Independence La Crosse

Our stay in La Crosse was the first of what will be at least three visits with the Mississippi River towns. After a week of studio time and orientations in St. Paul my company arrived in this small river town settled in the western bluffs of Wisconsin to tech our show. As I promised, there was ice cream. My cast and I frequented Pearl Street Ice Cream for dessert, and I say "frequented" because we were there every single day. These are the ice cream flavors I ate: butter pecan, snapping turtle, maple walnut, and cookie dough, all covered in sprinkles in a chocolate dipped sprinkle cone. Our first trip to the most popular (also only) ice creamery down town was sponsored by our CEO in celebration of the announcement that our company joined the Cirque du Soleil family. My cone was 3/4 in my body by the time we walked two blocks back to our riverside hotel to watch the Independence Day firework display. La Crosse gave us all kinds of fireworks, including smiley faces, and ended with four fire cloud explosions à la The Wizard of Oz (1939, Technicolor.) Were these fires intentional? I don't know.

Me, Bri, and Ice Crea

We explored a few miles of the Mississippi together on the LaCrosse Queen, a replica of early 20th century grand river boats. Our boat stopped as we approached the Canadian Pacific Railway bridge. I've seen a number of Bascule bridges in my trips to the Jersey shore, but this was my first encounter with a Swing bridge. The bridge swung open for our vessel to pass through twice on our journey, and I had a slice of Dominos in my hand each time.

SpEaKiNg Of PiZzA my cast and I took a sweaty post-rehearsal march over to Polito's Pizza for several slices one evening, and I did something. I don't think my ancestors will ever forgive me. I ate pizza covered in mac and cheese. My college pizza shop served pizza topped with penne, and I never bought it because I thought it was "disgraceful." I can't believe I was so close-minded to wonders of the world such as this. The mac and cheese pizza was delicious and I'd do it again. But Mom Mom can never know.

Other (not pictured) pizzas I consumed include the veggie flatbread from The Crow and Big Al's flatbread (which I ate whilst watching The Boy and drinking Bogle Chardonnay.)

The bottle of Bogle I purchased cost twice as much as it does back home, but it was worth it. To my surprise, it was the wine of choice at Jules Coffee House, home of the most delicious scones I have ever eaten in my life and also some chocolate infused coffee. These sones are crumbly, but also soft and covered in sugar and I will miss them. Get the blueberry oat or cherry oat if you go.

For a more substantial breakfast I suggest Cabin Coffee Co. They have a number of locations in the midwest and maybe in Georgia, so when asked if I'd like to become a club member I declined. At this location patrons have the option to sit in a saddle to consume their fluffy egg and cheese bagel.

For a juicy brunch experience, get a mimosa flight at Grounded Patio Cafe. I kicked off my Fourth of July celebration with one of these. Also, they serve up a delicious lavender honey latte.

Flavors Right to Left: Lemonade, Cranberry, Orange, Grapefruit. Consume Left to Right.

I tried the Bor-e-alis at The Twisted Moose. It looked like this and it tasted like a juice box fantasy.

He watches over

I'm not a beer drinker but here is the world's largest six pack. This area smells strongly of sulfur and is filled with the bodies of dead dragonfly/wasp things?

A trip to Wisconsin is not complete without cheese curds.

Last time I was in Wisconsin I had these cheese curds.

This time I was in Wisconsin I had many cheese curds and I recommend these from Dublin Square.

Last time I was in Wisconsin I saw barbie legs in the window of a bar.

Bodega Brew Pub

And this time I saw barbie legs in the window of a bar.

Bodega Brew Pub

And that's when I realized I've been to La Crosse before.

Some things that I didn't know about La Crosse that I know now:

It is a Pepsi town. Pepsi is everywhere. On the vending machines, on billboards, sponsoring the arena, in the river probably.

La Crosse is filled with secret back alley murals.

The businesses of La Crosse are all connected from the inside, like Bath & Body Works and its portal to the candle part of the store. Restaurants are connected to businesses that appear to be completely unrelated and it's fascinating. Is it a zoning thing? Is it because everyone is friends? I should have asked but I was distracted.

One night I ran out to Grandad’s Bluff. The run was two and a half miles uphill.

Outside of our hotel was a display of decorated herons from the Pump House. They come out of the regional arts center ever summer to say hello.

We don't have black squirrels in Pennsylvania but here they are in La Crosse.

We don't have vending machine cigarettes in Pennsylvania but here they are in La Crosse.

I'm currently passing a wind farm en route to Topeka where we'll have our final dress for our partners at Nickelodeon and open the third season of PAW Patrol Live! "Race to the Rescue."

P is for Present

"C is for Cookie that you will bake for me"

Every year after Thanksgiving I go out and buy materials to wrap my gifts for Christmas and Festivus. Usually there is a design theme in my gift wrapping. This year, stocking stuffers and gifts to friends were wrapped in metallics, and gifts to family were wrapped in earth tones with twine and burlap accents. By the end of the holidays I am usually, and very conveniently, all out of those materials, which means I get to start fresh next holiday season. This calendar year I wanted to do something creative when it came to birthday present wrapping. My brother recently got into baking, cookies mostly, so he asked if he could have an apron for his birthday. After picking one up from Target I started thinking about how I would wrap it. I checked Twitter and toward the top of my feed was a post from Cookie Monster. And this is the reason brother's birthday present was wrapped in the likes of Cookie Monster. I knew immediately that I wanted the wrapping to have that raggedy Cookie Monster look and texture, so I purchased blue streamers from Deals and went home to work with my purchases, scissors, tape, a glue stick, brown packing paper.

First I lit my Lilac  Blossoms Yankee Candle to provide a sweet spring aroma. Also, the power was out so it provided heat.

To start, I wrapped the gift in the brown package paper. This would provide a base to create Cookie Monster's fur.

I wrapped the entire package in the streamers the way we used to wrap each other in toilet paper at my Halloween parties in the 90s. If you do this craft, start with the smaller ends and glue as you go.

The best way to get a fur like texture out of this paper is to cut the paper into fringe, similar to piñatas. To do this I wrapped the streamer around the package once horizontally to measure, then I cut the streamer and forty other streamers to be the same length. I then layered them in groups of ten and made small cuts about 3/4 the way across to create the fringe effect.

I then wrapped the pieces around the box and glued the uncut ends in place. I repeated this step one streamer at a time from the bottom working upwards.

I printed an outline of Cookie Monster’s eyes and mouth and gently applied them to the fur layer with glue.

The best part with decorative packaging is that it doubles as a party decoration. I can imagine a pile of presents that are decked out like Elmo, Big Bird, Abby Cadabby, and Two-Headed Monster. Part of me worried that my brother would like the wrapping more than the gift itself, but thankfully he was happy with both. He was definitely surprised to see our favorite Sesame Street resident on the table wishing him a happy 25th Birthday. 

The Pudding the Pudding the Pudding!

I've done A Christmas Carol ten times and yet I've never thought to explore the flavors of figgy pudding until recently. I found this recipe for figgy pudding but I made a few changes. I replaced brandy with rum because somewhere I found a fig pudding that used rum and that's all we had in the cabinet. I discovered, düring, that we only had Italian herb bread crumbs and not regular ones so I put crushed Cheerios in the mix instead. We didn't have nutmeg but we did have pumpkin spice and cinnamon so. And finally instead of dark chocolate I used semi-sweet chocolate. The recipe calls for three to four hours of baking but it was really like five and a half in a big Pyrex dish in a pan of water that eventually boiled away. I stabbed it with a fork a million times to see if the middle was done (we didn't have any big skewers) and eventually I had to leave for my show so I told my mom to give it another hour and then take it out of the oven. It sat in the refrigerator for a week and a half because I was too nervous to bring it to Christmas because it had to be heated before serving and I didn't want to show up to someone's house and take over their kitchen. Also, what if it was bad? I didn't want to be judged on Christmas. It was served ("It will serve, Ebenezer, it will serve.") on Christmas Day at a small family affair. My mom really wanted to set it on fire and I wanted to cover it with a thick glaze. Neither of those things happened. The final results can be seen in this video and also below.

Remember those pumpkins I was collecting? They're thriving even as I write this weeks after the New Year. I seasoned them up with greenery (and later, those tiny copper lights.)

My cast had a door decorating contest at the theatre. I hid a few characters from Oz in my snowflake wreath. 

Holibakes with My Brother

Last year someone asked my brother about how he and I got along while growing up. Things that come to my mind are: kicking a technicolored soccer ball between the power lines hanging above our treehouse, being chased around the living room, me forcing him to put on plays in our basement, making box forts, tree climbing, luging down the street via wagon, and making pancakes. Pancakes was a consistent thing. Matt and I used to make pancakes together every weekend. We put our aprons on over the Scooby-Doo tee shirts and tighty whities we wore to bed, then pulled a chair up to the stove and flipped incredibly sugary pancakes (see note about sugar in last post.) When responding to the "getting along" question, my brother said that I wasn't really around that much. The things that brought us together faded away at some point when I was in middle school: the time when only theatre and Xanga ran my life. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But when he said that I wasn't around, I realized that we basically ignored each other from middle school onward. At times he told me stories and I would get a glimpse of his life, but for the most part I had no idea who he had grown into.

Matt and I had two spontaneous baking sessions this Christmas. The first was for the dogs, the second was for the Falas. We know lots of dogs, so we made over three hundred of these yam based cookies. If they had more sugar I'd eat them on the reg.

This broke the spoon

We used the tiny cookie cutters we won in last year's Christmas crackers.

The most wond-arf-ul time of the year

I had been thinking about making some type of buche de noel to serve on Christmas at our house, but a few days before Christmas Eve Matt told me he was looking up recipes but couldn't find anything he liked, and I immediately showed him my winter pins. He liked the ginger bread cookie tree recipe on Martha, so we made it together. Do not do this recipe if you don't have the right cookie cutters. We retroed it using bottoms of glasses and bowls to create different sized circles then played the game of trying to stack the different sized pieces so that there is space between levels of "branches" all while creating a cone shaped tree. We used halved Dots covered in icing (to look like mini cupcakes) to decorate the tree. It survived the car ride to Uncle Mark's for the seven fish dinner without it falling apart. I don't know if anyone else ate it except for me and Matt. I liked it though.

I Do Believe In Spooks

As the ghoulish, Saintly, and Dead(ly) celebrations wind down, tech for Oz fires up. I'm not called in until 6 tonight so I'm on the internet reflecting.

Like me, my parents don't possess too many Halloween decorations. Our house is more on the side of subtly spooky. 

Our two favorite ghoulies:

Witchypoo

She is also sometimes called Witchypoo

Now onto subtleties. 

I saw a black twiggy snakey wreath on pinterest and my mom really liked it, so she ordered this 18" Grapevine Wreath by Ashland® from Michaels. It took two small cans of black Krylon to paint the front of the wreath and the additional sticks I picked from the half dead red cedar trees on the edge of the woods in my backyard that I added to make it creepy. Snakes were discussed, but not needed. 

The extra cedar branches I picked made a great backdrop to this newly acquired Dicken's Village house. My Mom Mom collected these houses, and when she moved she offered some of them up, so my mom took Miss Havisham's house. These houses are usually out for a snow covered Christmas scene, but this one is perfect for Ween. Anyway, I purchased a foam block and some Ashland® Value Pack Spanish Moss-24oz from Michaels (at this point the store was decked out for Christmas why America) and went to work. Spooky dead trees are easy. Simply cover the foam block with Spanish moss, either gluing it or wiring it down (I wired it because I couldn't find the hot glue gun,) then stab the branches into the foam. Spray with that leftover Krylon and put it somewhere. 

I'm not really into that thick spiderweb look, so for Halloween I like to either stop cleaning (not an option here) or thinly spread the cotton webs that have been in a bag in the basement since idk. 

This skeleton is a favorite. He came to college with me, but now he hangs out here, like me. My mom and I purchased these pumpkins from Produce Junction on my first of (as of 11/2) four trips to obtain gourds this season, and she arranged them in this cage on a tray. Both of these were purchased at separate Southern Living parties back when I was wearing Quicksilver and people still had Southern Living parties. Skeleton man took his throne and I surrounded the cage with tea candles to give the scene some creepy uplight in the dark. What's great about this kind of Halloween decorating is that when once it's November 3rd we can put Mr. Bones away and it's magically a Thanksgiving decoration. Amazing.

Speaking of transitional decorating I would like to discuss this candle situation. My mom purchased a hurricane vase at a Southern Living party, and at some point this summer she decided to put rocks in it with a green candle. I almost put it all away when we were decorating, but then I thought, "Wait. There must be away to make this creepy." Back when I was gathering sticks for the wreath I cut a few vines "just in case." I had a case. I coiled it into the vase around the candle and put a spider in there. Summer->All Hallows.

Here's something kind of tacky that I did. I clipped some purple and yellow mums from the front yard and put them in this vase that lives inside a Southern Living wrought iron orchid planter votive that was given to me for my First Holy Communion. I covered the votive in some of that cotton spiderweb web. It needed moar. Or did it? I had this gold scorpion that was attached to a gold bead necklace I bought for one of last year's Halloween costumes and I knew I had to sneak it into the flowers. It's creepy because it's tacky but also because why is there a scorpion in there?

A fun alternative to answering the door every two minutes is sitting outside by some fires with wine and candy. 

Always do the best you can.

Southern Living tally: IIII

Also I found the hot glue gun.