The Empress's Chicken Saga Debuts

Tsing Tsao, Chinese food, Des Moines

This is another old review but I might as well do it anyway to honor the Cyclones that were playing the Hawkeyes the weekend we went to this restaurant. So I think it was on a Friday. It was show your team spirit day at our school so that is why me and my brother and sister are all wearing Iowa State Cyclones clothes. That night we decided to eat at a Chinese restaurant, which I was happy about because one of my favorite dishes was at that restaurant -- Empress Chicken. It's something I get at a lot of Chinese/Asian restaurants.

Empress Chicken is breaded chicken with a sweet sauce on it. It is served with rice. It also has veggie in it. I like it because the sweetness goes good with the rice. I like the vegetables because they are stir-fried. They're good that way because they give off a different kind of taste and they're not mushy. They're crunchy.

We like Tsing Tsao because it is not the most expensive restaurant. With your meal, you get an egg roll, a crab rangoon and soup of your choice.

Pho All Seasons, Especially Spring!

Pho All Seasons, Des Moines

On Friday, me, my brother and my mom went to Pho All Seaons, a Vietnamese restaurant that we had never been to before. It turned out to be a very good restaurant serving great appetizers, such as pot stickers and calamari.

I ate three of the pot stickers. They were so good! A pot sticker is like a noodle shell with meat and vegetables on the inside. It feels smooth and it's not crunchy.

Here I am by my meal. I got the Korean short ribs. And they tasted really, really good! Part of that was the sauce on the ribs that made it taste good. It was kind of sweet, tangy and it was a little bit spicy. At a barbecue restaurant, the ribs are like baby back ribs -- you get the entire rib bone. But at this restaurant, they cut the ribs differently so each piece of rib had just a little bone circle and the rest was meat. 

 The other things on my plate was a salad, which was sweet. It had carrots and zuchinni cut really thin. There was also rice. And in this bowl was a spicy sauce that went good with the calamari that my brother ordered.

 The restaurant is a smaller restaurant. It was authentic with cool lights from the ceiling. It was pretty busy on a Friday night. Many people were ordering big bowls of soup, like the one that my mom got.

My mom ordered the pho soup that had brisket, noodles, green onions and broth. It was served with a plate of fresh basil, sprouts and a lime wedge. When I tried it, it tasted good with the noodles and the broth. But I was not a huge fan after eating lots of spoonfuls of just the broth. The meat tasted a lot like roast beef and I really liked it. I think the addition of the fresh vegetables made that soup taste fresher and better than other soups.

My brother wasn't that hungry so he just ordered an appetizer of calamari for his meal. Calamari is squid breaded and fried. I like it because it has a unique taste that I think is really good. I'm not a huge fan of raw calamari with no breading because it's really rubbery and chewy. This calamari tasted tender and not really chewy. It was served with a sweet sauce, and fried onions and carrots. The calamari tasted great! It was one of the best I've had. 

We will go to Pho All Seasons more often now that we know it is a good restaurant. I recommend it!

Old Review Hullabaloo (Wraps and Bagels!)

So, first off I'm sorry for not doing any posts for a while. My family is getting ready to move to another house so I've had my hands full with work. Here are a couple of old reviews I haven't shared yet.

Cafe at the Meadows, a restaurant at Prairie Meadows Casino
So before I went to this restaurant, me and my brother were swimming in the pool for a few hours, because we were tired of the cold winter and we can't resist pools when we have the chance to swim. So when our parents came we were very hungry and ready to eat. When we got to the restaurant I was expecting to order a sandwich but I found a really good sounding wrap with chicken, lettuce, beans, tomatoes, and cilantro.

The wrap had some other kind of tortilla on it, I think it was south west garden blend.

I had a lot of fries come with the wrap, and for some reason I always eat my fries first.

The fries came with this sauce I really liked, it was a spicy sauce that was kind of creamy, and really similar to a zombie burger sauce.

So if you want to go to a restaurant in Prairie Meadows I suggest that one.

THE END

Bruegger's Bagels in Des Moines 

So, after my chiropractor's appointment I chose to eat at Bruegger's bagels. I chose Bruegger's because we don't eat there much anymore, and because I felt like bagel sandwiches that day.

I was looking at the menu and figured out that I should just design my own sandwich instead.
I can't remember what I got on my bagel sandwich though.

Here is a picture of the kitchen where they make the sandwiches.

Oh, I also ordered soup, chicken noodle soup. It was really hot so when I ate it there was this warm feeling in my chest which somehow made it taste even better.-

I like Bruegger's because they make good sandwiches. The ingredients are fresh and cold, not like McDonald's lettuce. I love the flavors of the bagels, especially jalapeno bagels. It is a good place to go for lunch. 

Christmas Flavors Peeps Review

This might sound like a weird review. I mean who would go out and wake up and say, "Hmm, today I'm going to go out and make a review on Peeps."

It all started when we were going through Target to buy some stuff. We went through a Christmas sweets aisle and I saw a Sugar Cookie flavored Peeps package and then I showed my dad. He looked at it and then put it back on the shelf. Then I asked him if we could get it. I barely convinced him to let me get one of the packs. And then before I convinced him, there were three other packs I saw: Red Velvet, Hot Cocoa and Candy Cane dipped in mint chocolate. So we were deciding to get the Candy Cane one, and then he said, "You can get more kinds if you want to do a review." So I agreed and we got all four of the Peeps.

I was going to do the review on Saturday but we ran out of time. So I did it during the Ravens vs. Chargers football game on Sunday.

The first kind of Peeps we tried was Red Velvet, which we thought would taste the worst. But we were wrong. The Red Velvet looked cool cause of the red sugar on it. And on the inside it had a chocolate flavored marshmallow. Before we started eating the Peeps, my dad made me some coffee so it wouldn't be too sweet.

After I ate the first one I thought I could take three more. I was wrong, of course. I barely ate the last kind. The part that made it so sweet was the bottom coating -- either chocolate or vanilla. So the Red Velvet was our favorite at the moment.

Then we tried the Sugar Cookie flavor. At first, all we could taste was the bottom -- chocolate. After it was down my throat I could start tasting the Sugar Cookie flavor a little bit, but I think it needed more flavor. By then, my coffee was halfway gone because of how sweet the Peeps were.

After I lingered past the Sugar Cookie Peeps coating I faced an even harder challenge: next up was Hot Cocoa Peeps. It was pretty good. I liked how the marshmallow didn't have a ton of flavor to it, because of how overwhelming the coating (vanilla) was on the bottom. I barely made it past that one. I had one more to go. My coffee was almost gone. The coffee was also for washing the taste of one Peeps out so I could taste the flavor of the next one.

Then came the best one, which made me think that I had to eat it and I couldn't let it pass by. I ate it of course, and felt glad that I did. It was very, very good. It was Candy Cane with a mint chocolate coating on the bottom. When I ate the regular marshmallow part, it was very, very good. It tasted like peppermint. Then the mint chocolate bottom tasted like a Junior Mint, which made it very, very minty flavored which I liked a lot.

So after I drank all my coffee and ate all the Peeps, my stomach hurt for two reasons: the Peeps which were very, very, very sweet and the Green Bay Packers (my favorite NFL team) were about to play the New England Patriots (another very good team). Thankfully the final score was 26-21, the Packers.

So disregarding the standings of how I liked them, all the Peeps that I had were very, very good. It was hard picking but the standings are:
No. 1: Candy Cane with mint chocolate coating
No. 2: Red Velvet coated with vanilla
No. 3: Hot Cocoa coated with vanilla
No. 4: Sugar Cookie coated with milk chocolate

Although that was one of my strangest reviews I can say that my hot sauce review was even more strange. So, warning: do not eat too much Peeps at a time or you will suffer from severe sweetness. That's it.

Des Moines Day

We are on October break at my school. One of our days was to go to the Science Center of Iowa and then eat sushi. We went to the Science Center because my brother Bo went there with his old school on a different break and he liked it and wanted to go back.

We went to Gateway Market for breakfast. I ordered Juevos Muneulos -- it was an egg with a tortilla with cheese on it, under it there was beans, ham and picante sauce. It was good but it was too big for me to eat all of it.

Juevos Munelos at Gateway Market

Bo: I ordered a Snicker Doodle cookie -- it had cinnamon and sugar, and it was big and it tasted good. I had already eaten two bananas and some Takis tortilla chips. So I didn't order a big breakfast. 

After Gateway, we went to the Science Center. There's a new dinosaur exhibit there. After we got our tickets we went straight to the Dinosaur Exhibit. There were dinosaur skeletons there. There was a sucomimus, an orinosaurus, and another one I can't remember. There was also a stamp machine where you put a piece of paper under it and pressed down on the stamp and it made an imprint of the dinosaur. In another room, they had more dinosaurs. There was giganotasurus, masaikasaurus, rapatasaurus, and some others. After we got all six of our stamps, we took a picture with them. Unfortunately, my mom lost them so we don't have them.

After we went to the dinosaurs, we went to an area with a conveyor belt where you could put food on, fake food of course. They had lots of kinds. One part was you dumped the food off onto the conveyor belt, it dropped onto another conveyor belt and then it goes on the last conveyor belt where it dumps in a tub and gets sorted.

I was on the most dangerous job. A lot of the time I had to dodge plastic apples, pears, etc., coming down at me.

There were more exhibits in the room -- a bubble exhibit, which we didn't stay at long. And there was also a whiffle ball track with pipes and pieces on magnets so you could make a track. There was one more exhibit in the area that I went to. It was a big frame with red and grey pegs that you could push your hands into and it made an imprint on the other side.

What we did next was an area about movement. One of the exhibits was to make a dam. You had these rubber blocks that you had to put together to make a dam. There was another exhibit where you could race tennis balls down three different tracks. At another exhibit you could make Lego cars and have them roll down a track, racing other cars. My brother built one that had four wheels and about 10 blocks of rows stacked on top. My car kept running into the wall and falling over. It could barely even start because I made the wheels too far down. 

There was also a paper rocket exhibit that I didn't pay attention to. There was also an arch making exhibit, it was almost impossible. You needed at least two grownups to help. Another exhibit was these plastic balls that went through tubes with air. My favorite exhibit in that room was the egg-dropping contest. They were fake eggs made of hard rubber. You had to put plastic wrap around a rubber egg and tie it together with black ropes. Then you sent it up a chute where it fell from 20 feet and you saw what score you got. Five means your egg got smashed and one means that your egg was not smashed and you did a good job. I tried sending an unwrapped egg up the chute once and it made a very loud sound when it hit. My brother did a plain egg too, and it also made a loud sound. 

I made a very puffy egg with lots of plastic wrap and I got No. 1 -- which is "good job." We tried it one last time and we got "good job" again. 

After that, we went to a space room. There was a ball inside that had an electric force where if you touch it, electricity would attract to your finger. There was also an exhibit about a temple where in the Egyptian times that they used to tell time. Light moved from one side to another on each solstice. There was a lot of other space stuff. One of them was a game where you could find planets in other areas and you could look at them through a few different waves -- radio, microwave, infrared, visible, gamma, x-ray, ultraviolet. 

There was one other very cool exhibit in the space room. It was a big dome where you could make your own movie and play it like a movie on the big screen. It seemed like you were in space because it looked so close up and real. 

There was one more section -- the reptile section. It has tons of animals in it -- mostly snakes and a few turtles, lizards and toads. There was also a bat cave where you walk in and it has bat sounds. There was also the Channel 13 weatherman doing the weather from that room. I had a chance to be on TV at noon but I didn't want to. 

After that we went to the gift shop. My brother got a painting kit with four different dinosaurs in it. It came with colors of paint and two brushes.

After that, we ate lunch at a restaurant named Wasabi Tao. It had a very good sushi roll there -- Angry Tuna. The tuna tasted a little bit like salmon and looked like salmon too. It had my favorite sauce -- orange mayo. It also had some other toppings that I can't remember, including avocado. For my drink, I got ice tea. My brother got cherry Coke and my mom got ice tea too. 

We all got bento boxes. Mine was the strangest. Bento boxes are a tray with different kinds of foods in different sections. My main entree was beef negamaki -- it was different than what I thought. It had a thin layer of beef around the outside and green onion on the inside. I could not even taste the beef. I wasn't a huge fan of it. I liked the sauce on the salad -- it tasted like trees. It was ginger dressing. I also liked these little dumplings or rolls that had fish inside. It tasted good. They also had plain white rice that I liked a lot. There was also four California rolls. I ate seven pieces of those -- all of mine and most of my brothers. I was stuffed after eating all that. My brother's salmon was terriyaki. It tasted oceany and just tasted like good salmon. It also had terriyaki sauce that made it more sweet. My mom got shrimp. 

Overall, I liked the Wasabi Tao restaurant. Next time I want to get only sushi rolls instead of a bento box. 

After lunch, we walked around the skywalks and then went to the State Historical Building. I think kids would enjoy the Science Center a lot. Not all kids would enjoy Wasabi Tao, but I am one who does. Most kids would enjoy the State Historical Building. I think they would like the interactive displays. I'm the guy who actually likes to look at stuff in the museum. My favorite exhibit was the Midwest Hollywood display because it showed the movie, The Field of Dreams.

Tomorrow we are going to Boone to ride the Scenic Valley Train. We're going on the basic excursion ride and maybe on the trolley, if it's open. I think we will be on the yellow diesel engine. It's a Union Pacific. I know a lot about trains.