So much more than peanut butter and jelly

My last few posts haven't really been about travel. Sorry  if you really missed hearing about my adventures. Here's one just for you.

I REALLY want to go back someday.

In New York, Mommy and I went to a restaurant called Peanut Butter and Company that specializes in--surprise!--peanut butter sandwiches. If you think this sounds boring, IT WAS NOT. It was very good. There were more types of peanut butter sandwiches than I could imagine. They have some normal stuff, like PB&J, and some weird stuff, like the Pregnant Lady, which has peanut butter and pickles. That is crazy. And strange.

When you order a sandwich, they bring it out to you with carrot sticks and potato chips, "Just like Mom used to do." Interesting. My mom almost never allows potato chips in the house.

They have all kinds of peanut butter, and by "kinds" I don't mean texture like crunchy and creamy. (Although those are offered.) I'm talking flavors. There is a white chocolate peanut butter, and a cinnamon raisin peanut butter, and some spicy peanut butter made with chili powder. And a lot more types. Of course, you can have just the regular, unflavored stuff, but it's more fun to try something new.

I chose a Fluffernutter sandwich made with dark chocolate peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. That was wonderful--how could anyone have something against peanut butter and marshmallow, unless they're allergic? 

Mommy decided on peanut butter BLT made with maple peanut butter. She said she was surprised at how good it was. I was surprised too!

Scrumptious. No other word for it.

They make the best peanut butter sandwiches I've ever had. If you ever go to New York, make sure you stop there for lunch.  

Jell-O!

 I LOVE making Jell-O. I don't know why, just something about the taste, and the texture, and how fun it is to cook.
It's very good with whipping cream mixed in it ("decadent", Mommy calls it).

 I've stopped using the brand name packets after Mommy said that some of the food dyes they put in the Jell-O packets are banned in Europe. Instead, I make it from scratch, using this recipe.  I couldn't put the whipping cream in it, though, because Mommy says the lemon juice might make the cream curdle.

Sliced lemon smiley face!

First, Mommy showed me how to slice the lemons in half. That part was fun. For some reason, I really like using the knife. Then I squeezed the lemons, added some sugar and water, and started boiling the juice. That was not my favorite part -- I'm not a big fan of hot things. Luckily, Mommy did most of the work with the boiling water.

Stirring the mixture

The lemon gelatin dessert took a long time to set. Kathy was very impatient. The whole evening, it was, "Taryn, will the Jell-O  be ready soon? Well? Will it?" She called it Jell-O even though it wasn't. When it finally was ready, she thought I gave her less than I gave myself. (I didn't.) But we both liked it very much. 

Mommy made her special whipped cream to go on top, and it was very, very good. It reminded me of a lemon meringue pie.

Ready to eat!

Someday when I grow up,  I want to figure out a way to powder fruit juice without using artificial flavors and colors for my gelatin dessert. Then I'll package the mix. It'll be even better than the brand name packets. (And healthier!)

The Ghostly Gangplank

The Ghostly Gangplank

In Minnesota at the Mall of America, there is a ropes/obstacle course called The Ghostly Gangplank. It goes all the way up to the top of the mall, which is so big it can fit loop-the-loop roller coasters in it! When you are on the floor looking up at it, the people on the top level look like figurines.

Each level has some kind of obstacle you can walk across, like two skinny balance beams parallel to each other. Those are hard to cross because when you're thirty or forty feet in the air, you're probably thinking something like, ''Oh my gosh, if I put my foot in the wrong place I'm going to fall to my doom!'' At least that's what I was thinking. There is a bridge that looks like it's falling apart, and you have to walk on the slats. That was easy to cross because the gaps between the slats weren't very big. There is a really hard one on the sixth level--two black ropes that cross in the middle, making a narrow X. Those are hard to walk on--they are very wobbly! I couldn't even cross those.

Luckily you're strapped in so you won't fall off.

About to go up the Ghostly Gangplank!

There are six levels of obstacles that get harder as you get higher, and you can actually walk ''the plank," a small platform that gives you a view of all the rides in the Mall. At the end of the plank, you can pull on two ropes to make a clanging sound. Mommy tried that. She said it kind of scared her. "Walking on the plank, there is nothing below you until the ground," she said.

You transfer levels by walking on staircases. You could walk right up to the sixth level if you wanted to, but what fun is that? It's a lot more fun to do the obstacles. Each time you go up a level, you climb another eight feet. You're so high up on the sixth floor that when the roller coasters pass you, you can feel the breeze they make!

When you reach the top, you can go down a slide. It's a curvy tunnel slide that goes all the way to the bottom floor. You sit on a sack to go down, and when you reach the bottom, you're probably going to feel like, "Wow! I'm back on solid ground!" It's really fun.

Mostly Delicious Food In Amsterdam

I liked trying new foods in Amsterdam.

A box of the best chocolate sprinkles I ever tasted

They had chocolate sprinkles, called chocoladehagelslag. We call them "jimmies" at home. Chocoladehagelslag actually taste like chocolate. At home, jimmies are just waxy sugar sprinkles colored brown. Dutch people eat chocoladehagelslag on toast for breakfast. I liked that!

Also at breakfast, I tried yummy white cheese, whose flavor I can't describe. I call it "pepper cheese" in my head because I never found out its real name. It looks like it has bits of ground pepper in it. The Dutch eat this cheese on toast, too (although not with chocolate sprinkles!)

I enjoyed cookies called stroopwaffles. The "waffle" part is  
a thin sugar cookie made on a waffle iron. Then two waffles are squished together with a layer of caramel.  We always had some with us because they were easy to carry around and they made a good snack!

We wanted to try black licorice because we had heard it was good. When we finally found some in a grocery store, we thought, "Let's buy it!" It tasted like gummy molasses without the sugar. We were disappointed. I didn't like it that much. Neither did Kayla, Mommy, or Joy. Daddy didn't even try it! 

Delicious Dutch chocolates

On the other hand, Dutch chocolates are good--very good. In one chocolate shop, they served us our chocolates on little plates, and we sat down at a cafe table to eat them. Mommy drank an espresso with her chocolates. Joy and I had milk with ours. I had one that was flavored with green tea and lemongrass, and another that was chocolate and cinnamon. A lot of the chocolates I wanted to try had alcohol in them, though, so I couldn't eat them!  

More delicious Dutch chocolates

Lots of places sold a chocolate milk called Chocomel. That's yummy, too! It makes a good pick-me-up whenever you get tired. I had it at Keukenhof Gardens, Vondel Park, and with lunch while out and about. 

One night, we ate vlaamse frites -- Dutch for French fries -- for dinner! We had them with mayonnaise and Andalouse sauce, which is made with mayonnaise, ketchup or tomato paste, and spicy paprika. It was a good picnic dinner to eat along one of Amsterdam's many canals.

The Biggest Candy Store Ever

One of  Mommy's chocolate bar wrappers

It was Sunday, our last day in New York, but there was still time to do fun stuff. At around 1:00 p.m., Mommy and I took a bus to Dylan's Candy Bar. (If you can't guess what we were doing, we were buying candy.)

Dylan's Candy Bar is three floors tall, but the top floor is more of a cafeteria. The bottom floor was where Mommy and I did our shopping. It had a chocolate fountain, wall after wall of candy, souvenirs, T-shirts, and even dog treats. I chose jelly beans in eight flavors: coconut, raspberry, caramel corn, toasted marshmallow, strawberry cheesecake, pear, lemon-lime, and mango. They were so good! Mommy chose two Belgian dark chocolate bars.

Then I asked Mommy if I could walk around the floor for a bit. But the floor was bigger than either of us thought. Suddenly, I couldn't find her!

I asked an employee wearing bunny ears (it was Easter that day) who had helped us earlier, if she could help me find my mom. She did, and we were reunited by the wall of rainbow colored candies. We both thanked her a lot. Phew.

The wall of rainbow colored candies

10th Birthday Brunch in New York

In New York City, my mom and I woke up early to go to American Girl Place for brunch.

American Girl Place is five stories tall! What can they put in a five story doll store?

We ate brunch at 9:30. Even Kayla got a seat! We had mini cinnamon rolls for an amuse bouche (French for "appetizer"). While we were waiting for the rest of the food, Mommy discovered a basket full of discussion questions. For example: if you could choose three girls in books to be friends with, who would you choose?

Kayla, that's my Shirley Temple!

The questions entertained us until the rest of our food came--a quiche for Mommy, French toast with strawberries for me. I drank a Shirley Temple, which is a virgin cocktail with lemon lime soda and grenadine syrup. So yummy! Mommy sipped a mimosa (a grown-up drink with champagne and orange juice).

Too many choices, so little time...

When we had finished our food the waitress gave us each a BIG piece of cake, along with some vanilla ice cream in mini-flowerpots. Everyone sitting near our table, the waiters and waitresses, and Mommy sang "Happy Birthday" to me.

Mommy and I couldn't finish our cake because we were too full!  We ended up just taking it back to the apartment/hotel and eating it for lunch. With our fingers!

Happy birthday to me!