I took a swing through Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage (7401 W. 91st St.) last night - the Colorado-based grocery chain that opened in the shadow of the Overland Park Whole Foods in April. Here are the results of one man's meanderings.
3 Women and an Oven (14852 Metcalf) will have five movie-themed cupcakes - Snow White and Black Forest - as part of the promotion. The Overland Park bakery is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Another 10 cupcakes will be aboard the CoffeeCakeKC truck (see April's profile of Brian Jurgens to find out more about this rolling coffee shop). The big orange truck stop has planned stops at 9 a.m. (11th and Pennsylvania), 10 a.m. (17th and Washington), 10:30 a.m. (17th and Grand), 11:15 a.m. (17th and Walnut), and 1 p.m. (17th and McGee). Happy hunting.
Their Scarlet Queen turnip (a bunch costs $3.50) is slightly bigger than a golf ball and comes in miniature-golf-ready bright white and pink. (The varieties due in the fall, he says, pack more spice and are bigger.) Kube admits that he hated turnips while growing up on a farm in Nebraska, but he loves them now. He and Hershberger fry or sauté them in olive oil and garlic.
I have eaten more than my share of unappetizing dishes in my day - mostly crow. And dirt? Well, considering my notorious clumsiness, I've dropped God only knows how many doughnuts, hot dogs and deep-fried Twinkies on the ground over the years and still eaten them. And to paraphase Stephen Sondheim: I'm still here.
I don't believe I've ever seen dirt listed as a menu ingredient before I dined at chef-owner Martin Heuser's German bistro, Affare, last night. The small-plate menu includes a salad with an array of fresh greens, asparagus stalks, paper-thin radish slices, flower petals and edible soil. Did I read that correctly?
Yes, according to our server, Josh (formerly of the Brookside Avenues Bistro, like about half of the servers here), who explained that edible soil is not a dirty little secret but a concoction of portobello mushrooms, cocoa, almond oil and chopped almonds. It looks like high-grade mulch and tastes kind of chewy, a little nutty. I wouldn't want to make, you know, a meal of it.
The fresh flowers dotting the picnic tables in front of his restaurant and the bright-yellow awning adorning the façade are among the visible updates to the gritty neighborhood that once held Kansas City's stockyards.
Clothier also is adding a few shades of pork to the old cattle grounds. His nine-month-old Franks (1623 Genessee) sells hot dogs - pork-and-beef hot dogs.
"We all remember that perfect hot dog from our youth," he says. But turning that idyllic childhood meal into the simplest lunch an adult can get in this part of the city requires some sophisticated butchery. For Clothier, 67, that means a pork-and-beef mixture tailored to each hot dog, footlong wiener and "über dög" (a 10-inch bat that weighs 6 ounces) on the menu. "There's a lot going on in that simple $2 hot dog," he says. Enough that Franks could have fed the hungriest industrial workers of another era.
First it was a partnership with the Magical Meatball Tour this January, which led to a mix of meatball appetizers and sandwiches. And now, Good You, has designed a more extensive lunch, happy-hour and late-night menu for the Crossroads bar.
"A man called this afternoon and said he'd like to come by and build a garden for us," my wife told me two weeks ago.
"What? How did he know we wanted to build a garden? How did he get our name?" I asked, immediately on guard.
"He just plucked it out of the phone book," she said. "But I trust him."
And so last Thursday, just before 9 a.m., a red pickup with a slurry of dirt and water in the bed and a paper bag of seed packets in the passenger seat pulled into my driveway. A man with a sunburned neck and close-cropped, beginning-to-gray curls came to my door and asked if he could look at my lawn.
Milk & Honey has the best I've had in KC. http://milkandhoneykc.com/
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