Spicy Chicken Sandwich Taste Off

I love Chick-Fil-A. For a lot of reasons. First, I think there food is just really good and there are so many good things on the menu. A few years ago I had a bad experience the first time that I tried Popeye's (which is right by our house) and have never wanted to go back. A couple years ago Popeye's introduced their Spicy Chicken Sandwich and it was all the rage, but I was just not interested. Finally, some co-workers who really love Popeye's convinced me that I needed to at least try it. So Shantel and I finally got a couple of sandwiches to try. Shantel loved it! I really liked it, but was not on board with putting it in the same class as Chick-Fil-a spicy chicken. This kicked us off into a month long Spicy Chicken Sandwich taste off.  

Us with our Popeye's spicy chicken sandwich. 

When Jenna was staying with us we decided to do a full on test comparison, including fries. This was a determination: 

Best Customer Service (4 points): Chick-Fil-A. CFA won this by a mile. CFA employees are so friendly and make you feel good just for coming by. In addition, they are so fast. Even if the line is a mile long, you get through it just as fast as a short line at Popeye's. Popeye's employees sound like they don't really want to be there. 

Best Bun (3 points): Popeye's wins this with a fluffier and overall better testing bun. 

Best Value (4 points): At $3.99 Popeye's is less than the $4.29 for CFA. In addition, the bun and chicken are both bigger, so Popeye's wins for value if you just want the most food for least money. 

Best Fries (2 points): CFA wins here. Popeye's has some cajun fries that look good. But in the end they did not taste better than the CFA waffle fries which were perfectly salted. In addition, the Popeye's fries were soggy and even when we tried heating them in the oven, did not get much better. CFA waffle fries stayed warmer and crispier and longer and had the better taste. 

Mac and Cheese (1 point): Popeye's does not have Mac and Cheese, and Chick-Fil-a has delicious mac and cheese, so they win this one. 

Chicken (5 points): CFA wins this as the Popeye's chicken is a bit dry and CFA the chicken was perfectly moist. 

Spice (5 points): Shantel would call this a toss up, I would give the victory to CFA, since I'm writing the post, I'm calling it, CFA scores the points. Shantel liked the spiciness of the Popeye's best, I liked CFA better. However, CFA has spiciness in the breading and Popeye's just adds a spicy sauce to their regular chicken sandwich breast. For me, that is a deal breaker because it is not a proper spicy chicken sandwich. Even so, I prefer the spiciness of the CFA sandwich because I feel like it is slightly spicier, but then I get to dip it in the CFA sauce and that creates a perfect taste profile. 

Breading (3 points): Shantel and Jenna voted for Popeye's here for their thick breading. But I don't love the breading so thick, but we'll give it to Popeye's. 

Pickles (3 points): This one goes to Popeye's who have fancier pickles. I don't like pickle's, so I'm not swayed. 

For me, I feel good when I go to Chick-Fil-A and the taste is amazing. I liked the Popeye's sandwich, but it is not fair for any sandwich to be compared to Chick-Fil-A. 

Final Tally Overall:

Chick-Fil-a: 17

Popeye's: 13

Final Tally Sandwich only:

Chick-Fil-a: 10

Popeye's: 9

We had so much fun with the taste off! We can definitely agree that Dr. Pepper is the soda of choice to go with it. 

After the taste off we decided we really wanted to try a couple of competitors (Slim Chickens and Super Chix) to see if they could compare. 

Slim Chicken's had some good dipping sauce, but was not particularly memorable or special. Super Chix Nashville hot chicken sandwich was a little too spicy. I'd still rather take the CFA any time and Shantel would rather have a Popeye's sandwich. 

Either way, it made for some great date nights and we learned one thing for sure - we love spicy chicken. 

Sadie and Lucy

When Jenna dressed Sadie for church this week I had to go dig through my boxes of clothes to find the matching dress for Lucy to wear. (They are both size 2T so Lucy's is still too big on her) But if there is one thing I love about dressing my children - it's matching outfits! 

These girls are such sweet cousins, and even though they are small now - I have high hopes that they will be good friends to each other throughout their lives. I hope so, for them, and for me. 

#cousinsmakethebestfriends

September Homeschool

We started homeschool in August - but the Haderlies were staying with us, so we didn't start our normal homeschool routine until September. The Haderlies still joined us for most of the fun things that we did (we LOVE having them live in the same state as us again), but we were excited to do some of our back-to-school traditions and start getting into our routines. 

Lydia- Grade 3

Language Arts. Math. Science- Biology 1. Family History. Piano. World Art Appreciation. Procreate Drawing/Illustration. Spanish. Bird Study. History through Literature. 

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Austin - Kindergarten!

Language Arts. Math foundation. Process Art. TECH/STEM. Family History. Spanish. Poetry memorization. Cooking skills. Science through books and activities.

We moved the homeschool room out of the guest bedroom and into the sewing room off of the laundry room. We got a few fun school supplies/new clothes/reading pillows and set them out for our "First day" of school. The kids were thrilled and it was a great start to our "official" school year. 

We finished our zoo unit with animal cookies...

...and a trip to the zoo with our neighbors the Wards. It's the Ward's first year of homeschooling and we are thrilled to have the joining our neighborhood homeschool community. With Covid, we now have several families right on our street that are homeschooling and it's going to be an AWESOME year! 

We went to a meetup with another homeschool coop group to see if it would be a good fit for us. Our very best homeschooling friends, the Middletons, are heading up this new coop and I wanted SO badly for it to be a good fit for us. But after the meetup I felt the strongest impression telling me "Not for you, not this year." I'm so grateful for the partnership of the Lord in helping our homeschool stay focused on the things that are the most important and in guiding my decisions and purposes. 

However it was a lovely day of sunshine and playing in the dirt. (And we made the Middletons promise to still hang out with us as much as they can possibly stand it.) 

One story that I want to remember is that there was a large group of kids that were throwing rocks at the ducks. Lydia tried to tell them to stop but they wouldn't listen. So Lydia and Austin left the group and walked all the way around the lake. I was keeping track of their progress and when I saw Lydia come back and get Caleb to join them I was so grateful for such good kids. The three of them sat on this little dirt bench area right by the lake for a really long time. They were talking and soaking in the nature around them and I realized that as long as they have each other, they're going to be a-ok. (I originally was like "Why are they leaving? We are here to socialize." But when I realized it's because they were choosing to leave a bad situation and standing up for themselves I couldn't have been more proud.) 

-The Haderlies came down again and we built Home Depot wooden craft kits. 

-When you're a homeschooler, your library haul looks like this. 

(Both of these pictures are from the same haul.) 

And speaking of books, our FAVORITE used book sale was this last month. You get a bag for $10 and you can fill it as full as you can get it. I let Lydia have her very own bag and then I got a bag to split between books for me and books I was grabbing for Jenna. It was the best thing in Lydias life to be able to fill an entire bag of books just for her. We got between 100-200 books in total and it was THE BEST. I was so proud of Lydia because of the types of books she was choosing. We love books around these parts. 

The books below are the only photo I have of two separate planning meetings that I've had with the gold-medal Ali Middleton. We've been doing some homeschool planning together and it's been the best. One day she came to my house and we just talked about things, the second time we went to her house and let the kids play and planned out all our memory work for the rest of the year. Someday I'd love to go on a girls weekend with her and plan out our years together. It's a homeschool dream. 

Another Haderlie adventure: The Salmon run at Strawberry Reservoir. The river was full of salmon and it was so cool! I didn't realize the salmon migrated here in Utah. We watched the salmon then ate a snack while we read some books about Salmon. A homeschool field trip for the books.