Alright, here’s the deal. We had this post all planned out and ready to go last week for a Food Face-Off Friday. On Friday morning we went to log in to our blog and saw this craptastic beauty:

Sad Trombone. That was the second time last week that happened to us. We apologize for those who checked our blog on Friday and were met with the same disappointment that we had. Hopefully we have all the techie issues worked out.

Now, we know it is technically not Friday, but we are still having a Face-Off, dang it! In case you hadn’t heard, Thanksgiving is this Thursday so we are holding a Thanksgiving Face-Off. Everyone has an opinion on Thanksgiving food, so let’s find out which opinions are the most popular. Cast your votes below and see how others voted too!

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It has returned! We’ve finally found something Face-off worthy to share with you this week.

So, Halloween is over. We’ve had our first snow. There are Christmas decorations in the store.  It’s official….we’ve entered the holiday season! What better way to welcome it in than with a Starbucks Peppermint Mocha?! By the way, love their red cups! It’s like drinking from a Christmas Card!! The only problem is that this baby is a whopper! Literally,a regular grande peppermint mocha has the exact same number of calories as a Whopper Jr.! Disturbing! Thankfully, Starbucks rolled out their new Skinny Peppermint Mocha this year so we can celebrate responsibly. Here’s how they stack up….

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Alright, so it’s not technically not a Food Face-Off today…just more of a “face-off.”

The big in-state rivalry is tomorrow! For those who are not from Iowa, it is the Iowa vs. Iowa State Football game. Since our state does not have a professional football team, most people tend to cheer for one of those two schools. Of course there are a few Northern Iowa Panther fans (where we both attended college, met and fell in love!), and those who just don’t care at all. But for the most part, in this great state it is either the Iowa Hawkeyes or the ISU Cyclones.

If you want to know who we root for, check out this short audio clip from a local sports radio show, Murph and Andy.

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Happy Friday! Waking up in the morning knowing that it’s Friday is such a great feeling! Do you think that Friday’s are better as an adult or as a kid? We think they were better as a kid. As an adult it usually just means the end of the work week. But as kid it meant pizza for lunch, TGIF, maybe a high school football game, or spending the night at a friend’s house. So many great memories!

This weekend is more than just “the end of the work week” for us though. Tonight, Dave has his 10-year high school reunion. On Saturday, we are going to The Sweet Corn Festival in Adel. If you live in Central Iowa and have not been to the Sweet Corn Festival, you should really try to make it out. There is a parade (which Dave will be in ), lots of activities for kids, entertainment, and oh yeah…7 TONS OF FREE SWEET CORN!!! After that we are headed out to a friend’s/co-worker’s house for a “Meat-a-Palooza.” Basically, we all bring some drinks, a side dish and whatever meat we want to have grilled. It will be a grand ol’ time!

Speaking of grilling, we are going to do something a little different for our Food Face-Off Friday today. If you are new to 1 cup Awesome, on Fridays we typically compare the cost, nutrition, and taste of two similar foods and then tell you which one we like better. Click here to view past Food Face-Offs.

Today we are going to compare grills, and we are going to tell you right away that the winner is the Char-Broil Infrared Grill:

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In just a couple weeks, the Iowa State Fair will begin. If you aren’t from Iowa, you may not know just how big of a deal this is. It has often been said that the Iowa State Fair is the best state fair in the nation. There was even a broadway musical written about it! We have a very strategic plan when it comes to buying food at the fair, which we will be sure to share with you once the fair rolls around. One of our favorite things to buy at the fair is lemonade that is sweetened with honey. For you Iowans planning on going to the fair, you can get it at the Honey Producers stand on the top floor of the Ag building (right above the butter cow!). It is less expensive than other lemonade of the fair and the honey gives it a flavor that is like no other lemonade you have ever tried!

But for the other 103 days of summer vacation, we don’t have the luxury of buying that lemonade. Finding the perfect lemonade to drink at home can be challenging…which is why we put lemonade to the test in a Food-Face Off! We decided to go with Simply Lemonade, which we feel is the standard for store-bought lemonade. There were a couple other brands that we wanted to try (Newman’s Own and Anderson Erickson), but ultimately decided to go with Tropicana Trop 50 Lemonade. It was close in price and they designed their container to look just like Simply Lemonade, so we figured it may be similar in taste. Here are the results:

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Summer is starting to wind down, but there is still plenty of time to grill some great good. There is just nothing like grilling your favorite cut of meat and then slathering on some tasty barbecue sauce. The only problem is that there are 47 million kinds of barbecue sauce to choose from. We both grew up eating Cookies Bar “B” “Q” sauce, which is made right here in Iowa. This brand may not be well known outside of the Midwest, but it’s great! Another brand that we often buy is Sweet Baby Ray’s. For this Face-Off, we decided to do something different and throw in a third option! It’s important to note that these are all tomato based barbecue sauces, which is generally the preference in the midwest. Some regions of the country prefer vinegar or mustard based sauces, but we decided to just stick with what we know best!

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It’s super hot out there folks!! And for some reason our family has been plagued with the meanest of colds this past week – smack dab in the middle of summer! Boo! There is one thing that could cool us off and ease our sore throats all at once…POPSICLES!!

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Finally, it’s Friday! To this day, we still wake up on Friday mornings and think, “I can’t wait to come home tonight and watch TGIF!!!”

Those were the days, weren’t they? Perfect Strangers, Full House, Family Matters, Step by Step, Dinosaurs…all great shows! I don’t think anyone would really argue that Full House was the true King of TGIF. It is possible that Dave still has a slight man-crush on Uncle Jesse. Aaaand Dave may or may not have started playing the guitar because he wanted to be like him…

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Before we get into today’s Face-Off, we wanted to clarify something with all of you, especially those of you who follow us on Twitter. Yesterday, we posted our recipe for Homemade Cracker Jacks. When we posted the link to Twitter, the URL was cut off at an unfortunate spot:

Just to clarify, we ARE NOT making homemade crack! Hahahaha! If you have come to our website because you thought we would tell you how to make crack, sorry. You are out of luck. On to the face-off…

A couple weeks ago we asked you all to help us out with some ideas for new Food Face-Off Fridays. One of the first replies was from Dave’s cousin and fellow foodie, Abbie. She suggested that we do a Face-Off with peanut butter. We eat peanut butter every single day in our house, whether for breakfast or lunch. There are so many brands of peanut butter to choose from, so we had a hard time knowing where to start.

First off, we decided to eliminate any peanut butter that contained partially hydrogenated oil. That removed almost every brand and left mostly “natural” brands. From there we decided to compare what we call “semi-natural” versus “authentic natural.” Semi-natural  peanut butter would be peanut butter that contains only natural ingredients, but may have extra things added (sugar, palm oil, etc.). Authentic natural would be peanut butter that only contains peanuts and salt. We used our  new Fooducate app to help determine that Trader Joe’s Natural peanut butter was one of the healthiest “authentic natural” peanut butters available. For the semi-natural, we went with Skippy. We know that Jiff and some other brands make a semi-natural peanut butter also, but Skippy is what we know and love so we stuck with it.

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Last week we asked you all to help us out with some ideas for future Food Face-Off Fridays. You came through and provided us with lots of great ideas! That was the easy part! The hard part is doing the research to figure out which two items we will compare and then who the winner will be.

For example, if we want to do a face-off for peanut butter, the task seems so daunting. We need to consider things like creamy or chunky, natural or processed, and salted or unsalted. And within all those options there are dozens of different brands to choose from. We have shied away from doing Face-Offs with items like peanut butter because there are just way too many options. We don’t have the time, money or resources to test 35 different kinds of peanut butter.

Enter the game changer…

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