The Reese's Taste Test

After such high demand to know about the results of our Reese's Taste Test once the pictures were posted to Facebook, I figured we'd get this post up here quickly. Due to the difference in the look of all the different candies, we figured a blind taste test was pretty useless, so we went ahead and did a test as a group, discussing our opinions on the candy. For this taste test we had some guest testers along Tori Tappen and Henry Tappen.

The pictures from the taste test can be found here. So here is a picture of all the entries to the competition. Thirteen different kinds of Reese's entered and only one could come out as the winner. We created a spreadsheet to record our results and determine the winner.

The amount of candy that we consumed for this taste test drove me a bit crazy. I was definitely done eating Reese's by the end, but we had to do it, for Science! So we ended up cutting each piece into about fourths so we could all give it a try.

After the testing the results we came up with put Reese's minis as the #1 product with Reese`s original being a close second. The Reese's minis seem to have a peanut butter filling that is much smoother than that found in any of the other items, and had a chocolate to peanut butter ratio that we all appreciated. There was a consensus among us that some of the competitors, namely Reese's Pieces and NutRageous, were good, but not if you're wanting the chocolatey peanutbuttery goodness of Reeses.

The Floss Taste Test

Elena and I have had a habit of doing taste tests to determine which thing in a category we like best. You may remember a while back that we did a peanut butter taste test as well as a pickle (spears) taste test. Both of these were performed as a blind taste test (double blind is too much effort with 2 people). But this post is about some of our more recent tests. Floss and Reese's.

The Floss test was more of an expedition to find the floss we like. We had stumbled upon a type of floss that we really liked, but once it was finished we forgot what kind it was, and thus began our expedition. Unlike our previous tests, with the floss test we were just buying one thing of floss (what are those called? container? box? plastic thingy?) at a time and then we would use it to see how we liked it.

We're now pretty sure that our original floss that we really liked was this.

However, when we went to buy a replacement we ended up with one like this one. It was just plain floss and came in a container the same color as our original. The plain old floss isn't very good. Kind of just plain floss, not good, not terrible. (I started pulling it out in really long strands each night so I could get through it quicker.)

We realized that the plain floss was a lot thinner than the floss we had really liked, so we went ahead and tried out the tape instead of floss, because it's thicker, and we thought that's what we wanted. It looked like this one, but said tape instead of floss. This tape was terrible! It made my gums bleed every time, and was extremely hard to get between our teeth. We used this for about two days and then relinquished it to a strong string... not to be used for flossing.

Finally we went back and found this one. It is thicker and feels good between your teeth, and at the same time slides between the tight teeth with ease. This floss also has a great flavor and leaves your mouth feeling nice and fresh.

In the end the decision is pretty easy as to which floss we like the most, but it was a long sometimes painful and sometimes bloody road to find our favorite floss. Due to the length of this post, we'll have to bring you our Reese's taste test in our next post.

Enjoying the Weather

Since we've been up here in Seattle things have been pretty great, especially with the weather! So we've been taking advantage of the mid 60s weather and taking lots of pictures outside. (I think this also helps Lena stay sane since she sits inside reading books all day :D ). So you can see some of the pictures over on my flickr photo stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/boushley/

Some of my favorites are Lena imitating Ellie

And some pictures I got of the cool sparkling light on the lake

We went to downtown Seattle on our first Saturday here. Apparently it was the first sunny day about 70 in a long time... BAD IDEA! Pike's Place was super busy, and we weren't even hungry :/ So we won't be going back there, until its a cloudy weekday and we are hungry. After bailing on Pike's Place, we went to the Seattle Public Library, which was really cool. The architecture at that place is awesome.

Our first Sunday here, we went to the ward for our temporary housing and discovered that Lena knew someone and found a lot of fun couples. We have now found an apartment (http://thelakesapts.com/) and its only about .25 mile from Lena's friend... turns out its in a different stake though :( bummer. However, it is also only 1.5 miles from the building I'll be working in, and just across the street from part of the Microsoft campus.

One adventure from the apartment hunt. While we were looking through the listings that the realtor sent to us, we came across one that was awesome. It looked like the best one, was fairly spacious (1000+ sqft) and had hardwood floor, stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. The location was pretty good. It was our first pick that we wanted to go see with our realtor. Turned out there was one problem... it was a 55+ community :( Our combined age isn't even 55+. So alas it was not be.

All in all things are going pretty good for us. We'll be in our temporary housing a bit longer than expected ( the movers aren't available to give us our stuff until the 30th ), but it may turn out for the better as it'll give us some time to work on our apartment.