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Sunday, April 19, 2009

Yummy Dessert

My mom makes this amazing banana split cake. It tastes like fluffy whipped heaven, and it's so rich that you can only eat a small piece. The down side is that even a tiny piece packs a seriously high calorie punch (and takes a little effort to make) . Tonight, I stumbled upon a wonderfully similar low calorie way to make it.

It began when I decided to use some more milk before it reaches it's sell by date in a couple of days. I used two cups to make a box of vanilla pudding. Then I decided to smash up the overripe banana sitting on the counter. Then I remembered that I had a tub of cool whip sitting in the freezer that's been there for a while. I popped it into the microwave and used the soften butter setting to thaw it enough to make it stir-able. Then I added the cool-whip to the banana pudding and viola! I let it set in the fridge since the cool-whip sort of dominated the pudding. After about an hour in the fridge we took some out and ate it. It's VERY good and immediately reminded me of mom's banana split cake.

So the plan is to use two boxes of pudding (to make it a little thicker) and put the mix into a graham cracker crust and top with a little graham cracker crumble. Just like mom's, only less guilty.

So, for those wanting to attempt:

2 boxes instant vanilla pudding
1 overripe banana
1 8 oz tub low fat cool whip (I use the generic albertson's brand)
1 graham cracker crust (or you can make your own with graham crackers and butter)
2 cups cold 2% milk

make pudding according to box, break banana into pieces and mix in using your whisk, add cool-whip, pour filling into crust, refrigerate for 1 hour, enjoy!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

I'm a Bad Blogger

Sorry for not posting anything new in about....3 weeks. It's been crazy around here. I will eventually finish posting about our vacation I swear.

I really want to update everyone (or the 5 people that read this regularly) on how we're doing.

School:

We had a slight scare that Aaron wasn't going to be able to walk at his graduation. He found out about 4 weeks into the semester that he is missing a Psychology credit he needs for his degree. To make a VERY long story short: he took the CLEP exam, missed it by one point (according to TCU's standards, he was well above the college board standards), made an appeal, it was denied, he is now enrolled for a may-mester (3 week mini semester in May) course in general psych. He was told he could not walk at graduation, but appealed and is walking on May 10th with everyone else (if we can pay the summer tuition by the 1st of May).

Other than that school is going well for Aaron. He is very much enjoying his time as a crisis counselor at the high school and is by all accounts doing great there. He finished his honors project for the honors program and presented it on Monday and will present his departmental honors project today/thursday at their research symposium. He just needs to tweak his final paper and submit it by May 5th.

As for me, things are going well. I and a friend were selected by our department as Outstanding Undergraduate Students of the Year, which is pretty cool. We were presented with a certificate and what looks like two ashtrays (but is actually a trinket box/candy dish) at the UNT honors convocation. As a result of my award, I have decided to go ahead and walk at the UNT graduation on May 16th. I've got two big projects to finish before the end of the semester (one is due the 30th and the other during finals week). I feel good about them both and am so looking forward to graduation day(s).

Summer:

After graduation, it's going to be pretty hectic while we pack up/sell our things in preparation to move out of our apartment. We're going to move our stuff to Aaron's grandmother's house. She agreed to let us store our stuff if we clean out the garage and make room (such an awesome deal!). We also need to go to the doctor and dentist to get checkups and have them fill out medical/dental histories for us to present to Camphill so we can get on their insurance. For the month of June we will be working and house sitting in the Fort Worth area.

We're going to a family reunion on July 4th and then on the 6th we're headed to Colorado to visit some friends we haven't seen in a of couple years. After that we'll visit my mom in Oklahoma, a short stop back in Fort Worth, Del Rio to see my dad and Phyllis, Houston to see Aaron's parents, then a stop back in Louisiana for our one year anniversary (we're staying at the Oak Alley Plantation B&B), then Alabama to visit my sisters and their families. After that a very long drive up to SW New York to visit my grandmother, then finally to Pennsylvania where we'll stay with Aaron's best friend's family for a couple of days before starting at Camphill Soltane.

It's going to be a very busy and wonderful summer, I can tell. Lots of time with family and friends. I'm very excited to see my grandmother. I haven't seen her since I graduated from high school and this will be the first time she and Aaron will meet. I'm also excited to visit Salamanca again (where I lived from age 3-13); from what I saw on google maps street view it hasn't changed much.

We've got a lot going on right now, but I'll do my best to keep this thing up to date. I'll get to the vacation stuff eventually (hopefully before I forget what all we did) :)