I’m starting a new series where I provide tips and suggestions for pimping out your diaper bag. And if you haven’t seen the video that started it all, here’s the How to Make Your Own Manly Diaper Bag for $20 tutorial. Here is our first tip:
My son is only 19 months old, but he loves coloring on the placemats at restaurants. Most of these establishments give us crayons (with their label on them) and I’ve been keeping them. We’ve got so many, at this rate we’ll never need to buy crayons again. Anyway, I keep a handful in my diaper bag for places that don’t give us crayons, but they keep getting crushed. So I bought a $.99 snap tight travel soap case at Wal*Mart (Sorry, Walmart * ), and that’s been working great. Free crayons, under a dollar for the case? What’s next?
Thanks to Real Simple magazine via Consumerist.com. (Who recommended a soap case for keeping your small digital camera safe.
As I mentioned earlier, when you’re alone with the kid, you can’t always run out and grab Buffalo wings for dinner. You need someone who will deliver. I wanted to determine who had the best wings and delivers… the only way to find out was to do a side by side blind taste test. We ordered wings from Pizza Hut (Wing Street), Papa John’s, Dominos, and a local place called Armands’. I invited a handful of friends over and ordered Hot and Medium wings from each place. We placed each delivery on a plate with a table tent. See below to read our findings, and you’ll be as surprised as we were.
I think the Onion gets right to the issue here. Will someone think of the children? Our nation’s girls will be obsessed with an impossible body image of a skinny waist and a huge head.
When you have a baby and the two of you are on your own, your dinner options are limited to begin with –and every now and then you need buffalo wings. It doesn’t help that my wife isn’t a big wing fanatic to begin with, so most of the opportunities to have wings are when I am flying solo. (That was a terrible wing pun) As you know, it’s tough packing the little one in the car to go get food, and then come right back home (much less feeding and tending to a baby when you’re up to your elbows in that sweet, sweet BBQ sauce).
Two of my favorite wing places are Wing Stop and B-dubs, and they don’t deliver. (and don’t get me started about how the DC area is in sore need of their own B-Dubs)
So I started exploring these places that deliver wings. I know what you’re thinking, but there is good news and bad news.
I’ve had some success and some failure, but now I’m on a real mission. Here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to invite some guys over and order wings from a few places and get a consensus to see who delivers the best. Some may be local, so I’d love to hear from you, which are the best in your neck of the woods (and who to avoid)
This isn’t part of my official trials but here are two findings so far: Armands Chicago Style Pizzeria (with locations in DC-MD-VA and one in DE) has great deep-dish style pizza, but their wings are the best I’ve had delivered so far. The trick is that they arrive hot. Really hot. The first time I ordered their wings, I had to wait a minute or two to dig in. This is not the experience with other places. The wings are also huge… they don’t skimp ya. I’ve ordered their wings a few times now, and other guests of mine have said they were top notch as well.
Wing Street (a division of Pizza Hut) was not too good. To be fair, I ordered their boneless wings, and they were pretty crummy, I should try traditional style wings from each place to see, but these were just like chicken nuggets from McDonalds. On top of that they didn’t include any ranch or bleu cheese or anything. That’s a crime. The ordering process was difficult too… the minimum order for delivery is $10, but 10 wings is $8. (20 wings is $15, but too many wings for one guy) so I ordered some bread sticks. Those were also sub-par.
This is my second lousy experience with Wing Street… the first was when I originally tried to order from them, but because there was a Pizza Hut in closer vicinity to my house, they would not deliver to me. However that Pizza Hut didn’t have the Wing Street menu… so that’s when I went to Armands…
So anyway, let’s be scientific… I’ll order Medium and Hot wings from several locations (I might have to throw in a carry-out from Wing Stop just for control group purposes) but I’ll stick to traditional style bone wings, to be fair.
Then I’ll report on the findings.
But please chime in with your own experiences and local favorites… help another dad out there who’s looking to fulfill a wing fix when his arms are full.
Thanks to Lyzz, the Fletches, Blum and Andrew for being testers.
Links below go to dedicated reviews with more pics and video and links to buy (when available)
In this gift guide for boys ages 5-12 we cover the: Yada yada yada – the voice changing toy, perfect stocking Stuffer
Playmobil Pirates and Dinosaurs (2 separate dino articles in that link), but click here to read all of our playmobil coverage. Lazer Tag, definitely snatch this one for $40 or $50 on Black Friday (normally $80 or $90) Nerf Vulcan EBF-25… (KMart will have this $40 gun for $25 on Thanksgiving day)
Playskool’s Helmet Heroes, available as Police Officer, Fire Fighter, or Race Car Driver from Amazon
Hot Wheels Speed Racer Sky Jump look for deals on this one on Black Friday and online.
The ATC3K Helmet Action Cam, check out my videos there, but you can get this one online from Oregon Scientific
We also looked at Skeleflex which are available as two-packs at Toys R Us.
No fear, we have a couple more Gift Guides coming your way, we’ll cover toys for girls, infants and toddlers, and I’ll try and gather some super cheap/free gift ideas along the way.
The experts and pundits keep saying that it’s impossible to have a total economic collapse… but you can’t help but wonder… what if the economy did fall apart?, What would happen is suddenly the global market says “We don’t want your money” and then everybody starts thinking “this money is no good” Once the electric company or the beer store decide that money is no good, you’re pretty screwed… Read the rest of this entry »
When you have a baby and the two of you are on your own, your dinner options are limited to begin with –and every now and then you need buffalo wings. It doesn’t help that my wife isn’t a big wing fanatic to begin with, so most of the opportunities to have wings are when I am flying solo. (That was a terrible wing pun) As you know, it’s tough packing the little one in the car to go get food, and then come right back home (much less feeding and tending to a baby when you’re up to your elbows in that sweet, sweet BBQ sauce).
