Shoulda Hada V-8

People do strange things in the name of health. Whether it be slurping down a raw egg smoothie, eating grass (like a goat), or completely cutting maple donuts out of their diets. It's madness! I admire people who are able to eat all healthy foods and exercise so much that they could crack a coconut open with their abs. After last week's S'more Cake review, I think it's safe to say I am not one of those people. I do think I need to be more healthy and was very excited when I spotted a new flavor of V-8 Splash.
I love juice. I especially love grape juice!

And now for my review:

Refreshing! I don't know what I was expecting, but this "Grape Blend" juice tastes different than any other breakfast juice I have ever laid taste-buds on! It tastes almost exactly like a Grape Jolly Rancher. Some people don't like the vegetable V-8 drinks and worry that when they drink the fruit V-8 that it will have an overwhelming hint of celery or tomato. That is definitely not the case here, only fruity flavors! 

The bottle is designed so you can easily hold it with one hand which frees the other hand to steady the cup you are pouring the juice into which saves you from an extremely sticky kitchen floor! 

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see exactly what all was in this tasty juice. Was there tomato juice? Onion juice? So, I flipped the ol' bottle around and in-fact found that there was hardly any juice at all! That's right "Contains 5% juice." WHAT?! I have watched the V-8 commercials where the person drinks something super sugary and later in the day conks themselves in the head because they "Shoulda hada V-8!" I was so proud of myself for choosing such a healthy brand, only to find that I had been duped! 

So, to all those worried that your breakfast is going to taste like vegetables, don't fret! The only vegetable juice in this drink is the High Fructose Corn Syrup (and reconstructed sweet potato juice)! Perhaps the Jolly Rancher flavor should have been my first hint that this was not the most natural of juices. 

While it is not as healthy as I was expecting it to be, it really did taste good, and I plan on drinking the rest of it and will probably buy more of the V-8 Splash products, the Tropical one is very good and contains 10% juice. But if you are looking for something 100% juice, perhaps you should stick with Juicy Juice! 

Cheers!

-Mandie

Have S'more (Cake)

I have been keeping my eyes peeled for things that I could try out and review. I had my mind made up and my product picked out until yesterday when I made my daily stop at the bank. Earlier in the week, I stopped in and the girls there shared with me a picture of a S'mores cake they had been drooling over. I agreed that it looked quite tasty and encouraged them to make it and then give me a piece. Nobody ever does what I ask them to do, so I was super surprised when I walked in to the bank with a growling stomach, and walked out with a heaping plate of S'mores Cake. What?! Luckiest day ever? I think so!

I am not a traditional S'more eater for these few, simple reasons:
1. I don't want to be sitting out in the forest with chocolate and marshmallow stickiness smeared from my face to my elbows. That's called bear bait!
2. I always manage to burn my marshmallow until it is completely unrecognizable. You don't even have to try and peel it off the stick, you just touch it and it disintegrates!
3. Every time I try to eat a s'more, the first bite I take breaks the graham cracker in half and I end up eating the s'more off of my jeans. Gross!

But s'mores cake is an idea I could get behind! Here is my review:

I am not normally a huge cake fan, mostly because I think it is to dry and it gags my throat, but this cake was not dry at all! It didn't even need the inch of frosting that I would normally slather on a cake. This actually tasted very s'more like, right down to the "roasted over the fire" marshmallow taste. It was delicious!
I was grateful to have a plate and a fork because, in true s'more fashion, this is a sticky treat and at one point I'm pretty sure I had to just stuff the entire marshmallow topping in my mouth and eat the cake separately (be thankful you didn't witness that!) If it would have been safe to close my eyes, I would have been able to picture a peaceful mountain sunset, hear the crackle of my campfire, smell the smoke and sing a nice round of "There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" while chewing on my piece of s'more.

Those are real Marshmallows!

I didn't make this, and have to give a shout out to Carmen at Zions for whipping up this delightful dessert. . . A banker AND a baker! I'm pretty sure the recipe came from a Pampered Chef book and I have searched the world wide web over trying to find it, but having no success turned to Pinterest. Here is the link to the closest looking recipe I could find:

http://www.ihearteating.com/2013/06/14/smores-cake/

And also a link to Carmen's Pampered Chef site to which you can go and find many more recipes and products:

http://new.pamperedchef.com/pws/carmenhumphrey

I highly recommend this dessert to all you bakers out there!

Also, a thanks to Teresa for scooping up such a generous helping and to Ann and Connie for not making me stay there to eat it. ;)

So, if you saw me at the bank today and it looked like I had cake in my teeth, it's because I did!

All gone

-Mandie

Your Two Cents

I recently found out that a lot of VIP's have been trying to leave comments on my blog posts. For this, I am grateful because I love knowing what people think of my thoughts! However, these VIP's typed their entire comments, clicked publish and never saw the comment again, and neither did I. So I would like to let all interested parties know how to go about fixing this little problem.

Step 1. At the bottom of what I have posted is a box to leave comments. Just type your comment.

Step 2. Below the comment box is a drop-down box that lets you choose whether or not you want to leave your name. The most simple option is to click on Name/URL.

Step 3.  Type in whatever name you want to appear on your comment. Don't worry about the URL box, you can leave it blank.

Step 4. Click continue and then click publish!

Now get out there and get commenting! I love hearing from everyone! If you don't want to put your real name, you don't have to! :)

-Mandie

P.S. If you are on the home screen and can see more than one blog post, you will not see the comment box. At the bottom of each post, it will say how many comments that post has. Just click on that and then the comment box will appear, as if by magic, and you can type in your two cents!

The Youngest Among Us

Every family needs a youngest. Someone who gets called the baby for the rest of their lives, who always has to go last when playing anything "oldest to youngest", who has to stay home alone (or with the parents...whatevs) while all the big kids go to school or swimming lessons, and who gets to do whatever they want as they grow up because the above mentioned parents have already said "No!" so many times through the years that they decided to try a different approach with the youngest and just let her have everything, go everywhere and do whatever she wants! If I had known this was the case, I might have opted to be the youngest instead of the second born. . . There's nothing glamorous about being the second born!

Anyway, our family welcomed our youngest into the clan 21 years ago today! That's right, the youngest among us is now an adult! Well, numerically . . .

And now, for the audiences viewing pleasure, here is our baby, our Cindy Lou, Lil' Red, Hoot Owl, Little Bare, Droozel, Alps, Clairee:

Happy 21st birthday to you, Clairee!

Love,

Ouiser

-Mandie

Take Your Bucket and Run!

Quite a few years ago, I was called to be the Ward Emergency Preparedness Coordinator. There has never been a calling worse fit for me than that one. Was it really a good idea to ask the 20 something year old who had no family, no house, no experience, and no idea and who lived on frozen burritos and potato chips to advise the entire ward in the importance of Emergency Preparedness? I'm still laughing thinking about the ridiculousness of the situation! I agreed to give it a try and went home with the fate of the ward in my hands (okay, so maybe not. . . But maybe)!
I spent very small amounts of my time reading up on what emergency we were most likely to face here in our area... Earthquake, duh! And then came up with one of the most genius plans human kind has ever known... 72 Hour Kits! What? Someone already invented that?! Thank goodness, because I had no idea what to put in one! I did do quite a bit of research in the field of 72 hour kit preparation as I was scheduled to present to the entire ward Relief Society how to make one, and since they take those kinds of things to heart and take the presenters idea and run right out and make one of their own, I wanted to give them information that would be useful.
Let me present to you the 72 Hour Bucket:

This is simply a 5 gallon bucket with a lid. I put a little "cush" on the lid and voila! The 72 hour kit becomes a 72 hour chair! 

I put my math skills to the ultimate test and discovered that 72 hours equals 3 days! If worse comes to worse, I have to survive for 3 days using only the contents of my bucket? Also, the point of the kit is to have something you can grab quickly and run for the hills in case some sort if disaster makes it impossible to stay in your house and live off of what is already there. My bucket weighs about 20 pounds, and after I heft it about 20 feet I might have to sit down and take a breather, hence the cushion on the top!

Here's what I decided to put inside:

Looks like it's going to be a long 3 days!

I'm sure I could survive off of the things I have here, but after reading Angela's blog post about 72 hour kits (Angela, I hope you don't mind but I'm about to share the link!) I feel like she is going to be in the wilderness eating 5 star meals and I'm going to be huddled under my bucket trying to chew open my 5 year passed expiration date canned ham because I failed to put a can opener in the bucket! 

Here's the link to Angela's 72 hour kit:

http://foodstorageandsurvival.com/72-hour-survival-kits/

Needless to say, I don't think I excelled in the Emergency Preparedness calling. Do I think being prepared is important? Absolutely! Do I think it's becoming more important every day? Absolutely! Is all of the food in my bucket at least 5 years passed the due date because I didn't keep my 72 hour kit current? Absolutely! Have I been enjoying the string of power outages we have been blessed with in our area lately? Absolutely not! Do I think they are a sign of things to come and have shown me exactly how unprepared I really am? Absolutely! (More on the power outages in a later post) 

                                         I was just impressed with myself for fitting it all in there!

To wrap this up let me just say, you should probably not count on the people around you to be prepared enough to rescue you in an emergency, because chances are, they are less prepared than you are!

-Mandie