt-Putt, we also conned them into pictures on the beach after dinner one night which meant I finally got some good pictures of more than scenery and the dogs on my good camera!

 These two are the absolute best parent's a girl could ask for! And they're adorable, too, right?!

 And I just adore this guy!

The only thing missing from this amazingly wonderful trip was our Matt-Matt who had important work to do and could not join us....next time Matt-Matt, next time!

Garden Update: 1 month

We are officially one month into our little backyard garden experiment and things are looking very green!  They are also starting to look yellow and red, too, since we've had some veggie babies pop up this week! To say I am a little excited it an understatement.  I am not sure who enjoys looking at the crops more, me or the neighbor kids who come and check on it almost daily. I don't  know if they'll eat any of the veggies but they sure do like talking about them. One of them kept asking me if I had carrots planted, so this past weekend I decided to pick up some carrot seeds to plant so I didn't have to say no for the 10th time.  When I told her I planted some, she didn't seem to care too much, so I asked her mom if she liked carrots. She didn't to her mother's knowledge, so I asked the kid why she liked carrots.  Her answer: Because bunnies eat carrots and then they poop out candy. *palm to my face*  Oh the mind of a 5 year old.

Carrots and candy bunny poops aside, the garden is coming along quite nicely. The race is on to see what we will get to pick from it first, but I am thinking it's going to be a jalapeno pepper. I was really hoping it was going to be a raspberry because they're my favorite, but I think I am going to be a little more patient for those.

Clockwise from top left: cherry tomatoes, raspberries, yellow squash, and jalapeno peppers

I keep referring to the largest yellow squash as the "squash baby" so naturally Eric asked me if I had named him, yet....it's George by the way.  Silly man, he doesn't know that you have to talk to your plants to get them to grow nice and big.  I learned that from my mom and grandma years ago!

The picture above is George's progression in 4 days.....4 days! He's grown nearly an inch every day! [Which I totally understand is the entire point of the garden, but still!]

I am so excited to see how this garden thing turns out.  I am sure I will get to a point this summer where I am up to my elbows in produce but I can't wait! I love the idea of going out in the backyard instead of Walmart to get something to eat. If everything keeps growing at the rate it's growing now it won't be too much longer before picking time!

I am amazed at how much different it looks after just one month! There'll be barely any dirt showing a month from now!

Berry-Topped Shortbread Bars

I have been on a serious fresh fruit kick this year. Since Eric's short list of fruit he will eat consists of oranges, clementines, crisp apples, grapes, and watermelon, I usually don't purchase a ton of fresh fruit because it means I will have to eat every bit of it. I mean I understand texture aversions for berries and bananas, but who doesn't like the flavor of cantaloupe and pineapple for crying out loud!? This year I said the heck with it and have been tearing up some fresh strawberries (drizzled with honey) and cantaloupe. I even stepped out on a limb and purchased blueberries from COSTCO. Talk about a food commitment! With the abundance of fresh fruit in the fridge, I came to the conclusion that we needed a fruit dessert this weekend. Not being much of a fan of cooked fruit I whipped up my own concoction. We'll call it Berry-Topped Shortbread Bars, and it delicious!  It was crisp, light, and tasted like summer!

What You Need:

Crust:

1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

Whipping Cream Cheese Frosting:

1- 8oz package reduced-fat cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp almond extract

2 cups heavy cream

Topping:

1 cup fresh strawberries, de-stemmed and cut into bite-sized pieces

1 cup blueberries

any other fruit you have on hand

How to Make It:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease the bottom of a 9" x 13" glass baking dish.

Make the crust: Beat the butter and sugar in a mixer until creamy. Add the flour and salt and beat until combined. Press dough evenly into the bottom of the greased baking dish and bake for 30-45 minutes. When you take it out of the oven, set aside to cool completely (I let mine cool over night since I didn't started cooking until 9pm).

While the crust is baking, combine cream cheese, sugar, vanilla extract, and almond extract in a mixer using the paddle attachment.  Once it's combined, switch to the whisk attachment and turn the mixer on medium. Slowly pour in the heavy cream. Continue whipping until the cream can hold a stiff peak.

Once the crust is cool, spread cream cheese mixture over the top of the shortbread. Depending on how thick you want your whipped cream layer, you may have a cup or more frosting leftover....save it.  It is perfect to dip your finger extra strawberries or blueberries in.

Top the whipped cream layer with the fresh fruit in whatever pattern you want.  I did lines, but you could do a flag design for the 4th of July or just sprinkle the fruit randomly. Refrigerate for an hour or 2 so the frosting can set.  When you're ready to serve them, pull them out of the fridge and cut into whatever sized bars you'd like.

Enjoy!

Pool Time is the Best Time

Hello?  Is this thing on?  Somehow another two weeks have escaped me.  The past couple of weeks were a one-two punch for me.  After being in survival mode the week before last, trying to finish up a big project at work and recital week at the dance studio (which by the way was amazing!) I felt like it took the entire week last week to get back in the groove of things. I have no idea how I did it for 4 months every year when I was coaching basketball. Who's crazy idea was that?! Oh yeah, it was mine.

With spring football, fishing season, dance, and big work projects finally coming to a close, we kicked back and thoroughly enjoyed this weekend. Despite a couple of torrential downpours in the afternoons, we spent the weekend lounging at the pool with great friends, good food, and of course the pups.

We attempted to spend as much time as we possibly could here:

Sunday was a continuation of Saturday, but with a quick Costco/lunch trip to Montgomery to get a new pool storage box (our old one bit the dust last year and was limping along) and some amazingly delicious burgers from Red Robin.  We always forget it's there but man the burgers are delicious! A word of advice, we tried out their Garlic Parmesan fries and were extremely underwhelmed. The fries had some garlic salt and a very small amount of Parmesan that fell off the fries when you picked them up on them....they were definitely NOT worth $1 extra.

We finished off the weekend with more pool lounging with friends and an intriguing episode of Dateline that got cut off with 30 mins left because we had a crazy strong thunderstorm roll in Sunday night (don't worry we googled it to find out if the guy ended up in jail...he did and rightfully so).  We literally watched the storm come in and boy was it a doozy.  I guess it's been a while since we've had a good summer thunderstorm.  As long as they stay like this one and don't throw any swirly winds at it, I don't mind them.

This week should be considerably less crazy and we've already scheduled a gym date tonight. I've been itching to get back to it after taking an entire month (or two) since we got really busy there for a while.

A Very Summer-like Weekend

I really didn't think it would be possible to top last weekend, but dagummit if this weekend didn't come out of no where as being seriously amazing.  The majority of it looked a little something like this:

Blue skies, sunshine, a pristine pool, my hubby, and my puppies (Peanut is by the planters in the shade on the left hand side of the picture). 

We spent a good bit of our weekend in this exact spot and it was wonderful! Just warm enough to lay out and get a tan, but not so hot that you feel like you're melting. Both of us briefly considered giving up our jobs and becoming teachers so we could do this all summer long before coming to our senses and remembering there is a reason neither of us are teachers.  We just aren't cut out for it. 

Our weekend started out a little late. I was worked late trying to finish up a grant so Eric took his dad fishing.  I'd been craving some sushi and we toyed with going out to get some but since I didn't leave the office until 5pm (I usually leave at 3:30) there was no way no how I was driving all the way home and then driving somewhere for dinner...especially on a Friday night. We opted for Fresh Market dinner which is one of my favorites. I worked there for a year in high school and crave their food from time to time.  We ended up with a sushi/pot sticker dinner that we had during a Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives marathon. We're just a couple of wild and crazy kids, I know.

Since we called it a night so early on Friday...cough 9:30 cough...we were bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6:30 AM on Saturday so we did the obvious and marched our happy butts over to 1220 Cafe for an amazingly delicious breakfast with the rest of the over 60 crowd.  Just kidding...we were there so early that we BEAT the over 60 crowd there. We continued our early morning adventure at Walmart to get pick up a few things for dinner and headed home so we could, wait for it.....mow the yard and run more errands! Long story short, we had the yard mowed, garden tilled, errands (to Montgomery) run, and everything for dinner done by noon. Talk about a super productive Saturday. Since we'd done everything that morning, the afternoon looked a lot like the picture above...with a few of our closest friends hanging out, too. We topped our night off with the Mayweather (or Mayflower according to one of our friends) vs. Pacquiao fight. Yes we were some of those people who got the Pay-Per-View fight, but we had several friends over to enjoy it with us.  To the untrained eye I thought Pacquiao won since he was clearly the aggressor and threw way more punches, but I guess in true boxing scoring, there's more emphasis on connecting on those punches which Mayweather did, so he won. Clearly boxing is not my thing, but I am pretty sure I'd go stand in a boxing ring and get punched one time for $180 million. Just one punch though. =)

My baby turtle friend Eric found when he was cleaning the pool...he may look large but his shell was barely bigger than a silver dollar.  I walked him down to the pond near our house and set him free!

Sunday was really just a continuation on Saturday.  After doing a little work, we vegged all afternoon at the pool with a few friends.  We finished up our evening with some fish tacos which have leapfrogged into the list of our Top 10 favorite meals. I have a feeling we will be indulging in them a whole lot this summer. Heck we might even get through half of the fish frozen in our freezer!

Clearly our weekend revolved around food: Clockwise from top left: 1) Friday night sushi dinner; 2) Saturday morning french toast breakfast...did I mention how delicious this was? 3) Saturday night Pasta Salad...I promise there were noodles buried under all of those veggies! 4) Sunday night melons from the Farmer's Market stand.  They were so good!

This week is going to be a bit of a doozy around here with finishing up grants and the dance recital this weekend.  I am just going to close my eyes and jump and see where I end up landing.