Just Visiting : The JELL-O Gallery

I remember the rides up to the Renaissance Faire, we used to pass a sign that said Jell-O Museum was off the next exit. We'd talk about going, and never have manage to go see it. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't sound like a lot of fun. It's still on my to do list, and I'm going to tell you why.

The JELL-O Gallery
23 East Main Street
Le Roy, New York 14482

This is a fun museum. It's not something that can be seen everywhere. True, Jell-o can be seen in stores, and be made at home. But it is intriguing to think there is a place where you can see a more detailed rendering of the history of the wiggly jiggly treat.

Open year round, with a minimal admission fee, you can take your family here and not feel as though it was a waste of time. Kids love sweet things, and they are likely to find the toys and various memorabilia interesting.

I myself am curious to see if they have the old disney jell-o molds there, or even some of the odd advertising boxes that have been done associated to different movies and shows over the years. Things like that I find interesting.

The museum is open during varying hours. So I know if I want to go it's going to have to be planned out more than driving past the advertising billboard. And if you're thinking about going, please check their website. The online shop even shows some of the merchandise available there. And I have to say it's mostly reasonable.

I still want to go to this museum. So if you're going, can I go with you? ^_~

Trying New Things

Or who the heck thought this was a good idea?

If the above wording makes little sense to you, you're in for a real treat. I tried some new food and drink this past weekend, and have come to mixed conclusions.

Dew S A, also known as the three color Mountain Dew drink. I've been avoiding this drink for a little while since I first saw the cans come in their boxes to the end of the aisles at Walmart and Tops. I wasn't sure how I would feel about them mixing together 3 flavors of their drink.

This weekend we had the bravery to get one bottle, as you see to the left. It's not a huge sample size, but as I am only one person testing the flavor and deciding how I felt about it this was an adequate size. Besides I didn't want to be stuck with 11 cans if it was gross to drink.

The verdict was that it was alright. It's not really unique in my opinion, having more of a berry flavor than anything else.


The next new flavor actually shocked me. It was honestly a surprise to see it at the store on the shelves.  Sweet Corn flavored potato chips.

UTZ you have seriously got a winner here. As someone who has had to give up eating corn on the cob because it bothers my stomach, the taste of these combined with the texture as you chew them mimics corn on the cob surprisingly well. I have to say that out of the three new food and drink flavors I'm sharing my experience with, this would be the winner. These were wonderful.

But I will say they might not be what everyone expects. They truly taste like sweet corn. Where often potato chips have a chip flavor still, these lost that completely somehow, and nothing could have been better for them.

My third new experience was Pepsi FIRE. This was ... unique? It's not quite what I expected. I assumed it was going to be like Dr Pepper but with a slight cinnamon taste. Instead I got something completely different.

Pepsi Fire is akin to drinking a liquid cinnamon altoid. If you haven't eaten altoids, think of those little red cinnamon candy buttons, pretty much the same thing. Does this mean it was unpleasant? No... but it does mean it left me unimpressed and with little reason to purchase again.


So the verdict on a whole, is that the only product here that I would purchase again is the UTZ Sweet Corn flavored potato chips. Kind of sad really, I expected so much more from big brands like Pepsi and Mountain Dew. But today I have to say the winner is the potato, with the big taste. Definitely a great flavor and I hope they keep it, even if it's only seasonal.

Unique Experience : Cooking with Dice

Games are something that are popular now more than ever. Many people enjoy playing them alone or with other people. There are games for every skill level, and for those who want a challenge it can be a great change of pace from daily life to play a game. but they almost all have the same limitation, usually the only true results are simple entertainment and an engaging way to pass time. But that seems to be changing as people look at ways to creatively combine world necessities with our inherent need to be entertained.

Which leads us to our unique experience, Cooking with Dice: The Acid Test. This is a cookbook and game experience that is going to be live on kickstarter March 14th. You can find out specifics about the campaign on their website www.cookingwithdice.com. You'll be able to get your very own copy to play through and enjoy!  But I'm sure you're wondering about how it plays, or how it works. So let's have a look at how our experience here at home has gone.

So before I get too far into this, as someone who prefers tabletop games and board games to video games on the most part, I have to say I found this to be appealing. The Acid Test Cookbook is a fantastic example of creativity at it's finest offering unique kitchen experience. It includes a few different play mode recommendations, single player, group, or team based on what you feel up to attempting. But remember some of the recipes need time to 'cook' so they may not be ready for consumption immediately. I attempted to run it in group mode, but we felt intimidated, so I ended up testing it on my own in single player mode.

I must admit that my first few attempts at working through any of the recipes left me feeling a little out of my element. Partially because I'm not very good at following directions, but also due to the fact my kitchen lacks a majority of the ingredients listed on the roll tables. Which made it a little difficult to just play the book from home without purchasing the ingredients before hand. A mistake I initially made. I'm a gamer who doesn't frequent the kitchen so it never crossed my mind you need to go get your ingredients first. My bad.

So after reading through more and examining things more closely the solution I came up with, was to roll the dice and make a shopping list. Yeah I know, this is what everyone else would have done in the first place when they want to prepare a recipe. But I'm not a cook, so to me it seemed I had come up with a great solution. Less creative I suppose than I want it to sound, but by approaching the recipes and die rolls in this manner it was far easier to actually follow the recipes and continue game play.

I think my favorite part of the book is that it does not require the use of the oven. The microwave really is one of my favorite cooking centers, so a book that offers more creative and inventive recipes to be made there is highly appealing. It was surprising though that they were much easier in practice than I was expecting.

Not only were the recipes easy, the results were impressive. I'm looking forward to actually using some of them for future holiday get togethers. My favorite recipe in the whole book though is the buttermilk cheese critter. I never realized I could make a cheese ball so easily at home. I've always found them to be a rather intimidating product when the holidays come around. We often purchase them and then set them out as needed.

The recipe that I rolled up for my cheese critter wasn't extremely difficult. But I did alter my recipe slightly because I wanted to pretend that I was brave. I ended up using: 2 cups low-fat buttermilk,1/4 cup grated mozzarella cheese, 2 tablespoons diced Ham, and 2 tablespoons of bacon bits. Those components made up the majority of my "Buttermilk Cheese Critter". For the coating I ended up using 2 tablespoons of crushed round crackers.

Personally I like the buttery taste of the crackers, and it let the ham flavor stand out more. The bacon bits gave it a little more of a crunch, and I know they'll be safe if I repeat this with some of my friends around. I know they weren't really included in the plans, but I wanted to have a little bit of a crunch with the ham and I wasn't sure I wanted to add nuts. I think I'll call this variation porky.

I'm going to have to do it again soon though so I can make it cute and take a picture of the results. So don't be surprised if there's another post in the near future showing off my rather new found acid based cooking skills! I wasn't entirely brave in my preliminary creations because I was more interested in tasting the results and finding out how difficult it would be. But I am definitely going to have to show off some results as soon as possible.

So considering that I have actually had positive results, even though I have little skill, I recommend this cooking experience. Even for younger children, as long as you supervise them. If you're looking to make creative game based meals, or just to challenge your family to create food at home, this cookbook will be a wonderful addition to both your cookbook collection and your game collection. Check out their website for further information, www.cookingwithdice.com and MAKE SURE to check into their kickstarter once it's live! You don't want to miss out on this.

What's in the Oven? : Applesauce Bread

So this is what I made this week. Well, not all I made. I also did a Banana Bread, but It was all eaten up before I got around to remembering that I should share with you what I've been up to. After we ate all the banana bread, I remembered that we didn't have anymore Banana's in the house, So I decided to research what else I could make. I found a few different recipes. Applesauce Bread sounded pretty good, and simple enough. So that's what I decided to make.

Applesauce Bread

Picture of Applesauce Bread Taken by Polke A Dot (It's just food! It doesn't need a glamor shot)

So first things first. I didn't have everything on the recipe list. But I didn't find that out until I had already mixed most of the concoction up. So the list below shows what I actually put into my Applesauce Bread. The verdict on how it tasted? Well... we'll get to that later on.

1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups applesauce
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup butter softened
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Set the oven to 350 degrees. It needs to be that hot. Then  grease and flour your loaf pan, so that you don't have to deal with that once your batter is ready.

So you start off smooshing the butter and sugar together, then smoosh in the egg and applesauce. Pretty simple right? Then you add in all the dry ingredients. Mixing them up until they're a decent consistency (NOT DRY).

And I found half a bag of chocolate chips in the cabinet. So in my case I poured them in to taste, adding them into the mixture before putting it into the margarine and flour treated loaf pan.

Then into the oven it went for an hour.

Sure felt like a long time.

Ok. Emma you're right. I can't pour it out of the pan before it's cooled. *hopes it remelds before morning >.>*

Verdict : It didn't taste half bad. To be honest, it was a little spicy, but the chocolate balanced that out. Polke A Dot even ate some. So it couldn't have been all that bad. He doesn't like anything that might be good for him.

Product Review : Mio

People are frequently looking for the next best thing to add to their cupboards or picnic baskets. Something that's light, useful, and offers an option they haven't had before. At least not as simple and clean as it is offered now. For years we've had the powdered drink options. But now these concentrated drink liquids are growing in popularity.

These are 4 of the Mio's that we have in house currently.

Mio is advertised as a Liquid Water Enhancer. Basically that translates to concentrated koolaide like flavoring. It comes in a wide variety of flavors, and even options energy drink like options. They allow you to choose how much flavor to add to your water (whether you use tap water or bottled water doesn't matter, it's a matter of personal preference). I like mine a little more flavored than Polke does.

We have had a number of different flavors of this product pass through our household. So far my favorites have been the Berry Blast and the Arctic Grape variants. Polke's Mother likes the Sweet Tea flavoring. While Polke likes the Blueberry Lemonade one. To be honest though, I think we've tried most of the flavors.  None of us liked the Mio Energy Green Thunder, and to be honest, the Mio Energy variants in general weren't found to be appealing by our household.

Current list of Mio flavors we've tried:
Cherry Blackberry
Berry Pomegranate
Strawberry Watermelon
Blueberry Lemonade (household favorite)
Lemonade
Sweet Tea (household favorite)
Mio Energy Black Cherry (won't re-buy)
Mio Energy Green Thunder (won't re-buy)
Mio Fit Berry Blast
Mio Fit Arctic Grape (household favorite)

We do enjoy the fact that these enable us to have a number of different flavors on hand, while not taking up the large amounts of space packages of gatorade might take up. Not only that they're small. You can pack them in your purse and have them wherever you go. It makes it easy to have options, without being committed to one thing for extensive periods of time. So on the most part, Yes this is a good product. And there seems to be a flavor option for everyone.

Thanks for reading! I hope you find a flavor you like! We'll let you know about another interesting product sometime soon. Maybe even something amusing. Like...socks?