The switch

Hey! So, I made this blog without really researching other blog options. So, I am making an equally spontaneous decision and switching to Tumblr. So, my new url is: enporter.tumblr.com

See you there!

Snickers

If you know me at all, you know that I am a huge extrovert. I hardly ever get tired of seeing friends, or talking. I also love food, hence the blog title. 

And the only thing I can think of that's better than hanging out with friends, eating while doing it. 

So, this week I decided to try out yet another Pinterest recipe: Homemade Snickers. I brought these to my life group Thursday night and oh. my goodness. 

Seriously. One of those desserts that you just can't stop eating. 

If you aren't taking these somewhere where with lots of people to help you it, you will eat the whole pan. Trust me. 

This not my picture, but my result looked pretty much exactly the same. 

Here is a slightly modified version of the recipe:

First chocolate layer

1 1/2 cups milk chocolate

1/4 + 1 T smooth peanut butter

Thoroughly grease your 9 x 14 baking pan. Melt ingredients together in a saucepan or microwave, then pour into the baking dish and spread until even. Let cool and harden completely.

Nougat layer:

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups marshmallow fluff (basically 1 7oz jar)

1/4 cup evaporated milk

1/4 cup smooth peanut butter

1 1/2 cups salted peanuts, chopped

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add in sugar and milk, stirring until dissolved and bring to a boil. Let cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add in fluff, peanut butter and vanilla, stirring until smooth. Turn off heat and fold in peanuts, then pour over bottom chocolate layer. Let cool completely.

Caramel Layer:

1 14 oz. bag of caramels

1/4 cup whipping cream

Combine ingredients in a saucepan over low heat. Let melt, stirring occasionally, until smooth – this took about 10 minutes for me. Pour over nougat layer and let cool completely.

Bottom Chocolate Layer:

1 1/2 cups milk chocolate

1/4 cup + 1 T smooth peanut butter

Melt ingredients together in a saucepan or microwave, then pour over caramel and spread until even. Let cool and harden completely.

Refrigerate for at least one hour before serving, then cut as desired. These can stay at room temperature, but they do get gooey. I like them refrigerated best!

Note: for best results, buy one of the half-sheet aluminum cake pans at the grocery store. That way, you can pop the entire square out and cut from there!

So yummy. It was unanimously agreed that these are better than the packaged kind. They probably have just as many preservatives because they are made from packaged food. But, oh well. They still taste AMAZING! 

Aloha

In case you didn't know, my family and I spent the last week in the Aloha State. Honestly, it was the one of the busiest and laziest weeks of my life. I got a lot of sun, but didn't get burned (so proud of myself)!

The coolest part was definitely the helicopter tour we took over the islands Maui and Molokai. Yep, you read that right. I got to ride in a helicopter. Be jealous.

The Maui is really mostly brown foothills and resorty areas. Molokai on the other hand had less than 5,000 occupants and no electricity. It is also home to the waterfall used in the most movies and the highest sea cliffs in the world (that I got to fly over!!!).

As we were flying over this marvelous little island, who's coastline is made up of 55 miles of untouched coral reef, I found myself marveling at the sheer beauty of it all and thanking God for being so creative.

Think about it, God didn't have to give us a pretty planet. We don't actually need flowers. Plants, yes. Beautiful tropical flowers, no. But he made them anyways for us to enjoy. As a little reminder that we are loved by a great God who is big enough to create a universe.

Our pilot was telling us how many millions of years of volcanic activity it took to create Hawaii. Any time someone mentions the supposed age of the earth, especially in the presence of people who I know have very strong opinions about it I brace myself for a debate.

This "issue" has divided the Christian community for years, myself included. And that makes very sad. Because honestly, WHO CARES?

I'm not generally one to be ok with not knowing how something works. For as long as I can remember this has been a stumbling point for me in my walk with Christ. "Why" is my favorite word, and often times scripture doesn't have a specific answer.

I've listened to people fight over the age of the earth, each side convinced the other is wrong, stupid, ignorant, faithless, etc. And honestly, I think it makes God very sad to see his children fight over something so trivial.

At the end of the day the earth is a marvelous creation, no matter how old it is, or how God chose to bring it into existence. Believing it's new does not make you a better Christian, and believing it's old does not make you more educated and cultured.

Neither of these theories are proven, that's why their called theories.

I'll be honest, I have no idea which one I believe. I don't know where the dinosaurs fit in, or why the mountains have sea shells in them. I do however find it impossible to believe that everything came to be from nothing.

Anyways, it was a great vacation. But now it's back to real life. Which, as great as Hawaii was, I'm glad to be back. So, until next time, Aloha.

Junior High

The other day my friend Jessica and I journeyed down south to spend the day at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Sadly, there are no pictures to document the occasion. Why? Because about five minutes after we excited the car we were pretty much drenched in sweat. Sweat + long hair + 70 mph rollar coasters = no pictures! Seriously, my hair looked like something had made a nest in it. But, I digress.

As I looked for a picture of me and Jessica to post I had to laugh. Most of the pictures of us are rather unattractive. Not because we are unattractive people. Rather because for some reason we have a tendency to make very stupid faces in front of a camera. So, I decided to post a couple...

Freshman year formal. 

Junior year formal.

Ya, this is what I referring to...

On the bus to Senior trip, probably listening to Taylor Swift

You get the point, we're silly. Very very silly. 

However, while were at Six Flags, we weren't the ones being silly. The school bus loads of recent Junior High graduates were. This is the part where I cleverly tie in my title and get to the actual point of this post. Even though I did rather enjoy digging up those photos. :)

As we watched these young teens in line throughout the day, one thought continued to flow through both of our heads: I'm so glad I'm not them. 

Seriously though. If you offered me 1 million dollars to do Junior High again, I would say no. I don't really think any amount of money would be worth going through that much emotional turmoil again. 

No, my Junior High experience was not nearly as dramatic as the tv shows we all watched when we were younger. There were no hunky boyfriends with bitchy ex girlfriends who made it their life's goal to make my life miserable. There was however gossip, lots and lots of gossip. And fat jokes. Neither of those things made positive contributions to my self-esteem.

Other than mean, I think the best word to describe Junior High would have to be awkward. Seriously though. You have a bunch of kids just starting puberty, hormones raging, being forced to spend 7 hours a day, 5 days a week together. For me, that meant 35 hours a week of trying. Trying to be smart, pretty, and socially acceptable. Most days, I felt like none of these things.

I didn't have long, straight, blonde hair. I wasn't skinny. I had a weird sense of humor. And, I talked to much. I'm not really sure why I used past tense, because all of those things are still true. Although, I did learn how to style my curly hair without looking like a troll doll. But, hair aside, here's what's different: I don't hate myself now. In Junior High, I did.

It's taken me 7 years, but, I finally realize that I don't need to change any of those things to be the woman that God made me to be.

I am smart. I don't need to be skinny. God has a husband in mind for me that won't care that I don't wear a size 4. And as for the weird sense of humor, I've just kind of accepted that it's not going anywhere any time soon.

So, as we stood in line and watched them interact I wished I could tell them, the girls especially, to hang in there. It gets better. Your worth as a person does not have to be defined by what jeans you wear and how many boys think you're cute. And that life is too short to hate yourself. Because at the end of the day, Jesus loves you to pieces. And when you hate yourself, it hurts him; because he made you in his image.

Koolaid

A lovely day with a lovely friend, not to mention delicious cupcakes.

Remember when I said I liked healthy dessert? Well, this is not going to be one of them.
But, before I tell you about the cupcakes, I'm going to tell you a little about my friend, Ashlyn.

Here we are hiking at Hume Lake. 

I met Ashlyn at the beginning of my freshman year of High School at WSM (Well Student Ministries). It's hard to believe that was almost 5 years ago. (!) Anyways, we were sorted into the same life group. I don't exactly remember when or how we became friends. Which, is weird for me because usually I remember the moment when that bond started to form. For some reason I don't really remember that with Ash. I think this is part of what has made our friendship so special. 

Instead of following the typical high school friendship mold. You know, meet, be bffs and spend every waking moment together, get sick of each other and start picking out all the individual quirks about the other person, and then stop hanging out for awhile and THEN form a healthy relationship... (I know, total run-on sentence.) We just kind of slowly built up this bond over high school. Which eventually led to me waking up at 4:45 on Wednesday mornings to do Bible study at her house senior year. This is when we really started getting solid. 

I know Ashlyn and are going to be friends for life. When we hang out, no matter how long it's been, it's like no time has past. All in all, she's one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I know

So, a few weeks ago Ashlyn being her creative self wanted to try out a pinterest recipe for Peach Cupcakes. 

Long story short: I could not find freeze dried peaches! So, instead, I bought some Peach Mango Koolaid mix. Ya, I know not even almost the same thing. But, the result was still lovely. 

So, instead of making peach cupcakes, we made Peach Mango Koolaid cupcakes with raspberry puree. They pretty much tasted like Rainbow Sherbet ice cream in cupcake form. YUM! 

So, here is the recipe we ended up using:

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 ⅔ cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 packet unsweetened Peach Mango Koolaid  (next time i'll probably use a little less)
3/4 cup low-fat buttermilk
1/2 cup pureed fresh raspberries
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

We had a little baking mishap. Some came out too early and got a little shriveled. I called them brain cupcakes. Which, made me wish that McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy would appear in my kitchen and magically fix them with his wonderfully handsome Neurosurgeon magic. Instead of an intervention from a scrub wearing Patrick Dempsey, we put them back in the oven. That worked, sort of.

Here I am with our lovely creations. Ashlyn didn't think they were pretty enough so she went and picked some leaves in my front yard to add to the raspberries. Love her. 

The cupcakes came out very moist and flavorful. They where pretty dense, which, I liked. However, if you like light and fluffy cakes these are not for you. 

In case you couldn't tell, I'm going to be talking a lot about my thoughts here, and food. Lots of food. Since I was about 14 I've been pretty health conscious about what I eat. But, now that I'm in college, I have a bit more freedom to dabble in the realm of healthy cooking, desserts especially. 

Along with food, I've also been thinking a lot about life. In fact, if most people new how much I thought about society, religion, politics, school, and overall life in general, I think they would probably run away screaming. Which, you are free to do at any point in reading this blog. That is, if anyone is actually reading this in the first place. 

So, if you stick around you'll hear a little about food, and a lot about the way I see the world. Maybe the other way around. :)