2009 November | Table for Five

Win a $250 GC from a Toy Tuesday Blogger (like me!)

November 30, 2009 By Elizabeth

On December 8, Bill Me Later is hosting “Toy Tuesday”. Visit www.toytuesday.com on that day to find great deals on the holiday’s most wanted toys and gifts from leading retailers such as Toys “R” Us, Walmart.com, Step 2, Little Tikes, eToys, Drugstore.com, FAO Schwarz, HP, Overstock.com, MacMall, Mercantila and more. To help promote Toy Tuesday, Bill Me Later chose 12 bloggers to each host a one-day giveaway of a $250 gift card to one of the participating retailers, and one of those bloggers is me, Table for Five!

AND, not only do we each get to give away a $250 gift card, but the winner of each giveaway also gets $500 donated to the charity of their choice! Holy cow! Each giveaway will only last 24 hours so please don’t wait! I apologize to the first three bloggers for not getting this posted sooner, please visit their blogs anyway

November 27th – Ellen Seidman – Love That Max – giveaway closed.

November 28th – Cassidy Engle – First Time Around Blogger – giveaway closed.

November 29th – Elizabeth – A Nut in a Nutshell – giveaway closed.

November 30th – Linsey B. Knerl – Lille Punkin Reviews

December 1st – Carissa Rogers – Good N Crazy

December 2nd – Linda Sellars – Short Pump Preppy

December 3rd – Kim Becker – Mommy Knows

December 4th – Jodi Grundig – Moms Favorite Stuff

December 5th – Laurie Turk – Tip Junkie

December 6th – Briana – Bargain Briana

December 7th – Lana Barhum – Loving It, Loving It

December 8th – Elizabeth Edwards – Table 4 Five – that’s right, I’m the official blogger for Toy Tuesday itself! What an honor!

I’ll be reminding you every day here and on my other blogs that December 8th is the day I’m giving away a $250 gift card – and you’ll have to come back on that day to find out which retailer’s card I’m giving away!! I suggest subscribing to my feed if you don’t already, the link is in the top right corner of the header, so you can come by every day and get the link for the next day’s giveaway! Now, go visit www.lillepunkin.com and enter her giveaway today!

Filed Under: Group Projects Tagged With: bill me later, gift cards, giveaways, toy tuesday

The day I tasted Tofurky and Gravy Jones Soda

November 28, 2009 By Elizabeth

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Jones Soda. All opinions are 100% mine.

: Image by tedmurphy via Flickr

That’s right, I tasted Tofurky and Gravy Jones Soda and lived to tell the tale. Jones Soda is a line of brightly colored, uniquely flavored sodas known for using fan-submitted photos on their bottle labels, and for putting out “theme” soda lines around the holidays. Their Holiday Packs in past years have included flavors like Mashed Potatoes, Green Bean Casserole, and Turkey and Gravy.

This year, Jones gave a nod to vegetarians and vegans and created Tofurky and Gravy soda for the holidays. Tofurky is a brand name of a product made with wheat gluten and tofu, and then molded into a turkey shape. IZEA sent me a Postie Pack containing a bottle of the soda and a totally awesome turkey hat, and asked those of us doing this campaign to taste the soda and post about it. I had NO idea what I expected it to taste like, I was expecting something like liquid gravy flavor.

Nathan’s friend Forrest happened to be over on Wednesday, and he eats some vegetarian foods, so he said he wanted to try the Tofurky and Gravy soda. I cracked open the bottle and handed it to him. I stood there with the camera ready to catch his reaction as he took a sip….

ForrestDrinking

And much to my surprise, he swallowed and said, “IT”S REALLY GOOD!”

ForrestHappy

So I took the bottle from him and took a sip of my own. And much to MY surprise, it tasted okay! It tasted like 7-Up with caramel syrup mixed in, seriously! I can’t say I would buy it and drink it on purpose, but if you’re curious about trying it, I can honestly say it doesn’t taste like turkey-flavored meat substitute like you might expect. Pick some up and try it yourself!

Quench Your Thirst With Tofurky Soda This Thanksgiving (For A Good Cause) (huffingtonpost.com)
Tofurkey & Gravy Vegetarian Soda for Thanksgiving? (techburgh.com)

Filed Under: Food & Recipes Tagged With: IZEA, Jones Soda, postie pack, Tofurky

The Turkey is Brining…

November 25, 2009 By Elizabeth

I did this sort of product review for Kikkoman two weeks ago. They sent me a bunch of soy sauce and a gift card towards the purchase of turkey and other groceries for a practice Thanksgiving turkey dinner. I had NO idea you could brine turkey in soy sauce, in fact, I had never even tried to brine a turkey. After getting the Brine recipe, we realized that our biggest obstacle was what the heck to put the turkey IN so it could soak in the brine overnight. I had bought an 8.5 pound turkey breast, so my clever husband looked around the house and came up with this styrofoam cooler that some frozen food samples had come in. The turkey fit perfectly!

Turkey1

Chris came up with the great idea to take out the bottom drawer of our fridge and set the cooler right down on the bottom of the fridge. I mixed up half a batch of the brine recipe and it filled the cooler to the top.

Turkey3

The next day, Ryan carried the cooler to the sink for me, I drained the brine and then rinsed the turkey with water, put it in a roasting pan, and put it in the oven. Turkey should cook for about 15 minutes per pound, so it was done a few minutes past two hours. I didn’t have all the side dishes ready yet, so I covered it with foil, turned off the oven, and that turkey sat in the cooling-down oven for another hour.

It. Was. PERFECT.

Turkey4

That turkey was so juicy inside that we could cut our slices with just our forks. The five of us devoured so much of that turkey that we barely had leftovers for the next day!

So, it was so successful, we decided to brine the turkey for tomorrow as well. Only, this time we have a 20 pound turkey given to Chris by his company. Once again Chris came up with the perfect solution for something deep enough to hold the turkey plus the two gallons of brining solution-the refrigerator bin! Thumbs up to Frigidaire for designing a plastic bin strong enough to hold that much weight. It’s not quite deep enough, so the turkey is upside down so that the brine soaks mostly into the breast meat, we don’t care much if the bottom of the turkey isn’t brined. Can you believe this is in our refrigerator?!?

TurkeyBrining

I know I”m posting this kind of late for those of you who might want to try this for yourselves, sorry about that. If you have soy sauce in the house and a container that’s big enough (or an empty refrigerator bin!), and you read this post early enough, get your turkey brining for as long as you can. It really does improve the juiciness and flavor!