The other day we were feeling crafty and peckish so we decided to make a craft we could sup on. Here is the evidence of the events as they unfolded*:
We bought pizza dough at Trader Joe's on a whim.
I believe that Kristyn said this is the Italian Evil Eye or Devil Horns or warding off of the Evil Eye. IDK, I was thinking intently about pizza at the time.
I started the project but Kristyn had a lot of instructions so she took over. She forgot that she used to work at a pizzaria, haha.
We used a stupid Ragu sauce. It was kinda too sweet for to make pizza with.
We used an entire bag of mozzarella bc why wouldn't you?
Sprinkle some garlic on when Kristyn's not looking and it's ready for the oven!
Booyah!
It was pretty good! Next time we have to use a sauce with more oregano. Totes.
*I never said this blog would always be interesting. As Kristyn’s niece says, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset!!!”
Today I went for a walk at lunch. One of my fellow Interns had told me about an office complex called The Water Garden down the block. I had eaten lunch on a bench close to the street but had never ventured far into the complex as it’s not technically a public park. But today I wanted to walk around and get some air so I ventured in and was bowled over! It’s so pretty in there, I’m never going to eat lunch at my desk again! Anyway, there’s nothing humorous or noteworthy really about an office complex but this made me happy today so here it is:
My ducky friend.
Aesthetic benefits of corporate greed, in this circumstance, I like it.
I was on the phone with Kristyn.
I love me some sparkly water. Mmmhmm that's right.
Glitter prezzies.
I couldn't decide which glitter prezzie pic I liked betta so I went with both. Why not?
I peeped this Christmas tree through a window and snuck in to take a picture of it. OMG, I love it!
Oh another thing, I got to sit at work and read a book today. It was awesome and I kept feeling guilty like I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing…but I was! Hoohoohoohoohahahaha!
I found this near the sink under the paper towel dispenser at the Laundromat. Thought it was worth noting. This is some Passive Aggressive Notes shit right here…
P.S. I’m on the Laundromat’s side on this but the note is priceless, “So if there aren’t towels when you need one, now you know why.” Haha…
P.S. #2 The other thing that happened at the Laundromat, nice right?!
…continued.
So we were driving along, fresh off my “I’m so bored why don’t we stop the car and take some pictures” tantrum when we saw a sign for a Taxidermy Shop. I wishwishwish I could think of the name now and I will update this post if I can come up with it, I swear. Anyway, we are strict animal lovers, vegetarians blahblahblah but where we’re from, you do not just RUN INTO stray Taxidermy shops. Oh no. In NJ, we barely even have butcher shops that are not inside supermarkets anymore. Pizza places, nail salons, dollar stores, we gotchoo. Taxidermy shops are a little harder to come by.
From the inside looking out.
That being said, we were running on pure adrenaline when we ran full tilt boogie into that shop. It never occured to us until we were INSIDE the shop that we had RUN TOWARD a place that kills, skins and re-creates live beings for fun/profit. We just thought, “OMG, Taxidermy! I wonder if we can buy a squirrel!”
We're all just hangin around, hyuk, hyuk.
We knocked on the door and a man came let us in. He and his doggies seemed nice and we asked him a few questions before he invited us into his workshop (pictured in the last post).
More heads.
He told us that he used to work in some other line of business that wasn’t doing so hot. He has always been an hunter and had always admired taxidermists’ work. He got an apprenticeship under someone he looked up to and soon enough opened his own shop.
Foxes and boars and turkeys, oh my!
Basically, after you hunt and kill the animal, you skin them and use their meat however you’re gonna (food, whatever). Then you dry the skin out. You have to buy plastic or foam molds for the specific animal you are using and then the rest is just artistic interpretation based on how they looked in life and how you want them posed.
Closeup of Fox, Boar and Turkey
Apart from the fact that he is a hunter, he is a huge animal lover. He has that cat you saw previously and two dogs.
Kristyn petting one of the owner's doggies.
They go hunting with them a lot. I think it’s the highlight of their year. He took time and showed us a photo album of him, his friend, his family and their dogs hunting in South Dakota.
The owner and his best friends.
The doggies were really friendly too and even showed off their hunting “pointing” skills for us, haha. I can’t say we weren’t scared. Because we’re from New Jersey, we are suspicious of everyone and were leery at times. Honestly though, this was just a nice, friendly man who probably was silly to let us suspicious NJ-ites in. We thought we were knocking on the door of an actual factual store but it turned out to be his workshop and showroom. He was really nice for letting us in and showing us around. Thanks Taxidermy guy!
Showing off their huntin skills for us.
We left there and hopped back on 90. We were starting to get hungry and the cheese/taxidermy mania of the day (and my allergies) were making us yearn for a place to stop for the day and rest. We made it into Minnesota!
Entering Minnesota!
We decided to stop in Rochester, Minnesota. Rochester, unbenownst to us until we got there, is the home of the Mayo Clinic and IBM!
Rochester, MN is where hang our hats.
We found a room at a weird hotel that had a Goth front desk clerk, went through our animal rituals and then drove around downtown Rochester. The downtown area looked like it had probably at one time been thriving but was recently kind of abandoned. There was a main strip of like chain stores, followed by a more neighborhoody main drag that seemed like it had a lot of potential but that the shop owners had been driven out by the chain stores.
Mayo Clinic
Then there was another section closer to the Mayo Clinic that was nicer and maybe the reason why the downtown area was a ghost town. We found a street fair! Kristyn said, “I don’t know what the heck is wrong with this picture. Why does everyone look exactly the same?” I said, “They’re all white people with blonde hair and blue eyes.”
Street fair full of white people.
It was like being at a Barr family reunion up in that piece. I wish we had photographic evidence. Here I’ll provide a family photo instead:
White people, aka my family on the day of my Christening. If only they knew what a waste of time that'd end up being...ah well.
Since I was feeling like cockypoo because of my allergies, we took a couple of fugly shots and beat it out of there. I’m usually down for street fair food but I needed to sit down and have a cup of tea, STAT:
Us cautiously enjoying ourselves.
Me with a case of fathead/rednose and Kristyn with a case of weird eyes/slightsmile.
On our way to find me some tea with a side of pancakes, we found this:
World's Largest Ear O' Corn!
Right next to our hotel, there was a Denny’s. As we went in, I took this shot of the chain shopping area of Rochester:
Rochester by moonlight.
Inside Denny’s I flipped the script and got a veggie burger and DEFINITELY a cup of tea. We sat and eavesdropped as a group of adults sat at a table behind us and talked about “the homosexuals”. There were two men and one woman. The one man and one woman were extremely anti-gay. Well, scratch that, they were ALL anti-gay, but just those two were like, foot down, don’t wanna hear about it anti-gay. The other guy was kind of more thoughtful about it. He said, “Now you can’t just judge someone for being gay. I know they say they’re born that way and I don’t know if that’s true but if it is, I cannot imagine the burden that must be on your soul.” The other two were like, “They’re not born that way! They choose it I tell ya! If someone in my family were gay, I wouldnt’ talk to’m anymore!” The other guy was like, “If someone in my family told me they were gay, I wouldn’t understand it but it wouldn’t make me love’m any less.” Then they kind of went into a discussion on whether or not the homosexuals will go to hell for what they’ve done. Kristyn threatened me with my life not to say something so I kept my big fat mouth shut. *sigh*
So we went back to our room, laid down and watched some TV. The news is really weird in Minnesota. I don’t know if you watch 30 Rock or not but a couple of episodes ago they went to Kenneth the Page’s hometown in the mountains to find a standup comedian to draw “folksy people”. Liz Lemon turned on the news and the reporter said something along the lines of, “Ethyl is going on vacation so Myrna will be watching her cats this week”. Liz Lemon said, “Yeesh, small town”. THAT is what Rochester, MN was like. They reported on the high school football team, bake sales, kindergarten’s first day…It was incredible. In order to be on the news in Northern NJ, you have to get killed in a spectacular fashion in public (small, non-sexy murders need not apply) or you have to find out where Good Day New York has sent their newbie reporter to freeze at. They always send whoever has the least time on the show to stand on some corner in Hoboken or whereever and interact with the locals. If you can find that guy, you can be on the news but don’t count on it. Seriously don’t.
On my Aunt Theresa’s suggestion, we kept looking up KOA Campgrounds to stay at because there’s a million of them along the way. Our original intention for this trip had been to camp the whole way and save money on hotels. Because I insisted on bringing a shitload of photographic equipment I did not use, we ended up not bringing the tent. So that meant we could only stay at KOA Campgrounds that had cabins for rental. Being that this was the week leading up to Labor Day weekend (it was late this year), a lot of the campgrounds were close to capacity. Also, if we found a cabin for rent, it had no blankets and no running water. Typically we could find an actual factual hotel with bathroom for the same price. Still though, we had KOA on our minds and had intended to make a little pitstop to Wal-Mart that night for bedding and supplies. We were just too damn tuckered though and so we watched the news until we passed the heck out, dreaming of disembodied heads and cheese wheels. G’nite.
On Thursday, September 3, 2009, we left our hotel in Illinois and got on Route 90. We had only taken 80 so far so 90 was a new ballgame. We soon found ourselves in Wisconsin, the land of the cheese!
Kristyn and a Map of Wisconsin!
Now we typically try to pare down our cheese intake but when in Rome, dudes. So we started looking for a good place to get our cheese on and in DeForest, Wisconsin, we found our place: Ehlenbach’s Cheese Chalet.
Ehlenbach's Cheese Chalet!
We had a titty attack when we saw it and pulled off the road. This is what we found inside:
Cheeses in pretty wax casings.
There were so many different kinds of fresh cheeses, crackers, bread, wines, homemade baked goods, souvenirs. It was so cute in there!
Life-size cow statue inside the Cheese Chalet.
They even let you sample the goods. We tried one cheese that was chocolate fudge flavored. Damn that shit was good. We ended up buying some cheese and crackers and a coupla postcards. Ugh so good.
Then we went outside to take pictures of the giant cow they had outside. Love it.
Kristyn insisted on having her picture taken with the cow's ass. I like it.
I had terrible allergies for some reason that day. Oh and don’t worry the animals were in the car but we were only in the Chalet for a hot minute and the windows were rolled down. We kept running to check on them.
Kristyn definitely wanted a picture of the veins on the cow's udders. I think it was a good choice myself.
But I can’t say they were thrilled with our need for pictures of udders and ourselves.
Kristyn is taking pictures with her iPhone in front of the Cow and Cheese Chalet.
Who could blame them? But the pictures were necessary methinks.
Me and the Cow.
We got back in the car and set back off on our way, eating cheese and crackers until we couldn’t take it anymore. A coupla hours later, we stopped at a weird little rest stop that had this out front:
I LOVE that the station is called Cow 97...
I guess because my allergies were bothering me, I started whining about wanting to get out of the car and take more pictures. It may seem like we’ve done a lot at this point but if you figure it took us eight hours to get to the other side of PA, eight more hours to get to Chicago and then about six hours to get to where we were in Wisconsin, that is twenty-two hours in the car with only a coupla lookyloo stops. I was bored, yo. So we stopped and took this picture:
Wildflowers in Wisconsin.
And this one:
This truck is probably carrying the cookie you have in your hand right...this...second.
We were just going to drive a couple more hours and find a place to stop when we saw a sign that made us stop the car dead. We pulled up to this place:
Unassuming from the outside, right?
We knocked on the door and were let inside by a nice man who introduced to:
This guy.
That guy above is alive but I can’t say the same for these guys:
I'm no fan of hunting but this is impressive.
Cuz we found ourselves inside the a Taxidermy Studio!!!
Don't worry, he's friendly.
To be continued…
After we left Indiana, it wasn’t that far of a ride to Chicago, Illinois. Neither of us had ever been so we were excited to see it. We didn’t get to walk around in the city too much because we were kind of consumed with finding a place to stay because we were starving. On the road, we usually ate breakfast and then junk all day and then dinner whenever we got where we were going. We averaged about ten hours on the road per day, leaving between 7 and 9am and stopping between 5 and 7pm, sometimes forging on until 8 if we made a lot of stops.
But when we got to Chicago, we got to drive around in the Lake Michigan area which was nice.
Chicago Tribune
We didn’t get a lot of pictures of Chicago because we thought we’d find a hotel, boomerang right out again and then have plenty of time to walk around.
The train tracks are above the roads.
As it were, the hotel we stayed in was outside of Chicago because anything actually IN Chicago was crazy expensive and we didn’t want to spend the money. We found a great hotel but it was on the outskirts of Chicago, forcing us to drive through a ton of rush-hour traffic. But it was so pretty:
Edith chilling on the King-size bed...smart cat.
When we stopped in PA the night before, we were honest about the pets. The woman was fine with that and authorized my debit card for the price of the room and was about to charge me $15/animal (4 animals!). I couldn’t back out of the room because when your card is authorized, it sometimes can be held for two weeks. But I couldn’t afford to pay for $60 in charges either. I talked her into charging me once and we were extra-careful. Because of this, we kept the animals on the DL for the rest of the trip. Not the most ethical thing I’ve ever done but we were extremely careful about cleaning up after the animals, leaving zero trace and tipping the housekeeper well.
This hotel room was probably the nicest place we stayed.
When we brought the animals in, it was constantly a long, involved process of sneaking in two under cover while the other one stayed with the other two animals. Then we had to get the other two and all of our stuff and bring it in. We had litter boxes, food, clothes, toiletries…tons of stuff. We eventually learned to pare our stuff down and only bring in what we absolutely needed. It still took forever and a day though.
Kristyn starting our hotel ritual.
But once we got into the hotel, we were relieved. Relieved to be off the road, relieved to have the promise of grub, relieved to let the animals out…
Me classin up the joint, as usual.
By the time we got all the animals in (our timing was still being ironed out at this point), sat down and relaxed, changed and got ready, we were STARVING! Our friends Vanessa, Mike, Katie and Mark recommended a Vegan restaurant called “The Chicago Diner” to us. Sounds good to us. It was at this point that we realized that we’d gone back in time (Central Standard Time) and gained an hour. This was ga-reat news since we got a late start getting out of the hotel and were afraid that the restaurant would close soon.
Kristyn outside the Chicago Diner.
But we got there with way more than enough time! It was small and cute in there and there were hipsters aplenty. We ordered Vegan Buffalo Wings on Vanessa’s insistence. Oh ma fn god were they good!
Vegan Buffalo Wings...so good.
Then we ordered Philly Cheeze Steaks on our own insistence. They were not as great as we thought they’d be but still good nonetheless. Shoulda gotten a Dagwood.
Vegan Philly Cheeze Steak with Sweet Potato Fries!
Then again at Vanessa’s insistence and our own, we ordered vegan milkshakes. This was a delicious mistake. My overexcited, overeager belly was not prepared for this turn of events. I know I’m large and in charge but I am NOT used to eating this much in one sitting. Appetizers, Meal AND Milkshakes? I don’t know what we were thinking. Mine was Peanut Butter and Chocolate though and kicked my ever-loving ass. Kristyn’s was chocolate and so damn good.
Vegan milkshakes sent me over the edge. So damn good.
We got back to the room and I was almost dying. Like you know how sometimes on like, Thanksgiving, you eat so much that like your abdomen is swollen and you can’t close your pantalones? This is what happened to me. It was the worst. I was absolutely miserable. Monster and Elvira were happy to see us though.
Monster and Elvira chilling in the room.
We came in, put on our pajamas straight away and got right into bed. Monster joined us and I passed out immediately. This was a really great day.
Monster laying in bed with us.
And so yeah, we didn’t get to see as much of Chicago as we’d wanted but what we saw we liked a LOT. I would definitely love to visit this city again soon. I would even consider living here it was so nice. It was sort of different than I expected. I don’t know what picture I had of it but it was different than that and better than that. Def go to Chicago if you get a chance, you won’t be sorry y’alls.
*Oh ALSO, in case you’re wondering why the quality of the pictures vary so much. I am posting pictures I took with my DSLR and with my iPhone. Sometimes I didn’t capture what I needed to on my Nikon and only got a shot with my iPhone and to accurately show the chronology of what happened, I’m using both.
We got up on Wednesday, September 2nd and decided to try the hotel’s breakfast on for size. We got dressed and ready and went down to the dining room to see what they were serving in terms of the free hot breakfast they had advertised. We went inside and surprisingly there was no one around even though it was about 8am. We sat ourselves down at a table and eventually a waitress came. She told us that the there was only one meal being served and that was eggs, bacon and hash browns. That’s a nice meal for some people but we don’t eat bacon or eggs and they didn’t serve anything else.
Us attempting to eat breakfast at the Hotel. It was a meaty failure.
We decided to get to steppin and we hot-footed it over to McDonald’s. We ate McDonald’s for breakfast a lot. Cheese on a biscuit with hash browns and coffee does a body good on the road, haha.
Kristyn is happy-go-lucky and satisfied from her verboten breakfast.
When we started driving, it took us literally ten minutes to get into Ohio. We were soclose to the border and we had no idea at all.
Luck!
So Ohio, on Route 80 anyway, is full of pastures with cows, barns and wide green farms. We’ve been to Akron to visit our friend Mandy in the past so we’ve seen the more exciting parts of Ohio and trust me there are a lot of exciting parts! But just like NJ, if you base your opinion off the highways, you get a lot of misinformation. Ohio DOES have a lot of farms to be sure though.
Still on Route 80 in Ohio.
Not all of Ohio is this blank.
Most of the pictures didn’t come out so hot because we didn’t stop to take pictures. We only really took them from the confines of the car. We’d been to Pennsylvania and Ohio before and weren’t really on fire to get out of the car and take any pictures.
Me in the mirror enjoying the day, taking some pictures.
We were more interested in getting to Indiana! Most of Indiana looked similar to Ohio. Both Ohio and Indiana only took a few hours to get through, maybe three each at most. Towards the end of Indiana we came upon the town of Gary, where Michael Jackson and the Jackson family grew up!
The houses and all the houses around it were really, really tiny. They all look like they are about the size of a room.
The tiny house that the Jackson Family grew up in!
We didn’t go far into Gary but the houses look kind of run down. There seems to be nice houses bordering run down houses. It’s definitely an economically depressed area but there seems to be hard-working people trying to hold on to what they have there. It is a far cry from Neverland Ranch, that’s fersure.
A closer up picture of it.
Michael died in the end of June and this being early September, there was still a lot of interest in the media so we weren’t the only lookyloos but there wasn’t much else in the way of gifts left for MJ anymore but this:
A note left from mourners on the front lawn.
And this hilarious memorial:
I wonder if the sign was put up before or after the flagrant globe abuse.
The weird thing is that this house is actually on Jackson Street. If you thought that it was named that for the family, oh you’d be mistaken. All the streets in the neighborhood are named after US Presidents and unless they re-named all of the streets to suit this one street, it is definitely a fortuitous coincidink.
World's Best Coincidence.
It was really kind of surreal to be here. I mean, what were we doing in Indiana? What were we doing in front of Michael Jackson’s house? So weird, so cool.
Krissy at MJ's house.
Me in front of MJ's house wearing an MJ-approved sparkly hoodie.
A coupla titans of enterprise decided to strike while the iron was hot and rented the empty house directly across the street from MJ’s house. They turned it into a souvenir shop and allow you to tour the house so you can see what the inside is like (for a fee).
I wish I had this idea.
We didn’t go inside but we did do this:
My 1980's Michael watch!
Kristyn's 1990's Michael watch!
So we talked to the shop owners for a hot minute and asked them how their business was doing. They cheerfully said that it was going great! They said that they were sorry that Michael had to die but that it had opened up a big opportunity for them and since someone had to make that money it might as well be them. I seriously concur and am so, so jealous.
This was just a weird truck I liked and took a picture of...
So we were there for maybe 45 minutes or so, poking around, shopping. It was a lot of macabre fun but I do wish he hadn’t died. It wouldn’t been more fun to see it if he were still alive no doubt.
We got back on the road on our way to Chicago. I’m going to put that in a separate post.
To be continued…
So, we left Kearny on Tuesday, September 1, 2009. We put up some good luck charms that were both given to us by family and of our own:
Good luck and safe travels charms given to us by our family!
Another good luck charm from our family...
One of our own good luck charms: a Frida necklace Kristyn gave me a couple of years ago.
And another one of our own: a Golden Girls necklace with Hindi writing I bought at the Bust Craftacular a year or two ago.
I was an emotional wreck and slept for a lot of the first portion of the ride. We left at probably like 10 or 11 am and by about 3, I really regained consciousness. Before that, with Kristyn’s blessing, I was really in and out of it. We stopped at a rest stop for gas and snacks:
Kristyn at a gas station in Pennsylvania looking mighty self-satisfied, haha.
Even a few hours out of NJ, the air smelled fresh with a tinge of manure. People were friendly, smiling and holding doors for us. We were feeling pretty good. We got back in the car, self-satisfied with a full tank of gas and empty bladders.
Oversize Load in Pennsylvania.
We ate some snacks we bought and some snacks that Lori, Billy and Sandra had given us (Mini Snickers/various chocolate, Doritos, Sour Patch Kids, Goldfish, Swedish Fish) and listened to David Sedaris “Naked” that Lori and Billy had also given us. Thank you guys SO MUCH for that because all that stuff really brightened our spirits that day, especially mine as I was the Gloomy Gus on board, haha.
Monster, Chucky and Elvira all sat in the same (red) carrier. It was a huge one that should fit a Doberman. We were going to put Chucky in his own carrier but miscalculated the size of this big red one. It took up almost the entire back seat. Anyway, Chucky and Monster are all BFFs and so are Monster and Elvira. Chucky and Elvira are of the fairweather friend variety. “You don’t f with me and I won’t f with you, okay?” So they were fine.
Monster in the back seat in his carrier. You can see Chucky a little too.
Elvira begging for our attention, haha.
Edith had a bad start in life. Truly we shouldn’t have adopted any other cats with her. We were warned that she did not like other cats but stupidly we thought we could change her. The fact is, the other cats are hugely interested in her and she does not return that interest. Her interests are: Sleep, Food, Us, Being Left Alone by Monster and Elvira. She likes Chucky though surprisingly, haha. So she got her own little carrier which was more than fine by her. If she could have put a solid wall between her carrier and theirs, she would have, with glee, haha.
Edith napping in her carrier.
It took us forever to drive through Pennsylvania that day. NJ’s width probably only takes about two hours to drive through. For anyone wondering where we started off from, Kearny is on the entire other side of NJ from PA so we really basically went from one side of NJ to the other. PA though, is gigantic.
Trucks on Route 80 in Pennsylvania.
Various powerlines and clouds. What a lot of PA looks like, haha.
At the beginning of the trip, we used a map a lot. We really hadn’t come to rely on the iPhones for directions yet. And we already knew how to get through PA on Route 80 so we were mostly using it to see how far we’d come on the map. We had been hoping to make it to Ohio.
My view for a lot of the trip.
Route 80, still in Pennsylvania. Let me tell you what, PA is HUGE!
This is Littler Krissy. In 2001, I stupidly quit my job and immediately following, the Twin Towers fell. Everyone knows that because there were massive layoffs following 9/11, there were no jobs to be had. So, I found myself unemployed with a TON of time on my hands. I was living at my Aunt Heather’s house at the time and my Grandma brought me over some yarn, needles and thread to bide my time. In secret, I started making this Littler Krissy doll to give Kristyn for Christmas. At the time, she had her hair in a burgundy Bob and wore the outfit you see on Littler Krissy all the time! SO, we brought it with us in the car on the way to California because hey, it’s Littler Krissy! She was one of our mascots.
This is Littler Krissy.
So, we drove for about eight to ten hours that day. I don’t know the exact amount because of the hysteria/exhaustion/insanity of the day but it was a long time. We basically just drove until we absolutely could not take it anymore and then took the first hotel room we could find. We ordered a Domino’s pizza, ate it and passed the hell out.
It was a long, long, long, long day and unfortunately, we never made it to Ohio but at that point, we didn’t care.
So as I said in my last post, Kristyn had to work on Thanksgiving Proper (Thursday, November 26), so we had our Thanksgiving on Friday, November 27th. We slept late, got up and had a leasurely breakfast. Then we drank tea and watched “A League of Their Own” on the couch. After that, “Sleepless in Seattle” came on and we decided to start cooking. On Thursday night, while Kristyn was at work, I’d pre-cooked some of the food. I’d made the Green Bean Casserole, Sweet Potatoes, peeled a ton of potatoes and made the:
Turnips and Carrots! This is one of those Grandma Barr recipes that I have to have for it to feel like a holiday.
So while we watched “Sleepless in Seattle” (Kristyn used to have the soundtrack but never saw the movie, OMG), we started cooking everything. Since I’d already pre-peeled a lot of the potatoes, I started chopping them up as well as the carrots and onions for the Tofurkey. I use the directions to prepare the Tofurkey from the box but with some changes. On the box it says to use three tablespoons of oil with one tablespoon of soy sauce. It says to cut up like three potatoes, two carrots and some onion and put it in the dish. You are supposed to use half of the oil/soy sauce dressing and pour it over the tofurkey, cover, bake. I cut up probably about six potatoes, three carrots and half of a giant red onion and put the Tofurkey in a 9 x 13 dish. Therefore I doubled the oil/soy sauce ration. Six tablespoons oil (I used Canola bc that’s what I had but last year I used Olive and it was just as good) and two tablespoons soy sauce. Then I added Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Paprika and Pepper into the dressing and whisked it all together. I poured the whole bowl over the Tofurkey and veggies then sprinkled them all with the seasoning again, covered with foil and baked it for an hour and fifteen minutes on 350. Here is the Tofurkey I used (for those non-veggies reading this):
Tofurkey!!!
Here is what the whole thing looks like prepped and ready to go in the oven:
This is the Tofurkey all ready to go in the oven.
So then Kristyn decided to vaccuum to make the house nice “as if there were people coming over”. But, alas, she didn’t get far because the vaccuum is broken:
Kristyn feverishly vaccuuming with our broken vaccuum. (I broke it trying to suck up hay from the bunny, oops, haha.)
Edith chilling on her perch, tolerating her mothers.
After Kristyn vaccuumed, she started making Greebies. It’s a Lithuanian family recipe that Kristyn’s family eats on holidays. So good!
Kristyn and Greebies!
Done Tofurkey and Boiling Potatoes.
Here is the Tofurkey done and out of the oven!
These are the Garlic Mashed Potatoes I made. They happen to be the only good mashed potatoes I have ever made!
Here's Elvira sitting on our cat hair-laden couch. Our vaccuum is broken, boo hoo.
Food heating on the stove, mushroom gravy is almost done!
Kristyn does some last-minute dishes.
Here's Monster sleeping through all the chaos (on my Rocky IV Quilt), as usual. So cute.
Me smiling because my work is almost done!
Here is our spread, starting with my plate! There are not enough reasons to eat cranberry sauce in this world, I tell ya.
Here's Kristyn being a food paparazzi...All that preparation and we insist on taking a million pictures first, haha.
Time for pies! Pumpkin and a mistake pie. I meant to buy apple but instead bought this apple/cherry/raisin robo pie that is not as good as it sounds. Bad Coleen, bad.
There was a startling moment where we could not find the Cool Whip. We took turns looking for it, there was blame, there was panic. It had been pushed into the back of the fridge and we found it! *Whew!*
So after that, we ate pie and watched “Heathers” on the couch. This was a very relaxing and fun Thanksgiving! We missed our family and friends but on Saturday night, we got a chance to Skype with our friends at their own Thanksgiving Part Two:
This is Mike's body showing us a baguette. It is an awesome coincidence that the video cam appears to be his head.
This is Ray and Mike! Everyone's at Tiffany's House!
So Thanksgiving was officially a success!
I want Susan Boyle to be my Aunt.
Susan Boyle. Apart from the fact that she’s from Scotland, I actually get chills and cry every single time I watch the video of her singing “I dreamed a dream”. Here it is:
I don’t know if it’ll play bc a lot of the versions cannot be embedded but here is a link just in case:
And then as if she didn’t make me cry enough (god I love her):
