I prefer my soda drinks made with real sugar. I may have mentioned this before, but there is a noticeably taste differences between beverages made with real sugar and those made with high-fructose corn syrup. Unfortunately since corn syrup is much cheaper than sugar, real sugar soft drinks are usually few and far between. I’ve written about real sugar soft drinks before, including a comparison of two different versions of real sugar Dr Pepper. Today it’s time to talk about Pepsi.

When it comes to the Cola wars I am generally allied with Coca-Cola. If given the option between the normal versions of Coke or Pepsi I will choose Coke every time. My allegiance to Coca-Cola only wanes when presented with the option of real sugar Pepsi. Throwback Pepsi has been available sporadically since at least the summer of 2008. I always by a case or two when given a chance. Mexican Pepsi is something I’ve only found recently at one grocery store in Bellingham, WA that stocks a large amount of Mexican foodstuffs. I’ve been buying cases of Mexican Coca-Cola from Costco in Bellingham for years now, but I had never seen Mexican Pepsi until just last month.

Pepsi Showdown!

For pure appearance it’s obvious that Mexican Pepsi is the winner, glass bottles are superior to aluminum cans. Although for nostalgia the can does remind me a lot of the Pepsi cans I would see as a child. In terms of taste I’m still undecided, I’ve had a lot of cans of Pepsi Throwback but only have drank two bottles of Mexican Pepsi. They both taste much better than normal Pepsi, but I’m having a hard time declaring one the winner.

Actually, scratch that, I already knew the winner before I even started:

The Winner: Mexican Coca-Cola!

I choose Mexican Coca-Cola as the winner of the Pepsi battle. I can do that because I made up the rules of my taste test. It has the classic Coke bottle look, and the best taste of any of the real sugar soft drinks I’ve had. Check Costco near you, or go to Mexico, to find some and taste for yourself.

I really want to post about something non-food related, but finding non-food items to blog about seems pretty diffcult for me sometimes. So until I can think of something, here’s some more about consumables.

Magic Milk Straws!

got milk?

These are plastic straws full of magic flavor balls, use them to drink milk and you have flavored milk. Simple. We have two flavors here, cookies & cream and cocoa. With the cocoa I was expecting chocolate milk, instead I got cold hot chocolate, or cocoa. I really should have expected that. As for the cookies & cream, I didn’t try it. They also had strawberry, but I didn’t get those because fruit flavored milk is just weird. I have my standards.

straw full of flavor!

I found these at the grocery store, so keep your eyes open if you want to try some. Just don’t buy the strawberry because it’s weird.

I don’t really feel like typing that much today, but I’m getting a backlog of holiday photos I took to use in blog posts. Since American Thanksgiving has come and gone and it is now officially the holiday season I better get sharing. So without comment, some photos of holiday related stuff I have picked up so far:

I love Hickory Farms stuff. You may remember from last year. Actually I just really like gift boxes/baskets. I like the little assortment of goodies you get with them.

Well the other week was my first sighting of a Hickory Farms gift box, and of course I bought one:

First Hickory Farms of the year

Looking at the photo I realize two things, 1: It is a crappy photo, 2: It is the exact same assortment I photographed last year, right down to the not featured in this year’s photo spreader and strawberry candies.

Last week I ate it all for lunch:

On Remembrance Day I went to Bellingham and checked out the Hickory Farms kiosk that is temporarily in Bellis Fair mall. Of course I had to buy something, so I got this:

Second Hickory Farms assortment of the year

I haven’t eaten this one yet, but I can’t wait to use the mini cleaver when I do! If you will notice I also have a new tablecloth featured in the background. It was one of my many purchases from Target’s holiday selection. The rest I’m saving for a future post.

Christmas Crunch Update:
No sightings yet this year. I’ll be checking again soon. If I find any this year I will be buying fewer than three boxes this time. I didn’t even finish one box last year.

Yesterday I went to the US, and during this trip I had lunch, and during this lunch I ate a McRib.

If you haven’t heard of the McRib, where have you been? I mean it’s even been parodied in a Simpsons episode.

So I ordered one:

McRib box

And then I ate it. I liked the pickles on it, a nice contrast to the flavor of the barbeque sauce. The meat tastes extremely processed, which I’m sure it is, but it doesn’t even taste like meat. The bun was ok though.

McRib

Go get one if you want to be able to say you had a McRib like I did, or if you just like heavily processed food stuffs.

Behind the Bell by Dustin Diamond

So this is my first post about a book (I think). And the book I choose to write about today is “Behind the Bell”, the tell-all memoir from his time on Saved by the Bell by Dustin “Screech” Diamond.

If you are of a certain age, you probably remember Saved by the Bell. The saturday morning live action series that was then syndicated to death in after-school time slots. You may even remember the short-lived Saved by the Bell: The College Years. I have fond memories of Saved by the Bell and my perverse curiosity drew me to Dustin’s book.

The book is all over the place, jumping forwards and backwards in time while telling the story of what was happening behind the scenes on the Bell. Mostly it’s entertaining and lightweight reading. Dustin gets a little confused about dates, which leads me to believe the book never had a thorough fact checking read through, which causes me to question the rest of the book.

The biggest piece of Saved by the Bell dirt that Dustin dishes (other than Tiffani-Amber slept with it seems everyone but him) is that Mario Lopez allegedly raped a girl in the guest house on his parent’s home and NBC lawyers paid the girl off and kept it all quiet for a paltry $50,000 pay off.

Other than that he mostly complains about the gay innuendo between Screech and Belding that was written into scripts of Saved by the Bell: The New Class.

If you liked Saved by the Bell and see this book in a bargain bin, buy it. Just do not pay full price for this, it’s not worth it (trust me).

I think the title of this post explains it all. I am about to write about Donald Duck orange juice and sea monkeys.

First, Donald Duck Orange Juice:

Donald Duck Orange Juice (No Pulp)

I found this at the grocery store in Blaine, WA near where I get my mail. I’m not a huge OJ drinker, but I mean come on, it’s Donald Duck. It’s not immediately apparent to me the connection between Donald and OJ, but I don’t think it really matters. FYI, it was available in two versions, the regular no pulp seen here and a no pulp with extra calcium. Apparently Donald doesn’t like pulp, but that’s ok because neither do I.

And Sea Monkeys:

Sea Monkeys (No Longer on Mars)

You may remember (or probably not) that I had try to start a sea monkey family before. Actually I tried twice. And failed. Twice. Each time I ended up with only one sea monkey left alive after a week or so. This time looks to be much more successful. Instead of ordering the sea monkey stuff from Amazon I bought them from Walmart, and I gave up on making my sea monkeys live on Mars. It’s only been a week and a half since they hatched, but it looks way more promising then the last times since there are way more than just one sea monkey alive at this point. It’s hard to see in the picture but there are dozens of them in there. And yes, I’ve named most of them. And no, I can’t tell them apart so I might be calling some of them the wrong names.