Orange Creamsicle Bars and Summer Oldies

Though this blog is new, this will most likely be my last post for about a week.  I work 4, 10 hour days a week at work, and while I sometimes I have a day off in the middle of the week, this week I'm not off until Friday.  I used to think Fridays were the best days to have off, but after 5 years of experience being on this schedule, I can heartily affirm that a day in the middle of the week is much, much better.  Friday will be super sweet when it gets here and I can sleep in, but the flip side is that I will desperately need to sleep in because I will have just worked 40 hours in a row with 12 two year-olds.  Ack!  It's exhausting.  And Monday through Thursday my schedule will look like this:  

~Wake up at 5:45 AM
~Arrive at work at 7
~Work til 545 PM
~Arrive Home at 630.
~Eat Dinner
~Exercise, doing either the Sweat Cardio or the Sculpt Strength daily DVD for Power 90
~Watch TV or read
~Go to bed by 10

It will be impossible to do things like catch up on phone calls, write blog posts, run errands or pretty much anything else that deviates from the above schedule!

But before I get ahead of myself, I should explain the title of this post.  This weekend, in addition to making a potato salad for my darling niece Charlotte's first birthday party (minus the hard-boiled egg, which can alienate a lot of people, myself included!) I also came across an intriguing recipe on Pinterest for Orange Creamsicle Cookies.


The problem is, though I love cooking and baking, I am absolutely hopeless when it comes to making cookies.  (a notable exception is Russian Tea Cakes, which I will most likely talk about around Christmas!)  My cookies burn on the bottom, they spread across the entire baking tray and meld into each other no matter how far I initially place them apart, and I get freaked out by the clutter of 3 or 4 cookie trays constantly going in and out of the oven, plus the cooling racks I need to set up to allow them to cool properly.  Too much work!


I used this recipe almost exactly but turned them into Blondies.  After mixing together all of the ingredients per the recipe, I added some milk (just a quick splash or two) to moisten the batter to make it more like blondie.  I then poured the batter into a well-greased square glass pan and baked everything for about 20 minutes.  The result was heavenly!!  The bars truly do taste like Orange Creamsicles without being fake-tasting, because the flavor derives from real orange zest and vanilla extract.  I'd be embarrassed to admit to you how many of these my husband and I ate since I just made them last night!


I also stressed myself out this morning about taking a picture of them to put on here.  I used to blog before, on a wonderful little collaborative effort with my beautiful friends.  While it was fun and I discovered I enjoyed blogging, a lot of times parts of it felt like "homework" to me.  Like, whenever I would make a recipe, I had to take a thousand photos of it.  Then there was the whole hassle of downloading them, uploading them, captioning them on the blog.  This morning I literally took down my vintage dessert plates and matching cups from the 50s and was poised and ready to stage a photo of the Orange Creamsicle Bar looking quite summery and delicious next to a fabric napkin when I realized, hey, I don't have to!!  This isn't a lifestyle blog or a how-to blog...I read those everyday and I'm copying what they do! This blog is mainly a record of my random thoughts and daily events.  I'll add pictures and photos when I want to (more like as soon as I figure out how to use iPhoto.  After being a PC user all of my life, we recently switched to Apple products and I'm now super confused, which is far from normal because Apple products are much more user-friendly.  I guess it goes to show you how much of a dud I am with technology!!) but I won't conduct elaborate photo shoots of all the stuff I make.


Suffice it to say, the Orange Creamsicle Bars?  They look just like blondies.  And you should make them. :)


Okay, and finally, the Summer Oldies part of the title to this post.  If you have Pandora, do yourself a favor and create a station called Summer Oldies.  I love, love, love this station.  I play it all the time while cooking, baking and canning.  I've always loved music from the 50s and 60s and this station plays the best of the best.  You really do feel like you're out at the beach or the pool or, better yet, on summer vacation as a kid.  A lot of that, for me, comes from the fact that we listened to Oldies when I was a kid.  It brings back memories of my childhood, even though I was born 20 to 30 years after some of these songs came out!


Clearly I'm a very wordy person.  I guess I wrote a novel in order to compensate for not writing again for awhile!  Here's hoping everyone has a great week and a lovely start to their summer!!


~S