and good morning everyone lolapalooza has officially kicked off here at abilene state park
in beautiful sunny texas here we've got our lolapalooza shirts handed out that uh blind
views designed for the event then we watched uh his live party from the pavilion over here well
some of us did other people were staying in their rigs and then lola introduced the event and vicki
let us take some pictures in front of the official 2021 picture frame and we got our
schedules an itinerary and it is now the following morning so we've already had some
pastries and coffee and stuff in the pavilion over there and we're getting ready for event
one on saturday morning 10 a.m gypsy pear uh dennis and debbie over in their class a over there
are hosting the cooking competition which i did not uh enter myself into last year but i am doing
it this year the rules to start are you must bring four ingredients that are exactly alike
so i got my ingredients four individual packets of cheddar shredded cheese i am not going to make
this difficult like other people like to do last year we had sardines somebody brought individual
packets of seaweed one i have to use one of those ingredients also so you're only killing your own
group it's competition all right all right thanks for joining guys we'll be uploading this video
with nomad internet link below in the video description if you need some mobile unlimited
internet let's get this party started checking out what rex rex got chicken ramen noodles i
want to be part of your group i can work with that i can't work with seaweed or anchovies or
texaroni see i could work with that too this is looking promising all right
all right here we go we're drawing numbers shake them up number three number three
i am number two all right here we go here's my group members we're competing
now we find out what everybody's got
french fried onions all right i'll trade you for one of those ooh yum some celery there and
chicken perfect i need everyone in this building for judging i need you to vote even the cooks can
vote because hey you're just one vote geez that vote for me that was actually a pretty
good draw now i'm super excited let's see what i've got to make huh because the rules are we
have to use those four ingredients but we can use anything else we want i've got some grilled
chicken i've got tv dinners i got tater tots and what else do i have i have some hamburger meat
i also have some other hamburger meat that i could cook up let me think here wait a minute i'm seeing
something tater tot casserole with chicken fried onions diced celery on top with cheese
yes i'm gonna ground that beef though it's gonna be a beef and chicken tater tot casserole
okay all right so we'll start here i'm gonna ground one pound of ground beef
i'm gonna add some lemon lemon pepper to it a little bit here on top some salt and we'll brown
this while that's working i'm gonna multitask i'm going to dice up the celery ingredient there
i also found a can of cream of potato soup so i'm going to use this as my paste in the middle
of my tater tot casserole so i'll dice this up be keeping an eye on the ground beef over here also
and then when i get done with the beef i gotta do up that chicken too
all right looks like my ground beef is uh looking good here i'm gonna drain out some
of the extra liquid here but yep that looks done and i had to uh borrow a casserole
dish from randy 2.0 because i didn't have one i'm going to uh spray the oil inside of this
don't get any stickage all right gonna get a layer of ground beef on the bottom there
oh yeah mix that out oh that's gonna be perfect
that cream of potato in here that'll thicken up that layer of the tater tot casserole okay
and add the celery i know there's a bunch of people thinking you can't use cream of potato
in a tater tot cassie you sure can i've done this before i wouldn't normally voluntarily add greens
to it necessarily but it is what it is hopefully that celery in the oven is going to soften up
a little bit but yeah there's my paste all right and i'm going to uh cut up and and then grill the
chicken i'll put this all in the fry pan there all right well i was gonna add chickens i didn't think
there was enough but we already have the beef so i'm actually okay with the amount of chicken
that we got just from the one ingredient it's just gonna add a little bit of extra flavor to it there
yeah before we spread on the paste i'm gonna add a little bit of onion powder for seasoning there
just a little bit there okay and some minced garlic not gonna go crazy heavy but about there
let me mix that all up all right and now i will add the creamy paste on top
with my cream of potato celery
and garlic with my mickey hand spatula there and then get a good layer of that over the meat
i'm just not a big fan of celery but it was my ingredient so i have to use it and i have
to just hope that cooking in the oven is going to soften the celery and make it less potent
but there then finally my ingredient the shredded cheddar cheese
i'm going to save a little bit of this for the top layer of tater tots but i want to get
about half this bag here on there for this layer
yeah let's let's save the other half all right that looks good next frozen tater
tots the whole five pound bag no probably not i don't know just make a layer of tater tots
make a nice layer i don't think i can fit any more in there okay i'm gonna bake this at 350 degrees
for 30 minutes and then i'm going to pull it out and put more cheese on it for another little bit
but that is looking good is the oven ready oh and in case you're thinking i skipped one of my
ingredients no this is actually going to go on at the very end also so after 30 minutes of baking
i'll put the french fried onions on with a little more cheese but we're going to hold off on this
the oven is ready and willing to accept 30 minutes okay we got 14 minutes left and i am starting to
feel the pressure just a little bit let's see oh my gosh look at that that looks amazing let's put
finishing touches on her sprinkle on some fried onions on top there oh they actually look really
good with the tater tots there huh i love it okay i'm happy with that and some more cheese
got to be the right amount i think i think i'm happy with it right there
back in the oven she goes for about five minutes and we are just barely going to make
it here all right all right four minutes to go moment of truth did i pull this off
oh boy yeah let's go i mean we'll see how it tastes in just a minute what everybody thinks
but i think i should get a presentation award that's beautiful i have lots of judges in the
room we're gonna taste all these let's see what we got where do we get the card oh man
oh it looks like a cheese sauce there's mine oh
wow
rex can we think in here real quick yeah absolutely nice right on there are papers
over here uh you will vote on one dish you need the name of the dish and it will go with the bunny
box give me the sign that you voted all right now this is interesting this is a time for first place
read the ingredients because they're not the same person or the same ingredients
one of them had ginger root mushroom soup texas noodles and green chilies
the other one had chicken shredded cheddar cheese celery and fried onions oh my gosh
so now you know who the two winners are no in your mind you think you just read these ingredients
with the mexican chicken casserole come forward all right i voted for that one
and then
oh yeah i really don't know what to say about this but tater tot casserole
so for the second year in a row here at lolapalooza we had a tie so we tied for cooking
awesome that was a lot of fun mexican chicken casserole and it was really really good thank you
yeah this is fun that is the first and probably the only time i will ever win a cooking challenge
i gotta kiss the chef red apron here because i you know tied for first hey what did we learn
don't be a tater hater that was a lot of fun there were a lot of really creative dishes
in that room and that basically counted as an entire lunch for everybody here so
that's a really fun little event that we do here there's lots more going on and um i'm really
enjoying all my time interacting and meeting some new viewers it's just been a plethora of support
you know for the loss and everything going on in my life as well as i'm just gonna say
there's been a lot of happy distractions going on here at lolapalooza and these are my people like
everybody here is my people and um i'm also talking with people and finding out where where
those people might be heading after lolapalooza um most people are heading west okay uh
but i myself i do have to go back to my base camp in texas to pick up a few things that are going
to be there waiting for me after this event so i'll find myself almost back down in houston area
so now i'm thinking about just kind of making the loop and possibly going back to the coast
and coming up through el paso but but who knows i'm just having a blast here it's another really
warm beautiful sunny day in texas in late october so just uh having some having some fun
and uh still looking to see if anybody has any cornhole you know beanbag toss billy's here now
and he saved us and brought cornhole we got beanbag toss thank you buddy
the plate here got some of my pulled pork this pulled chicken rice and brisket and sausage
oh yeah we're doing uh raffles right now so they're calling off some numbers up there
nope so i wasn't filming it but they just called my number and i got three books by deborah
dickinson who's here the journey begins life on the road somebody's excited over there yeah cool
awesome looking forward to reading these i got some really sweet cards from different viewers and
then aubry from a full tiny house drew this little picture it says jack's on his name tag there
really makes me happy yeah hey guys i'm still out here at abilene state park you probably have
no idea that i've actually spent eight nights here today is day nine at abilene state park
and i'm over here at the buffalo wallow area here beautiful sunshine we have had some
absolutely incredible weather um i am going to be leaving today i did extend it out even farther
i'm not the last one here rv rebel girl frugal lone star rider and full tiny house are also
still here in our camping loop over there but this afternoon after i leave they're actually
hosting a wedding here in the wagon wheel circle they're having a wedding so it's time to time to
get out of here i guess it's just it's been really awesome for me and i have truly truly loved this
state park it's uh very reasonable there at our camping loop 12 bucks a night and then you got to
have your vehicle access pass or your texas state park pass i don't know why i don't have a texas
state park pass because i love most texas state parks that i've been to here however my package
i don't know how i feel about this i mentioned um in a couple videos ago that i was having problems
with escapees my mail service domicile place in livingston texas well they decided to reject
jax's ashes after all that they just returned it to center and sent me an
email and said they didn't like a sticker on the box so they sent that back as well
and i'm trying to trying to figure out something else to do
probably going to be shipping it back to my shop or sean's shop in illinois
and i don't know i got a lot of stuff on my mind right now guys
i'm really thankful for this awesome weather and this event that lola put on thank you again lola
and blind views and everybody else who did so much to make this one of the best lolapaloozas
ever uh and especially just all the people uh it felt really good to give hugs like for some reason
it's just i just man it just felt so so good to connect with people you know but yeah and and
anyway just i've really been enjoying all the peace as well through all the activities and
everything but anyway this video is getting really long and i didn't want it to get this long so
i'm going to go ahead and close this one out i'm still going to start heading back east just
to kind of see what i'm going to do and how i'm gonna do it because i got some confusion right now
but i'm gonna figure it out in my next video or something okay so thanks for joining me guys tara
and i will see you in our next video i love you all we'll see you next time bye-bye lola may i
say that you have the best shirt here one of the original don't be a tater hater shirts i love it
in the green thank you so much for putting this on this is really a lot of fun thank you lola
you