People used to risk their virtual lives along the Oregon Trail, facing wild bears, broken axles, starvation and the ever present threat of dysentery, all so the survivors of the trip could live a better life.

But now it's easy to move to Oregon and live the good life, and instead of risking death by dysentery gamers can risk death by kombucha overdose in Travel Oregon: The Game.

The semi-independent Oregon tourism group Travel Oregon created their homage to Oregon Trail as a way to engage potential visitors and show off all the amazing culinary adventures found in Oregon:

"The impetus for creating the game was to help educate folks about the range of winter activities in Oregon," Katie Meeker, Travel Oregon's Global Marketing Manager, told MUNCHIES over phone Monday. "We wanted to try to find a way to do that in an engaging way."

Travel Oregon: The Game comes with a pretty robust food and drink component, which is pretty cardinal to the real-life experience of Oregon as a tourist. "Portland's known for its food and drink," Meeker told MUNCHIES. "In terms of thinking about what makes an experience in Oregon great, that comes up a lot. It's sort of part of who we are. You will eat and drink very well."

Within the game, you can play the role of an apple farmer or winemaker (along with such vocations as yoga teacher, ski pro, rancher, fly fisherman, or, uh, surfer). You're then given the option of journeying to one of seven territories within the state and partaking in a number of activities such as foraging for truffles, getting ice cream at Salt & Straw, catching and cooking Dungeness crab, or even becoming an accidental sommelier. The list goes on.

At a variety of stores in different parts of the state, you can also purchase craft beer or artisanal coffee. Potential causes of death along your journey include falling victim to a food coma or ingesting too much kombucha. Choose your own adventure, baby!

-Via Munchies

On the off chance that you are looking for something different to do to your Thanksgiving turkey, we've found a completely millennial way to spice it up. Reynolds Kitchen brings us several ways to combine Thanksgiving dinner with your favorite junk food- and turn your turkey Technicolor! While the aluminum foil company did not mention brand-name ingredients, we can figure out what they mean. They have recipes that call for coating your turkey in "hot puffed cheese sticks" (Flamin' Hot Cheetos), "ranch-flavored corn chips" (Doritos), and "onion-flavored rings" (Funyuns). This is the perfect way to feed your circle of friends and declare independence from family and tradition. It should cure the munchies, too. Get all three recipes here. -via Cracked

(Image credit: Reynolds Kitchens)

When you tell someone they have food on their face you're usually just trying to be polite and help them from feeling foolish, but when you tell Canadian makeup artist Mimi Choi she has food on her face she says "yah, I know".

That's because Mimi carefully applied that food to her face and body in order to create an optical illusion effect so delicious you'll want a second helping.

Mimi is an incredibly talented artist with a knack for realism, and while it may seem odd for a makeup artist to focus on food the choice makes sense when you consider the body parts Mimi paints look good enough to eat.

See more from Mimi's Optical Illusion Food Makeup Series here

This video starts out showing you how to catch a wild pumpkin, so you know what direction it's going. You will also learn how to use recycled crust and mourn the existence of pre-combined "pumpkin pie spice." The entire video from You Suck at Cooking is a respite from the anxiety of planning and executing a Thanksgiving feast.   

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Some of the tips here are legit, while others are not. You must figure that out yourself. And stay for the little song at the end. Honestly, pumpkin pie may seem complicated, but it's as simple as following the instruction on the can of pumpkin. Don't even think about cooking a pumpkin yourself- I've done that, and it's not worth the effort. -via Mashable

The town of Terlingua, Texas, has been hosting a chili cook-off for over 50 years now. In a state where chili cook-offs are thick as thieves, this one is the biggie, and it comes with a ton of history. The founders split into rival cook-offs (now held at the same time), the rules were established, and there were controversies along the way.

Terlingua, Texas. It’s the Super Bowl of chili cook-offs. You can’t compete unless you’ve gotten yourself qualified by winning smaller competitions, and you have to show picture ID on account of what happened in 2003. A fella by the name of Don Eastep, a Yankee no less, snuck into the proceedings posing as his brother, who’d qualified but couldn’t attend.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, take a listen to this. Picture a desert scene with pickup trucks and campers and about a hundred folks in straw hats and aprons cooking chili on camp stoves. Now, our friend here, he’d set up his cooking area, but he wasn’t cooking. He was strolling around sipping a koozie-clad cold one and chitchatting. He’d eventually ask folks for a taste of their chili in a Styrofoam cup, and most of the cooks obliged. He took those samples and dumped them into his own pot. He got enough to enter the contest. And he won. Yep. He won the whole dang deal.

That certainly wasn't the first, or the last spectacular controversy at the Terlingua Chili Cook-off. Matthew Diffee attended the 50th Terlingua Chili Cook-off in 2016 and brings us a condensed but lavishly illustrated explanation and history of Texas' premiere chili event at Texas Monthly. -Thanks, Walter!

(Image credit Matthew Diffee)

PS: If you want a deep dive into the founding and first split of the Terlingua Chili Cook-off, here is the story as it happened, from 1967, part one and part two.

We learn from our mistakes, but it's less painful to learn from other people's mistakes. Stories of Thanksgiving disasters can be quite funny and they will become part of the family tradition to tell them again every year. On Thanksgiving, millions of people across the US are preparing the same meal and screwing it up in classic ways. Like neglecting to quarantine the family pets away from the turkey.

Take Frank Gunsberg of Ramsey, New Jersey, who was hosting a dinner for 20 guests when he realized both his golden retriever and the turkey were missing. He found them behind a cabinet—the bird on the floor, unmarred but for a few puncture wounds. Though his wife protested, Gunsberg wiped down the bird and served it anyway. "Those guests are hearing this story for the first time," he told NorthJersey.com.

Then there was the case of a chihuahua that climbed inside a bird. "A frantic new mom hosting her first Thanksgiving feast had a Chihuahua that climbed up onto the kitchen table and into the turkey, and she couldn’t get the dog out," writes Todd Sigg on the Illinois Poison Control Center blog. "I told her to pull really hard and yank the little guy out ... I could understand the awesomeness of it from the dog’s point of view, a meat room."

Even if you don't need tips on preparing the Thanksgiving feast, you'll get a kick out of what went wrong for other folks in an article at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: TheKohser)

Last year, Tye Lombardi made a Chestburster Turkey for Thanksgiving, and was told to never do that again. She said okay, and then developed a recipe for Facehugger Roasted Chicken. Behold the horror.

Made from a full-sized roasting chicken, snow crab legs, and a homemade chicken sausage tail, this sweet slab of petrifying poultry is smokey, succulent, and has just enough bite from a secret ingredient to make you cautiously come back for more.

In short, it’s damn good.

Lombardi would have used a turkey for this recipe, but she didn't have enough oven room. She assures us it can be done if your turkey isn't too big. The recipe is a bit involved, but if you are determined to make a real impression with your holiday bird, the complete instructions are at the Necro Nom-Nom-Nomicon. I can't wait to see the full-size xenomorph turkey she'll come up with next year. -Thanks, Tye!

PS: Lombardi has reconsidered the crab legs. For maximum edibility, they should be cooked separately and attached afterward, since the chicken should cook much longer than crab legs.

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Everybody enjoys going out to eat at a restaurant every once in a while, and we all know we're expected to tip our servers at the end of the meal, but beyond that people seem to be a bit clueless about proper restaurant etiquette.

Some customers think it's okay to call their server "honey" or "baby", find it acceptable to whistle or snap at a server whenever they need something, and don't mind showing up ten minutes before closing and demanding a table.

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And then there are those trashy troublemakers who complain at the top of their lungs about the total when the check comes, as if the prices weren't printed on the menu they ordered their meal from.

It's time to teach these boorish customers how to act when they go out to eat, so they'll stop making a server's job harder than it already is!

Read 14 Things You Should Never Say To Your Server here

Fast food companies keep coming up with advertising gimmicks that involve clothing in order to appeal to the younger, hipper consumers they're trying to bring in to their restaurants.

Some of these fast food fashions become collector's items, others end up on thrift store racks, but Taco Bell is hoping their new clothing line, created in conjunction with Forever 21, will make Millennials swoon.

The Taco Bell X Forever 21 line includes t-shirts fresher than their tacos, hoodies that keep you warm without the aid of a heat lamp, and this shiny athletic jacket that will make you shine brighter than a neon sign in the night.

-Via Boing Boing

On the menus of Thanksgiving feasts of the past are some items that were once considered traditional, yet are almost gone today. Honestly, I dropped cranberry sauce completely for a few years until I discovered a recipe that uses pineapple and walnuts. You should serve what people like. The unfortunate recipes that have disappeared from Thanksgiving include creamed onions, winter corn, and various mid-century Jell-O based recipes, like Jellied Turkey-Vegetable Salad.

There’s only one way to improve a dish as alluring as Jellied Turkey-Vegetable Salad, and that’s to stick it in the freezer. From the sound of the recipe—which combines cream of celery soup, salad dressing, diced turkey, vegetables, and gelatin—this is basically the inside of a turkey pot pie if it was served frozen. And also if it was square.

That recipe is here if you want to try it, or just read about it. The list of regrettable Thanksgiving side dishes is at Mental Floss.

(Unrelated image credit: Ms Jones)

Here's a state ranking that guaranteed to cause offense and arguments. Thrillist employed a mysterious panel of judges (described as "omnivorous") to eat their way through state cuisines. They don't reveal their methodology, although locally grown crops and products like wine and whiskey are factored in. The rankings will only surprise you for certain places you feel strongly about, such as your home state. Kentucky didn't make the top half, but it also didn't make the bottom ten, as it usually does in state rankings. And I thought Louisiana was robbed. However, you learn some details about the states along the way.

37. Arizona

Allegedly inventing the chimichanga by deep-frying a burrito definitely counts for something, and we're insanely fixated on Pizzeria Bianco. But it's hard to get excited about all those chains dotting the scorched landscape. If you happen to be elderly, advance this ranking seven spots up the list. If you happen to be a minority, drop Arizona 13 spots.

36. Indiana

Indianapolis has come a long way in recent years, with establishments like the universally beloved Milktooth injecting some life into a far too chain-dominant dining scene. And when you're outside Indy, keep your eyes peeled for some sugar cream pie. Maybe skip the fried brain sandwich.

Check out the entire ranking at Thrillist. -via Digg

(Image credit: Jason Hoffman/Thrillist)

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It's only natural for chefs to have a very clear sense of which foods they like and which ones they can't stand, since they're exposed to all kinds of different foods while working in restaurant kitchens.

Joy Wilson aka Joy the Baker is, well, a baker so she hasn't really worked around weird foods like octopus and squid, which is just fine by her since she can't stand eating any kind of cephalopod.

Gordon Ramsay has a discriminating sense of taste so his won't eat food isn't a specific ingredient as much as a meal served in a certain locale- Gordon will not eat airplane food.

And celeb chef Rachel Ray has a certain food product she abhors that may seem odd to some- she hates mayo. Rachel dislikes the condiment so much she's a lifelong member of the I Hate Mayonnaise Club.

See 10 Celeb Chefs On The Foods They Won't Eat here

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Are you or someone you know a Ranch-oholic? I'm not talking about someone who's addicted to life on a ranch, I'm talking about those people who can't seem to get enough Ranch dressing, adding it to virtually every meal.

These dressing guzzlers don't like the taste of food that isn't drenched in Ranch dressing, and they will complain every time they're faced with a meal devoid of Ranch, claiming plain food is for the birds.

If you're playing host to one or more Ranch-oholics this holiday season you're gonna need to pick up one of these new Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mini-kegs, so the Ranch can flow like thick, white wine.

The Hidden Valley Ranch mini-keg holds five liters of original Ranch, so there's plenty to go around, but it will set you back $50 so you may be better off buying some box wine so you can drown out the sound of their complaining.

-Via Laughing Squid

Pizzerias are the first eateries I look for while on vacation, because any American city that doesn't have a decent pizza shop simply isn't worth visiting, let alone mentioning.

Thankfully just about every major city in America contains a decent pizza joint or two, so the vacationing can continue!

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Roberta's in Brooklyn is literally a hole in the wall joint that serves up some super delicious Neapolitan-style pizza pies cooked in a wood oven:

Start with the mighty Speckenwolf (a dreamy concoction of mushrooms, house-made mozzarella, and marvelously salty slices of speck) and the seasonal Bee Sting (airy, just-crisp-enough crust piled with mozzarella, thin slices of soppressata, tomato sauce, chili flakes, and honey).

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If you're on the other side of the country then you've gotta pay a visit to East Hollywood's DeSano Pizza Bakery, where the pizzas are cooked in a wood oven and the ingredients are imported straight from Italy:

The tomato sauce shines here; it’s always made from San Marzano tomatoes, meaning that the pizza at DeSano can be classified as true Neapolitan pizza -- just ask the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana. Throw draft beer and authentic Italian gelato in the mix, and it's easy to see why a night at DeSano is a night well-spent.

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And slightly to the right of the middle of America is where Chicago can be found, a city known for its deliciously thick deep dish pizzas, and according to most Pequod's Pizza serves up the best pizza in Chi-Town:

Famous for its caramelized crust -- a rich ring of blackened mozzarella that encircles these Chicago cast-iron deep-dish delicacies -- this neighborhood hang sports a more authentic vibe than most of the deep-dish establishments that pull in Downtown tourists. These glorious pizza bombs rock a flaky, almost buttery crust, and once they’re loaded with sausage and/or pepperoni, you'll need a team of eaters to make a run at it.

See The Must-Visit Pizzeria In America's 35 Biggest Cities here

The experimental kitchen at Chicago restaurant Alinea has produced a transparent pie that tastes just like traditional pumpkin pie. Created by executive chef Mike Bagale and chef de cuisine Simon Davies, it's not the kind of thing you can just whip up at home, unless you have a rotary evaporator, or a moonshine still that's not being used.  

To make their translucent pumpkin pie, Bagale creates a heavily spiced traditional pumpkin pie filling, blends it with water, and then pours that liquid into a rotary evaporator, a device that distills liquids. He explains his process:

"We put the pumpkin pie stock under a vacuum, and that stock boils at room temperature. Because it’s boiling, it’s evaporating, and that evaporation hits the rotary evaporator’s chilled coils and drips into a collection flask. We take that collection flask and we season it with a little bit of salt and sugar, and then set it with gelatin. So, it’s basically pure aroma. You get a condensation water that blows off the stock, and once you season it you have something that’s really really special."

That distilled pie filling is added to gelatin to make the clear pie filling. Get the complete recipe at Vogue. But be warned, after all that work, your traditional family might prefer to look at it rather than eat it. -via Mental Floss

(Image credit: Allen Hemberger/Alinea)