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I went zip-lining this weekend with my older daughter, mom, brother, and some cousins. What an awesome adventure! For anyone that doesn’t know what zip lining is, you drive to the top of a mountain and zip down through the trees on a harness connected to a network of steel cables and platforms. Most of the time you are pretty high off the ground. The company that ran the tour, Alpine Adventures, had a bunch of really nice, funny,  and helpful people working there which made it even better.

Now I feel like zip lining is a gateway to more dangerous adventures like sky diving, which is something I have said I would never do, but now am starting to reconsider. That adrenaline tastes so good.

Yesterday was the hottest day on earth. At least that’s what it felt like. While driving around doing some errands with the family, (school was canceled because of the hot weather - in New England this is unheard of) my husband decided to stop at “Twisty’s”, a local summer ice cream shack. The girls and I got ice cream cones, and my husband ordered a root beer float.

“That will be fourteen forty-four,” said the teenage girl at the register. I handed her some cash.

“What did you get?!” my husband said, assuming I ordered the 12-scoop party sundae because three ice cream cones and a root beer float should not cost fourteen dollars.

“I got a medium vanilla soft serve,” I said defensively, waiting for my cone.

Just then, a long straight arm slowly eased out of the service window and attached to the end of it was the tallest ice cream cone known to man.

“Medium vanilla soft serve,” called a voice from inside the shack (I assume it was connected to the long arm holding the cone).

My husband and I burst into laughter at the sight of this cone which was - no lie - about 12 inches from the bottom of the (normal-sized) cone to the top of the ice cream. And it was FAT! It wasn’t just tall and skinny: this ice cream was at least 5 inches in diameter.

It must have been somebody’s first day on the job because the root beer float and kids cones were normal size. I can just picture the poor soul with the long arms at the soft serve machine in a panic “I can’t stop it! It won’t stop!” as ice cream continued to spiral out of control.
And then a co-worker comes to the rescue and pulls the lever as the cone is approaching maximum capacity.

We all took turns holding the cone next to our faces and pretending to eat it because it was just so ridiculously enormous. We laughed until it hurt. And then I had to eat it really fast before it melted.

After I couldn’t eat another bite, there was still about a half gallon of ice cream left on the cone, so I passed it around. The entire family couldn’t finish it so we ended up throwing it away. That laugh alone was worth $14.44.

One good thing about “having no food in the house” is that you tend to get creative.

I made an awesome quesadilla today with whole wheat tortillas, pepper jack cheese, onions, green peppers, diced tomatoes, and a dash of cumin and chili pepper.

I sautéed the veggies, put a very thin coat of butter on the outside of the tortillas, and toasted the whole thing up in a frying pan with some cheese.

Holy crap, it was so good! I didn’t have any salsa, but it didn’t need it. Maybe it was the butter that made it so tasty. Mmmmmm…butter….