You're So Vanilla

I have been looking for a good body lotion that smells yummy for awhile now.  I tried Bath & Body works, but all of those scents were overwhelming.  I looked at the lotion aisle in Target, and the smells were just too boring.  I wanted something subtle, delicious and hydrating.  And I found it!

My latest obsession for dry skin: Boots Extracts Vanilla Body Butter.  It's made with organic and community-traded shea butter, cocoa butter and vanilla extracts.  It is so thick and it feels like you're putting vanilla frosting on your body!  But it rubs in very easily, unlike Bath & Both Works Lay It On Thick-- which is great but it takes some muscles to spread it on your skin.  And of course, the Boots Body Butter smells great!  I love the smell of vanilla, but sometimes it's hit or miss.  I like it when my candles smell like cookies, but I want my skin to smell more natural.  That's exactly how this smells thanks to high quality ingredients.

I have the worst dry skin ever.  My hands and lips crack and break the second the leaves change color.  I've experimented with a lot of things, and here are my winter favorites that you can find at any drugstore:

Chapped lips:  Nivea A Kiss of Intense Moisture Medicated lip care, .20 oz, $4
Cracked hands: Aquaphor Advanced Therapy Healing Ointment, 1.75 oz, $6
Dry skin: Boots Extracts Body Butter in Vanilla, Avocado, Olive Oil or Mango, 6.7 oz, $10
Winter hair: Organix Moroccan Argan Oil, 13 oz, $8
Face:  Boots Organic Face Super Balm, .52 oz, $9

Fried Fair Food

Why else do people go to the fair beside the food?  Yeah, there are games and rides and vendors, but there's also a plethora of fried, greasy food that will make your taste buds dance and your tummy turn.

At a lot of the fairs and special outdoor events in North Dakota, there are some staples:
--taco in a bag:  a bag of chips or Doritos is cut open at the top, and filled with typical taco fixings
--Indian taco: fried dough with taco stuff on top of it
--kettle corn: the best mix of sweet and salty popcorn
--corn on the cob: the Lions Club's specialty
--beer cheese soup bowls
--cheese curds
--fried Oreos
--fresh-cut French fries
--roasted almonds

You'll also find the typical meats on sticks, cheeseburgers, fresh-squeezed lemonade stands, and gyros.  Health-wise, the above foods contain a lot of calories and fat.  One 7 oz. serving of fair French fries will cost you 560 calories and 24 grams of fat, and a fried onion mum is more than 1,300 calories.  WebMD says one giant turkey leg is more than a thousand calories and a whopping 54 grams of fat.  And don't forget dessert: funnel cakes are delicious, but they're also an extra 760 calories.

So what do you do?  Well, you can avoid the fair altogether, but where's the fun in that?  You can eat only the healthy stuff, but that might make you crave the other food even more.  My advice is to go for something relatively healthy, like corn on the cob without butter and then cut yourself a little break.  I'm not saying to be entirely gluttonous for the day, I'm just saying that one fried Oreo is only 98 calories.  If that's what's going to help you curve the fried food craving, go for it.  I'm not an expert by any means, so this is all just opinion.  But I have been to a lot of fairs in the Northern Plains and I always cut myself a little slack-- especially when it comes to the kettle corn.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

The other day I was in my hair stylist's waiting room thumbing through InStyle magazine, when I came across a small article about this machine that turns bananas into the consistency of frozen yogurt.  I don't particularly care for bananas to begin with-- unless they're throw into a strawberry-banana smoothie-- even then, they're kind of a boring, filling fruit that I rarely eat.  But for some reason, I was intrigued and I wanted this machine.  So after I got my bangs trimmed, I went home and Googled: Yonanas.  Immediately, the website plays an annoying infomercial about the joys of Yonanas and a girl saying that it's all natural, has a texture like ice cream, and you can add flavors to it.  Sounding too good to be true, I decided to do some more research on it.  I'm not going to publicly insult the creator's livelihood, but after doing a little snooping online, I realized that this product wasn't right for me.

But I was still interested to see if maybe I could make my own version of Yonanas at home with a food processor.  So I bought bananas, organic vanilla pudding (hoping that might help somehow) and organic vanilla extract.  I threw all of it in a food processor on low until it was blended.  I will say, that blended bananas in any form (whether it's in a blender, Yonanas, or in a food processor) does not look like ice cream, does not have the same consistency, and is not white.  It's a weird yellowish-brown color.  So right there, Yonanas was wrong.

I put them in small containers and threw them in the freezer, hoping they would take on a more solid consistency.  Now, like I said, I don't really care for bananas, so for me, it just tastes like cold, mashed-up bananas (which is exactly what it is).  But for people who do like this starchy fruit, they seem to like my own version of banana ice cream.  Personally, I'd rather just buy a tub of Tofutti chocolate crunch soy ice cream, and skip the bananas altogether.