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.

The World Food Fest

We went to the World Food and Music Festival in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. There is lots of food from different countries. We got a lot of food there. We are going to talk about the foods we got and how they tasted.

Here, this is my brother Bo talking about his food:

"I ate the alligator bite. It was on a stick in a box with frog legs. I didn't eat any of those. The alligator tasted good and chewy, like meat and it had a crust around it.

I ate pizza. It was pepperoni with cheese and a hard crust. It tasted like cheese and pepperoni. Then I ate some Hawaiian chicken on a stick. It was sweet and good with a little chewy inside. Then I had two marshmallows on a stick. They burned them first. When I touched them with my tongue first, it was hot. Then it got sticky. And that is done."

OK, back to me. I ate alligator bites -- it was a little sour and fishy. It's breaded and fried. It was from a stand called Fat Tuesdays -- the food is from New Orleans. I also ate three frog legs from there. They tasted very much like fish. I really liked them. They were moist and breaded. The bone was very thin, the size of a small chicken bone.

After the frog legs I had some of my mom's food from Ecuador. It was a potato tortilla. My mom said it was the best food she ever had. Next, we went to the Hawaiian stand for Hawaiian chicken with terriyaki sauce and rice. The rice was plain and the chicken was tangy, so was the terriyaki sauce. I ate most of it until it got too sweet and then I traded with my dad. He had some Korean food -- a spicy pork bowl. It was pretty spicy. They had a red sauce in it. It had lots of vegetables and it was pretty meaty.

After that we were about to leave so we had some marshmallows. My sister got strawberry, my brother got raspberry and I got kahlua -- it's a type of alcohol. The marshmallows were on a stick. They roasted them over a little fire. They were burning hot. They were sweet. The marshmallows are from Beaverdale Confections from Iowa.

It was very crowded at the festival. It was on the bridges. 

This is me using an ear swab and that is the gunk out of my ear! Just kidding, that's my alcoholmallows!

We're eating our marshmallow. 

They are toasting the marshmallows. 

That is me eating my spicy Korean pork with rice. 

This is me eating my Hawaiian grill chicken. 

That's the thing that I just said in the thing above. 

That is not mine. It was my mom's. It was a taco that I wanted to get but I didn't.

That is Bo eating his Hawaiian chicken on a stick. 

That is the potato tortilla from Ecuador that my mom said was the best thing in the world. 

That is Bo eating his pizza from the Ecuador stand. 

I'm having a serious look. I'm a professor. Professor of Food.

That is my yummy frog legs that I will not share with anybody. Not even if they asked and gave me $100. 

Those are flags from around the world. My favorite flag: I don't know. I'd have to look at them later. 

Budget Hot Sauce Review

                Budget hot sauce review
First up, the reason we got hot sauces today was because of football and hotwings . we (me and my dad sometimes my little brother) like to watch the nfl, we also watch college but not as much. 

Now let's get started with the hot sauce types. They were all pretty cheap sauces (all under one dollar) we just wanted to see which was the best hot wing sauce. There was texas pete, louisiana original hot sauce, and trappeys ulltimate cayenne pepper sauce. 

The ingredients for texaspete were: peppers, vinegar, and salt. It tasted tangy, salty and had more taste than the Louisiana hot sauce, it was very bold also. 

The louisiana hot sauce was the hottest sauce of them all. It was bold like the texaspete sauce, and vinegary also. 

I saved the best for last. Trappeys hot sauce was bold, salty, and vinegary, notice a pattern in the tastes?! But it was the right amount of spice, and it was the boldest sauce. 

All of the sauces were almost the same, but the trappeys sauce just tasted better. Well that's all for this one, guys, and a heads up, dont put to much sauce on one peice of chicken!!!!!!

The Outlet Mall Hulabaloo!!!!!!!

On saturday the 15th of march, I decided to go to the outlet mall, which is near Williamsburg, Iowa. It's about 2 hours from Des Moines. Drive east.

I got way more clothes then expected. About 11 shirts, 6 pairs of pants, 3 shorts and new shoes. An outlet mall is a chain of stores -- like clothes stores basically. My favorite stores were Reebok, Nike, Under Armour, Gap, Old Navy and that's all. I liked the last store that we went to because it was a caramel apple store! I picked out a toffee caramel apple, but I never got to eat it. We forgot it at Grandma's house. 

If you're going to the outlet mall, expect a lot of clothes and looking for clothes for your baby sister. It will be a little boring at times, especially looking for your mom's clothes, but when you get to look for your own clothes it's more fun. 

We shopped for about 3 hours. Then we went across the street to the Landmark Restaurant.

We forgot to take a photo of the restaurant, but we found this on the computer. There's no green grass in Iowa yet.

After all that shopping, you could guess that we were all pretty hungry.

To start it off I got spicy chicken soup, boy that stuff was spicy.

The soups were all homemade. My grandma got a soup with cabbage and sausage in it. She said it was good. 

 Then for my entree I got a bacon cheese burger and fries. I also saw steak that looked good and tenderloin sandwiches.

 I ate almost all of my bacon cheese burger but almost none of my fries [as usual].

 I was full.

They have homemade pies for dessert. I sort of wanted one but I was too full. 

If you're on the road, on Interstate 80, you should go to the Landmark Restaurant. And you should go to the outlet mall if you're running out of clean clothes or if your clothes don't fit you.