Aug 17, 2011

Blue Bell

Today Amanda picked Cade and I up to go on day trip out to the Blue Bell Ice Cream Creamery.   We made it there just in time for the last tour-- nice planning Amanda! We put on our very trendy Blue Bell paper hats and went on the tour.  It starts with a 5 minute movie about the history of Blue Bell.  For the most part the movie held the kids attention...any longer and we'd all been asleep for sure.  Afterwards was the actual tour where we got to see how the ice cream was made.  I always liked to see how things are made.  I think there is something about watching an assembly line and then carton after carton fill up with yummy, delicious ice cream. 

Today they were making:  Mint Chocolate Chip, Pineapple something or another, and The Great Divide. 
 
 
Here is what I learned from the tour:

  • Blue Bell stops making ice cream at 4 pm everyday. 
  • 54 gallons of ice cream are made each minute/per machine/batch.
  • The ice cream containers spin while being filled ensuring even distribution of ingredients (ie:  cookie dough).
  •  Blue Bell collects milk from 60,000 cows a day to make one days worth of ice cream.  That's a lot of cows and a lot of milk.  The milk is hauled in from a 200 mile radius.
  • The number one flavor is......Homemade Vanilla.  
  • The number three flavor is ......chocolate......
  • I can't remember number two. 

The cutest thing about today was just after we sat down to enjoy our "free" scoop of ice cream Abbey says, "how do they make ice cream anyway?"  Too funny!

Thanks Amanda for driving and inviting us!  Pictures to come...

Aug 15, 2011

Peanut Butter Pie for Mikey

Many of my readers (3 at least) follow Bakerella.  My Aunt Maxine sent me an email about a peanut butter pie recipe that Bakerella posted about. Along with the recipe came a really sad story.   Well to make a long post short, I decided to make the pie after reading it.

The story is about a woman who had all the intentions of baking her husband a peanut butter pie....tomorrow.  Life just seemed to be coming at her but she wanted to do something special for him.....tomorrow.  Well, there wasn't a tomorrow for them.   Her husband of over a decade and a half died- just like that, from a heart attack. One of the things she is wanting the blogging world to do to help her in the healing process is to bake a peanut butter pie in her husband's honor. 

The recipe I used came from the Pioneer Woman.

25 finely crumbled Oreos
4 tbs of melted butter
1 cup of peanut butter
1 1/4cup powered sugar
1 container of Cool Whip

I used my blender because I couldn't find my food processor to crumble my Oreos. I poured the melted butter on the crumbs and pressed into a pie pan. I baked it at 350 for 5 minutes and then cooled it completely.

(It is during these next few steps that nearly sliced my thumb off)
WARNING:  Do not use a serrated pie server to open your cool whip container.  Next time I'll be smarter and use my teeth.  hahaha. 

In a mixing bowl beat the peanut butter and cream cheese until smooth. Beat in the powered sugar and then finally the cool whip.  Pour into the cooled Oreo pie crust and chill for an hour or longer.


Here is a link to the story my Aunt told me to read.  http://www.injennieskitchen.com/2011/08/for-mikey.html

Now go hug someone you love and if you get around to it, bake a pie for Mikey.  I did!








our weekend

Friday night was "date night".  It started off with a trip to Home Deopt to check out prices on a new fridge.  Our beloved Frigidaire refrigerator was going out on us.  It all started with the ice maker not making ice.  Then things started to defrost and refreeze.  Then the juice boxes didn't feel very cold but the spinach was frozen on the fridge side.   Things were not looking good for our approximately 7 year old, side by side, too small to put anything in, refrigerator.

Yep. The end was near and we needed to find a replacement FAST. 

Home Depot had nothing.  So it was on to Best Buy where they had mostly a higher end selection- including a fridge with a touch screen monitor. You could update your twitter, upload pictures and get the weather report all while pouring yourself a nice tall glass of juice.  Is any of that really necessary on an appliance?  Afterward we went on to Lowes.  We kind of sort of found one we liked but it was in the scratch and dent pile... and it was well, pretty dented up.  So we called it a night and went home. 

The next day Travis left with Cade to go to the farm for the weekend.  I met up with my parents and we went out to the Lowes in Spring, where the very knowledgeable Phillip helped us find an awesome refrigerator.  He was really great.  He knew every answer to every question we (my dad) came up with.  He was so much help. We spent awhile determining what I didn't want (side by side, stainless, small).  And then we determined what we did want (french door, well lit, auto pull drawer, ice maker, room for a pizza box). We found a few that would work but nothing was quite as impressive as the Samsung 25.8 cf white, french door refrigerator- sorry there isn't a "cool" name for it.  Here's what it looks like.

It's even more impressive with the doors open. 

It's perfect.  You might have noticed that there isn't a water dispenser. Travis and I both agreed that feature is really just something else that could leak.  And WE know ALL about leaks thanks to our beloved Frigidaire.

We went to 2 other stores to check prices but Lowes couldn't be beat (and even if there was a competitor with a better price, Lowes will price match them).

It was delivered today....all shiny and white.  We couldn't be happier!

By the way, Samsung has been rated #1 for the past 5 years and this particular model has a 5 star rating!


So long Frigidaire.