Zoo, Beatles, Susan G. Komen and Cookies and Cream Smores

Last month I met my family at the zoo for my now annual tradition of seeing Ticket to the Beatles perform at Jungle Boogie Friday nights. Here is my boyfriend Charlie waiting to meet my family for the first time....
And Ticket to the Beatles...even though I didn't get to see them for very long. grrrr.... Going to another one of their concerts in October next to the river.

We then went to cool down in the stinky penguin house!!!

Then watched these two goofballs mimicking each other...they were hilarious.

And saw the zebras going crazy cause it was apparently mating season and the female wasn't having it...

Then the next day got up early to go to the Susan G. Komen walk. It was stormy when I got up, but there was only 5 minutes of rain during the walk. These are some people who decided to paint their bodies and hope they wouldn't sweat it off.

And there was a tortoise in the walk! He was moving pretty fast too.

And here's the recipe that I thought was going to be full of chocolatey goodness. This is the batter...which there clearly wasn't enough of...which led to the disaster to come.

Crushed up Oreo's....which apparently I was supposed to pulverize...the directions did not imply this at all....

Mixed into the batter...which was supposed to be completely brown because the Oreo's should've been pulverized....

Layer some Hershey bars on top of half of the batter....

Then a layer of marshmellow fluff....

Then you're supposed to spread on the rest of the batter. It's really hard to spread something over marshmellow...especially when there isn't enough of that something....

Right out of the oven you could see the marshmellow bubbling up and exploding through the batter. Which left this hard, cooled lava look. Apparently it tasted fairly decent for looking like a pile of slop. Mary and Charlie ate a little and then I had to throw the rest away because I couldn't handle looking at it anymore.

Peanut Butter Brownies and Taco Pasta Salad

My boss decided to have a last minute bake sale to raise money for the tornado victims in Joplin, MO. So I found an easy recipe for brownies to make really quick.
Batter with peanut butter chips!

Ready to bake...and I don't have a finished product picture for some reason. I guess cause these were so last minute.

Next is the Taco Pasta Salad. Chopped up some tomatoes and lettuce....

Brown some meat and add taco seasoning....

Make rotini noodles....

Then add everything together with some Mexican blend cheese.

Then layer on top of the lettuce. You're supposed to eat it like a dip with chips...which didn't work so well cause the rotini noodles just roll off the chip.

Mile High Strawberry Pie and Pizza Baked Potatoes

First up is the strawberry pie I made for work last month. You start off with making strawberry jello and adding some sherbert to it. My grocery store didn't have strawberry sherbert so I used mixed berry and used the raspberry and orange parts of it.
Then mix in the fresh cut up strawberries...

Mix in 2 tubs of whipped topping and layer it in a baked pie shell.

Then add another tub of whipped topping on that. This was delicious and everyone at work ate it up! I'm sad that I got so full that I only had one piece and the strawberries were still frozen when I ate it. Here is the pie sitting precariously in my over-packed freezer.

Next are the pizza baked potatoes. I mixed some cream cheese with pizza sauce and I believe maybe mozzarella?? Looks lovely doesn't it?

Cut big slits into some already baked potatoes (which were not baked through at all) and layer on mini pepperonis and mozzarella. I have no after baking shot because the majority of these exploded in the oven. They were hard and didn't cook all the way through. Needless to say I went out to eat for lunch that week at work.