Let me tell you about the best day ever. EVER!
Last weekend, Jake and I drove down to St. George, in southern Utah. We went with Jen and Zo-fish. We left on Friday in Justin's huge Ford truck loaded up with road snacks galore -- gold fish, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter M&Ms, and fine beverages. Despite all this, we had to stop in Beaver at the cheese factory to get squeaky cheese and ice cream. If you are ever doing a road trip in southern Utah, you've got to stop here and get you some squeaky cheese. In Beaver. Off main street. You could ask anyone for directions and you'll find it because there's only one dairy in town. In fact, you could even say, "Point me to the cheese factory!" to any given Beaver citizen and they will know exactly what you are talking about.
After stopping in Beaver we headed our way down to St. George to stay with Becky and Jeff. And we really wanted to check out their tasty little burger joint, "Fargo's Drive Thru" that just opened in March. Obviously, Jeff is from New York and has all sorts of crazy ideas that he has decided to import to the wild west. One of these was the sweet potato fries concept. Maybe sweet potato fries are not really from New York because I've had them in Fresno before but you get the idea. Sweet potato fries are not from around here.
Anyways, so our first stop in St. George was to hit up Fargo's for some free grub. Jeff kept plying us with strawberry shakes in addition to the cheeseburgers, fries, and chicken tenders. We got back to their house at about 10 pm ready to bust from a full day of noshing combined with at least two hours of straight-up pigging out. I remember thinking that I had already eaten way too much than what was good for me. But little did I know, tomorrow was going to be the best day ever. EVER!
The next morning, we got up to run a 5K mud run in New Harmony. Our name was the Mud Butts. Don't ask, it's a Jen thing. (If you noticed our t-shirts in the above photo, that's what the "M" stands for.) It was simultaneously the best and worst 5K I have ever run. For one thing, half of it was uphill. The second half was filled with military-style obstacles in mud pits. Fences in mud . . . tires in mud . . . crawling army-style through metal pipes in mud . . . log balancing in mud. It was very muddy. I still have weird bruises. There were parts where I was laughing out loud but the mud and water was so cold that you couldn't tell I was really crying. On the inside. Just a little.
So after getting hosed down (literally, with a fire hose) after the race, we cleaned up to head back down to St. George. And our next stop? Fargo's Drive Thru. For more food. Post-race double pig-out food.
Somehow, Gundersen creativity, combined with Fargo executive power, creates total insanity in food concepts. As we were all happily eating our fried chicken fingers with barbecue sauce and ranch that afternoon, we started talking about fried items such as deep-fried Snickers candy bars and deep fried Twinkies. To the Gundersens, this is just wishful thinking. But to the Fargos, this is reality waiting to happen.
Jeff decided that we needed to, no, we were required, to test the limits of fried food and immediately ordered up a fried food extravaganzy. Oops, I mean extravaganza. Except really, that was a blend of both "extravaganza" and "frenzy" to convey the true sense of what happened later that evening.
After stocking up at the local grocery, we brought back our booty to the restaurant and immediately got to work. What this means is:
1. Traci (or "Trace of Base" as I am now known in the Mud Butt team) started prepping by unwrapping and cutting food into bite-size pieces.2. Jen started soaking the items in buttermilk and then breading them in egg and flour.
3. Zo manned the deep fat fryer and was in charge of powder-sugar sprinkling the output.
4. Jeff supervised while still running a completely functional restaurant, and went around yelling out things like "you shall now have eternal gluttonous glory!"
5. Becky laughed and took pictures.
6. Jake attended to his iphone or laptop, which was actually (and what I mean by that is not at all) crucial to our overall success.
We deep fat fried just about anything you can think of: cookie dough, brownies, cheesecake, snickers bars, Oreos, nutter butters, cheese sticks, Pillsbury crescent roll dough, Almond Joys, Reese's peanut butter cups, Twinkies . . . it was crazy. Here's the cookies, which actually did not turn out too well:
There is a deep-fried Twinkie there on the plate, and we learned the hard way that you really don't need to roll those suckers in buttermilk prior to breading them with flour. They sort of start to disintegrate in liquid. But I will say this: they are good. Very good.
But amazingly, the best was deep fried cheesecake. IT WAS SO DELICIOUS!!
Anyways, after cleaning up that night (some of the customers even got in on our fried food action, which was good, because we needed help eating all of that stuff) we rolled ourselves home. Went to bed. Slept like logs.
Seriously -- how often does a day like that happen? Not often enough.
When we got home Sunday night I weighed myself to assess the damage, which was FOUR POUNDS.
I've already been working to get it back off (in addition to some other poundage that needs work, we won't even talk about that right now).
Worth it?
WORTH IT.
BEST DAY EVER. 
