Almost forgot Halloween

I spent Halloween at Honeyville Farms this year. It was inventory. Mandatory. Instead of trick-or-treating with my kids, I was count-or-recounting isles of food storage. It's like I was in Bizarro-Halloween. Candy no. Freeze-dried zucchini, yes. And there are 19, no, there's 20, yep, twenty. My kids, no. Freaky co-workers, yes.

Ok, they aren't freaky. Not all of them.

Not usually. But Halloween does bring out the freak in co-workers, especially when they have been counting all day. We were allowed to dress up and were encouraged to dress up as a Honeyville product. Well, I was the only one who did this. Of course, I chose to be a sun oven. (Plus it seemed hard to dress up like a #10 can of beans or a bag of spelt flour.)The sun oven is my favorite Honeyville product anyway. If you forgot what a sun oven looks like, go to my labels and click solar oven to see one.

This is my costume, and this is Co-worker Carrie, who dressed up as a nerdy cashier.




I've got the sun rays on my head, cooking the pan of chicken on my shirt. (Thank you, Sandy, for the late-night iron-on transfer labor.) And I have solar panels (cut-up sun shades) on my waist to channel those felt rays to my iron-on poultry dish. I wanted to make these panels bigger, but I knew I wouldn't be able to fit in the smallish space we stand in at the register. I am pretty sure I'm the first person to ever dress up like a sun oven, and that I should send this picture to Paul Mundsen, the owner of the Global Sun Oven company, because maybe I'd get a reward of some kind. Or he'd feature me on his company website. I could be like a mascot and travel around the country.

I got home on Halloween Night in time to kiss my kid's sticky faces good-night. I was sad to miss out on the trick-or-treating with them, but at least I didn't miss any parties. Most events were held the weekend before. So I still got to celebrate with them.

Here's some pics of Halloween weekend:



I was glad to see this costume rise out of the closet for another appearance. I burned my fingers so many times making this thing last year! This was taken at Padawan's school party. He got lots of compliments. It got more notice than many of the expensive store-bought numbers his classmates were wearing. And it cost nothing!

 

Butterfly girlie went with Taylor Swift. Nailed it! ...Kinda. Make-up on my babygirl! Makes her look too old!

 

Dutch Baby went all cheetah on us again. This picture is almost identical to the one I took of her last year. So glad Halloween was so cheap this year.



Didn't get a picture of Smalls in costume this year. As our resident 13-year-old, he can't decide if he's too old to dress up or not. But he did borrow a ninja costume from his buddy Bridger to trick-or-treat in. When are you too old for free candy? I did get a carving pumpkin picture of him, just to round this Halloween post off nicely.

Pionerd Woman

When I started my job at Honeyville Farms, I began grinding my own wheat to bake my own bread. I became the Little Red Hen. As if that's not strange enough to my neighbors (who had preconceived notions about my weirdness already because they know us as the only Mormons on the street), I have been cooking outside. With solar. Solely with solar.

So.

My neighbors must think Mormons are like Amish.

I don't care. I love it. The day after I bought it I cooked three things in it.

Hard-boiled eggs- no water necessary.



Chicken to shred for tacos

From Drop Box

And I baked rolls in it that first day, too. Not because rolls go particularly well with shredded chicken, I just wanted to see how they turned out.



Sunday I baked a whole chicken, using the Solar Oven Chef's favorite solar oven recipe. You buy a chicken, stuff two lemons with fork holes all over them into it's you-know-what and let it cook outside while you spend three hours at church, another something peculiar Mormons do.

Yum. That was really, really good. I've also cooked pasta fagioli. Next up is roast.

P.S. Solar oven cooking is not a Mormon thing, or an Amish thing. I've met the Solar Oven Chef herself and she is neither. Sun ovens are not weird or unusual either here in Arizona. It just happens to be unusual on my street.