What's a little mud between friends

For all my talk last week about mud, I wanted to share with you another side...SWEET EATS!

My plan was to share a Mississippi Mud Pie recipe but all Reese had on the brain this week was milkshakes. Lo and behold, I found a Mud Pie Milkshake recipe! It just wasn't the type you find on a kid menu. 

No worries! Reese took a desserts cooking class at school last year and assured me she knew how to KID-I-FY this treat. 

All she needed was a little bit of DIRT.

REESE'S DIRT MILKSHAKE

1 pint of chocolate/vanilla ice cream - all chocolate, even better! Slightly softened.
1/3 cup of very cold whole milk
12 plus Oreo cookies (depending on how much DIRT you want in your drink)
Mallomars cookies for your topping

Directions:

Place 6 Oreo cookies in a ziploc bag. Get your fists ready and break them up, Wreck It Ralph style, till you have what looks like DIRT.

Place ice cream, milk and 6 more Oreo cookies, broken in pieces, into blender. Mix until you have a smooth consistency. 

When ready, pour into glasses (or Olaf's head) alternating layers of DIRT and milkshake. Don't forget, like we did, to save some DIRT for the very top layer of your drink. 

 

Top off your creation with a tasty Mallomar cookie or two!

 

 

It's not the ultimate foodie pic but quiet children and empty glasses

are the final word at our house on good eats.

 

After they slurped these milkshakes down, more sweet combinations and toppings came to mind for our next DIRT Milkshake. We'll definitely be making these again. Stay tuned!

 

 

For those interested, here is the original Milkshake recipe by Bobbly Flay that originally caught my eye.

Mississippi Mud Pie Spiked Milkshake Shots by Bobby Flay

Still a keeper amongst adult friends! Happy Friday!!

Refrigerator Art - november

Here is our artwork for November.

Reese likes the bright colors. Ethan and Dave like the words floating over the paint. And me, I just like that it's done. Why? Because the artwork you see didn't have a pretty start. 

What I wanted was an abstract look, something that might be perceived as a mistake. I started off fine but then got carried away with my paint. When one too many colors swirled and mixed, all I was left with was a mess of brown or better yet, MUD.

It was a mistake, a real one, and it wasn't beautiful.

I wanted to chuck it. It would have been easy to start over again but for all my talk about mistakes, I didn't. I got out my paints and tried to work with it, again, and again.

I made big strokes and little strokes. I dabbed paint here, I dotted paint there. I outright squirted colors all over my paper obliterating the brown muddle I started out with. But it was still there, down deep.

As I mentioned, the kids really liked this piece but they only knew the final result. They didn't know, like I did, about the mud pie that was holding all those colors together.

What a metaphor for life.

There are so many layers to our every day. So many moments, so many attempts, and yes, so many mistakes. It takes a lot of living to reach those fleeting instances where suddenly, everything looks alright. How easy then to sit in a shining moment and forget the not so pretty mistake where it all began. 

But everyone has mud moments, beautiful mistakes. Lucky you. Lucky me.