T'Giving!

For once my sister came home for Thanksgiving, so I actually spent the holiday "properly" with the entire family- feasting and Black Friday shopping.

For dinrawr we had the usual turkey, along with stuffing and spinach dip an mac&cheese and cornbread and pie that my sister and I cooked/baked! It was our first time making any of them, so we produced some interesting results…

we made cornbread from a mix so that was an easy win. The mac and cheese required a ridiculous amount of cheese (like two handfuls of just cheeese), but that's probably because I never made it before.

The spinach dip turned out all right paired with pita chips!

The failpie started going downhill when "Grandma Ople's Apple Pie" from allrecipes.com instructed me to "cut the shortening" into a dough mix with a blender. I don't own a blender, so how to "cut it in" and shot webby web? ¯\(°_o)/¯ I just sliced the shortening into pieces and mixed the whole darn thing. Then the dough couldn't stick together and kept cracking apart when we attempted a lattice crust. It didn't taste half bad though.

A few hours after dinner and a couple games of Big 2, my sister spontaneously suggested we pay the Cabazon Hills Outlet a visit at 12am. It seemed like a harmless idea, so why not?

Turns out that when we arrived, the entire Asian population from LA was there. Traffic was a chore- on the road and at the outlet. The restroom line was like a 40 min wait, and the line for Gucci was ridiculous (I asked one of the people standing in line whether there were exceptional deals at Gucci or something, and they replied, "I guess." facepalm anyone?) All the nice stores were still expensive anyways, although I did get some neat deals at Billabong. And before I knew it, I pulled my first all-nighter getting frustrated at the lack of size smalls and waiting in lines in 30 degree weather amongst equally exhausted red-eyed Asians. To be honest I'd rather spend the $50 dollars I saved than endure this ordeal again. NEVER AGAIN, BLACK FRIDAY. NEVER AGAIN.