Friendsgiving

SHARP TOOTH!

Yesterday was my first ever Friendsgiving. I've heard of people doing this before but had never been to one myself so this year I asked my friends if they'd want to try it. Everyone was down with it so we all agreed to bring a Thanksgiving-esque dish to the party. My actual Thanksgiving was pretty sucky (majorly sucky) since I had to work that day (and was completely by myself I might add) so it was nice to get a do-over yesterday with my girlfriends.

For my contribution to the potluck I got a Trader Joe's turkey-less roast and it was surprisingly a big hit! Their mock-turkey roast is ONE BILLION times better than Tofurkey's roast and I look forward to it every year now. I wish they carried it year around because it's oh-so-good and super easy to prepare. It's also, quite a bit bigger than Tofurkey's as well. One roast was enough for 4 or 5 of us compared to the Tofurkey which barely feeds 3 (if that). Sorry to rip on Tofurkey so much but TJ's version is far superior. In addition to the roast I also made homemade cranberry sauce. Once you try homemade cranberry sauce you can never go back to the canned stuff and it's SUPER EASY to make. All I used was one 12 ounce bag of cranberries, 2/3 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of orange juice, 1/2 cup of water and a pinch of cinnamon and salt. Easy peasey.




Maddie, Jenika, me, Jackie, Heather, and Michelle

I wish I'd taken a picture of the whole spread but we also had a candied yam casserole, a green bean casserole, Pennsylvania Dutch corn, mashed potatoes, biscuits, chocolate pie and apple cider. It was quite the feast! I hadn't eaten so many delicious things all at once in ages! It took me a while but I managed to clean my plate. Sharleen arrived a little late but in time for pie and my favorite party game, Cards Against humanity. It was great to see her and hear her super cute laugh again since she moved to California to go to grad school. This time we decided to throw a random card into each round and it was so funny when the random card would win. I think I'll play with a rando thrown in from now on. :)

Another cool thing that happened this week was when me and Michelle visited the Desert Museum in Tucson, AZ. I had never really been to Tucson before even though I've lived in Arizona most of my life so it was fun to go on a little excursion. If you do happen to find yourself there, I'd highly recommend the Desert Museum. We had so much fun there and it was a beautiful day. We saw a mountain lion, bobcat, fox, river otter, javelina, coati, porcupine, beaver, mule deer, big horn sheep, and countless birds. It was funny when we went in the aviary I knew more about the birds they had than the people who worked there. My dad and I are massive birdwatchers so my bird knowledge is pretty vast to say the least. I don't really have any friends who share my passion for birding but I can say that we birders are an eccentric bunch. I've never met another bird watcher who wasn't quirky ;)

After the museum we went back into town for lunch. We went to a vegan restaurant that I've heard many of my vegan friends rave about called the Lovin' Spoonful. I was pretty impressed by all of the options they had on their menu but the item I chose was a bit of a dud. So that was a bit of a bummer. Next we thought we'd walk around downtown and do some shopping, however, once we'd parked the car we found out that there really isn't any shopping (or anything) to do in Tucson. We kind of walked around in a circle until we found a place that had ice cream called The Hub. The ice cream was reallllly good (I got salted caramel) and for whatever reason all of the boys who worked there were super cute. What the heck?

Other than that I've been SO BUSY with orders this month! It's been my busiest month ever so I'm totally stoked about that. Hopefully, December will follow suit because Mama needs to save money for my upcoming vacation! ^_______^