That Time I Won a Kitchen Appliance

This past weekend, for the second year running, Angel and I were asked to lead a group of teams to participate in an annual "Mall Hunt" which is run as a big fundraiser on behalf of a local hospice care organization.

Our first year, we brought 5 teams to the event, and all placed somewhere in the top 10 when awards were announced after the hunt. This year, because of all the tales of the fun we had last year, we ended up with 8 teams of two signing up for the event (which meant that this year it was the two of us adults in charge of 14 teenagers...running around a mall...while 200+ other people are doing the same thing...oh, and normal customers are simply trying to enjoy a Saturday at the mall).

Read on to see what happened this year!

This "Mall Hunt" primarily involves finding the answers to a bunch of cryptic clues while wandering the mall. Answers are always the names of stores in the mall--but you should not underestimate the mysterious reasoning that goes into the cryptic clues that we're given.

For example, in this year's hunt, these were a few of the clues and answers:

Clue: A Greeting with No Directions

Answer: SHINS <--This is the name of a store at the mall. I figured this one out because S, N, and S can all denote directions (South and North), and if you remove those letters, what's left is "Hi," a greeting.

Clue: You can mix a single gin here.

Answer: Smiggle. <-- The name of another store. If you mix up the letters in "single gin", it can become Smiggle, that is, if you assume that you can glue 2 n's together and turn them into an M.

I told you that these clues require a lot of mental leaps!

Clue: If you add whiskey, this turns into traveling salespeople.

Answer: Hakers <--The name of a store. If I assume that Whiskey is a reference to W in the Alpha, Bravo, Charley alphabet, and I add a W into Hakers, I can turn it into Hawkers, who are traveling salespeople.

Clue: It makes a late singer

Answer: Levis <-- If you rearrange the letters, they can turn into Elvis, who is a late singer.

Does your brain hurt yet??

The startling fact is that I am very good at figuring out these bizarre clues while wandering the mall and staring at the names of various shops. Our group, like many of the other larger groups that attend this event, takes a teamwork approach to the challenge--allowing people like me to figure out the cryptic clues and share answers with the rest of the group, while others worked on other parts of the challenge, which involve buying very specific products and identifying logos around the mall.

But our teamwork must be a little bit above average. There were 131 teams of two participating in the event this year, 8 teams of which were in our group. All 8 of our teams of two placed in the top 30, with one of our teams taking home FIRST place (the prize was 2 49" TVs!). My team placed 7th...and that's how I ended up winning a kitchen appliance!

Our 7th place prize was: a vacuum, an air fryer, and two pairs of knock-off crocs (everybody won crocs--and everybody won crocs last year, too. It's a tradition. We all wear them afterwards and call them our "Winner Crocs").

I asked my partner which appliance he'd rather have, and he picked the vacuum.

And that's how I won an air fryer.

Admittedly, I wasn't entirely sure what an air fryer was when I won it. Based on my research, it seems to be a cross between a deep fryer and a very fast oven.

I own very few kitchen appliances (no oven, no microwave, no mixer, no coffee maker, etc) so it's pretty funny that an air fryer is the latest appliance to be added to my minimalist kitchen, but we're excited to figure out how to use it to expand our dinner options.

Last night was our first night experimenting and we made roasted zucchini slices, potato slices, and lemon pepper chicken breasts. All of it was tasty. Do you have any recommendations on air fryer recipes? I heard you can bake potatoes in it which I'm really excited about because this oven-less girl loves baked potatoes.

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So that was my weekend. We were gone for the hunt from 8 in the morning till 5 in the evening, and where was Cyrus this whole time? Chillin' with his grandma. That's by far the longest we've ever been apart and it was very weird. Apparently, though, he behaved himself very well. We start excessively young--when we pick him up, we don't ask "Did you have fun?" but rather, "How did you behave for Grandma?" Six-week-olds must learn that they have responsibilities, too. ;)

What's the coolest thing you've ever won? This is somewhere up there for me, although when I was a kid, I won a $200 gift card to Toys'R'Us from a calendar art competition and that was pretty epic for an 11-year-old.