Wake boarding, strawberry pretzel salad, Dance Central=Summer

I love summer. And it is here, finally. Ok, not officially until June 21, which just happens to be my birthday so start planning. Anyway, we have had the wonderful perfect ideal summery weekend. Yesterday we woke up early to go boating and we both learned to wake board. I was unaware that the plan was to wake board, I thought the plan was just to go out on a lake on a boat and relax. So when asked if I had ever been wake boarding before, I said, sure. Which was actually a lie. Partly because I didn't really know what wake boarding is and I was thinking of body boarding which is really nothing like wake boarding at all except that they both include water and a board. So Caleb and I both learned and both managed to spend a few minutes zipping around the lake on top of the water and many more minutes falling down and swallowing lake water. We actually had a lot of fun and today we are insanely sore. Mostly me, because I'm kind of a wuss. I took pictures, but with someone else's camera. Darn, you can't see us falling in the lake a million times...

But on to the main event: strawberry pretzel salad. We went to a bbq last night and this was my contribution. It's a good southern girl recipe by Paula Dean. It accounts for all of her favorite things including butter, sugar, and cream cheese.  I've been making this with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law long before they ever became my in-laws. And it is just delicious. This time around though, I had a major revelation about the recipe that I will share...

Here is a link to Paula's recipe.

1. Crush up your pretzels. FYI, 2 cups crushed pretzels=4 cups non crushed pretzels.

2. Stir the melted butter, three tablespoons sugar, and pretzels all together in the pan and then press down to make the crust. Let cool completely before moving on the next step. (I actually made the crust on Friday and the rest on Saturday)

3. Cream together the softened cream cheese and sugar. (You could use light cream cheese and it would be just fine.) Fold in the cool whip. (Again, light or free cool whip would be fine. And you would feel better about yourself later.) Spread over the pretzel layer. Refrigerate until firm. (Or stick in the freezer if you are in a hurry like me.)

This is the best layer. You could just make some of this and eat it, minus the jello or pretzels.

4. Ok this is where things get tricky. Add 2 cups boiling water to the jello, stir until dissolved. We always used to skip the fruit, I don't love pineapple and I honestly don't love whole strawberries mixed in things. At this point, all you have is boiling jello and it melts down your cream cheese layer and gets all in the crust which makes the crust soggy. And it would take hours to set up. But yesterday it dawned on me: you need the frozen strawberries to make the jello cold so it won't melt every thing down and so it sets up quickly. Who knew? Probably everyone but me. I had a pint of frozen strawberries in the freezer so I threw them in the blender and grated them up to a tiny size. Then stirred them in. Perfect. And awesome texture.

Only a tiny bit slipped in the corner. 

5. Then refrigerate until ready to serve. Or freeze. Again, in a hurry. But it set up in less than an hour. And the ground strawberries gave it awesome flavor. So good. I've been eating leftovers all day.

My hips hate you, strawberry pretzel salad.

This doesn't even count as dessert because it has the word "salad" in the title. You are welcome.

And for your Sunday night viewing laughter, a picture of me playing Dance Central at the bbq last night. Again, you are welcome. I don't mind making fun of myself.