Time to eat: Nashville bound?

Oh jeez, I hope so!  My sister applied for a gig at a school in Nashville, and she hasn't heard back from them yet but she got on great with the people there so we're all cautiously optimistic.  Sister says that this gig would be beneficial for both her and her husband, so the whole family is keeping their respective fingers crossed.  It would be nice to have them four hours away as opposed to nineteen hours, and even though Sister has never been a fan of cities she says that Nashville isn't so bad.  Typical of the south, LOL.  But then again Sister reported liking the airport workers in Detroit too, and they're definitely NOT southern!

In honor of this new development, I present...something of Tenney's.  No, I never will be Tenney's biggest fan, but I do like some of her accessories, including her picnic set.

I particularly like the art on the back, where Little Miss Taylor-Swift-Wannabe is chowing down on her food.

That's your typical southern gal, lounging on the picnic blanket with her shoes off.  I remember my family spending a Fourth of July like that, out at my grandmother's where the sand burrs weren't so cotton-pickin' fierce.  It's amazing what difference a measly five miles can make; Grandma's farm was five miles out of town, and she didn't have sand burrs, while they're thicker than a whale blubber sandwich here in town.  As an aside, Mama had set out the blanket to keep us kids out of chiggers, but we found 'em anyway.  Good times, LOL.  Anyway, I've paid so little attention to Tenney over the years that I had no idea her mom owned a food truck.  According to the box, that's where the grub came from.

When I opened up the box all the items were individually wrapped, and I got a hearty LOL out of this sticker.

The chicken, the potato salad, and the watermelon chunk all had that sticker.  Like I'm gonna try to eat tiny plastic doll food.  I will admit that the chicken makes me hungry, though.  Anywho, one of the items that came with this set is a menu, one that displays the name of the food truck.  Makes sense.

Mmmm, I could get behind a menu like this!  Mrs. Grant offers white meat options and dark meat options, plus hot wings and the sandwich that came with the set.  The sides include fried pickles, one of my favorite things, but Tenney opted for the potato salad.  She also opted for the sweet tea, though water and lemonade were also available.  Mmmm, I won't knock that decision!

But then again, no one but no one makes better sweet tea than my mother does.  Granted, she loads it down with sugar so it's not the healthiest stuff on the planet, but it's delicious.  Anywho, here's Tenney's stuff all spread out...

...and here's a closeup of the grub.

Rita Cheryl, my little New Yorker, will be partaking of this meal today.  Here's the sandwich.

Y'all, I never would've dreamed that pickles belonged on chicken until I had it that way at KFC.  If you've never had chicken that way, I highly recommend it.  On the other hand, I DON'T recommend eating it open-face style like Tenney apparently does, because it goes everywhere.  That said, look at the texture on this!

Certainly looks good enuff to eat!  The bread is painted on both sides to look lightly toasted.

Tenney's side of choice is a foodstuff that I'm not in love with:  potato salad.  I love potatoes, but I've never been a fan of potato salad.  This stuff looks good, though the potato chunks look a little round to be potatoes.  Maybe Mrs. Grant used a melon baller?  Or maybe this is those tiny little seed potatoes cut in half.

Either way the potato salad comes in a striped bowl...sort of.  The design is a sticker rather than paint.  Ugh...my sister ruined every toy she or I ever had with stickers, because she picked the stickers off.  Anyway, here's the insignia; it matches the menu.

The potato salad itself appears to have spice on the top (paprika?) and some parsley...I assume that's parsley.  I can dig that.  There are even veins molded in, but those are hard to see.  

Parsley's kind of a family joke; sometimes when there's a lull in conversation I'll randomly repeat the line from The Tale of Peter Rabbit:  "...and then, feeling rather sick, he went looking for some parsley."  I don't know about y'all, but if I'd eaten enuff to be nauseous like Peter Rabbit apparently did, I would NOT be looking for something else to stuff my gullet!  Apparently Tenney didn't feel the same way, because she brought along a hunk of watermelon.

Good, good, I'd been wanting a hunk of watermelon for my girls.  This is just your stereotypical red watermelon with seeds, though yellow watermelon without seeds is every bit as good.  Indeed, the best watermelon my family ever ate was yellow and seedless.  That was the first time in my life (and so far, the only time) that I picked the whole slice up and ate it straight from the rind, like people do in cartoons.  Tenney's hunk of watermelon is small enuff that Rita Cheryl could hold it if I could rotate her palm up (I can't).  But at the same time it would be big enuff to be satisfying.  Like the chicken it's nicely painted...

...and nicely molded.

Ah, there's nothing like watermelon on a hot summer day!  And what better to wash it down with than the aforementioned sweet tea?

The glass of tea is actually my favorite item in this set, because if the lighting is right one can see the "ice" in there.

There's also a lemon wedge in there.  Nice!

I happen to have a glass of iced tea from Etsy packed away in my horde of doll stuff.  Let's see how the two compare.

Reminds me of an old Luzianne tea commercial.  The voiceover goes "Let's see if these Lipton drinkers can tell the difference between Lipton and Luzianne iced tea" or something of that stripe...and the glasses are different, AND the tea itself is a different shade.  Yeah, I think the Lipton drinkers could tell the difference!  I like the Etsy container better, but it's definitely not as portable as the Mattel container!  Notice that the lemons in the Etsy tea glass are shaped like Mickey Mouse.  The Etsy proprietor is (I presume) a Disney fan, because just about all of her stuff is Disney-themed.

Right then, back to the picnic set.  Most of this stuff can fit into the little cardboard carrier...

...but not all of it.  The chicken won't fit, especially if it's in its container.  When taken out of its container the chicken sort of fits, but boy howdy would that make an awful mess if it were real food!

Good thing Tenney included a napkin. 

That bad boy is made out of cloth too, kinda like the napkins at fancy restaurants...and not-so-fancy ones too, for that matter.  Colton's isn't really all that fancy, but their napkins are cloth.  Their napkins come wrapped around their silverware, which is not the case here.  Tenney's grub did come with a fork, but it wasn't wrapped in the napkin.  Likely that could be done, though.

Tenney had a specialized hand for holding crap, so she could probably hold this fork.  Rita Cheryl can too, but I have to cram it between her fingers.

Lastly, the blanket.  It's reversible.

I like gingham, so I usually have that side up.  The blanket rolls up and has ties to hold it together, plus a handle that allows this blanket to be carried like a duffle bag.

Unfortunately, rolling the blanket up and then tying it like that makes the fabric wrinkle like mad.  The cloth isn't heavy enuff to let the wrinkles hang out, the way they do on my own blouses.

With that, Rita Cheryl is ready to dig in.  LOL, it was late afternoon when I took this picture, growing dark and beginning to thunder, but Rita Cheryl gave no flying burritos.

My girl comes from the land of deep-dish pizza and loaded hot dogs, but she's loving that chicken!  I would too, if my stomach would allow it, LOL.  The older I get, the wimpier my stomach is.  So I'll deviate from my usual outro and give this set ratings in a few categories.

QUALITY:  Four out of five.  The molding on these items is good, as is the painting.  The two cloth items are well-sewn and have no raggy hems or holes or tears.  The food carrier came bent, but since it's flimsy cardboard I'm not terribly surprised by that.  It can be straightened again.

DURABILITY:  Three out of five.  Most of the items are plastic, and the fork is made out of metal.  However, there are paper items that can be easily bent out of shape (like the cardboard carrier already is) or outright destroyed.  The cloth items (the napkin and the blanket) feel sturdy enuff, but if a little kid is determined enuff even the best cloth item can be annihilated.

VERSATILITY:  Oh...four out of five.  Some AG items are obviously specific to one or two characters, but this set can be used by just about anyone.  Not a Tenney fan?  Not a problem.  The "Georgia" on the menu can be a family friend or somebody like that.  The individual food items can be used in some of the larger sets, like the campus snack cart that Miss Emily loved so terribly.  LOL, Mama liked that set too; I may have to shell out the bucks for that set someday.

AGE GROUP:  The box says ages eight and up, and I agree.  Five out of five on that recommendation.  That fork is small enuff to be a potential choking hazard for small children and pets alike.

TASTE:  Rita Cheryl gave it ten out of five, LOL.  She says it's been a long time since she's had watermelon that juicy and crisp, and the chicken and the potatoes both had the right amount of spice.  She did wish the blanket were a little thicker, but that's got nothing to do with taste.

Whether you're a Tenney fan or not, if your doll is a foodie they might like this set.  Heck, if you are a foodie then you might like this set!  Since all of Tenney's collection is archived this set can only be found on the secondary market, or on good ol' eBay.

Chow down! 
RagingMoon1987