Craving Mac-N-Cheese

This was supposed to be a story about twinOak, a local restaurant where I had Mac and Cheese for lunch today, but somehow, I feel the need to share with you my adventures getting to twinOak rather than how tasty lunch was.

You see, I could walk to twinOak from my apartment in about ten minutes, but it took me almost an hour to get there.  The real story starts yesterday when I went for a drive, attempting vainly to locate a pet store that carried my preferred brand of kitty litter.  However, I neglected to actually write down the addresses for any of the pet stores that I had googled and ended up driving around in circles in the rain. 

Somehow, I ended up on Delmar Blvd, which I took all the way from Big Bend to KingsHighway Blvd.  This takes you from a very trendy University district (locally known as the Delmar Loop) through some very rough neighborhoods (where I locked my doors).  It was while passing through the Loop area that I noticed a fun sounding restaurant: Cheese-ology Macaroni and Cheese.  Not being particularly hungry, and not feeling like finding a parking spot and walking in the rain, I made a mental note to come back. 

I never did find any of the pet stores that I was trying to locate, but I did come home and curl up with my cat and enjoy a good book. 

Fast forward to today:

Feeling like I had been particularly lazy this weekend (I spent a lot of time curled up with Holley and enjoying books), I decided that I would go out and run a couple of errands and maybe try out that cheese place.

So, I hop in my car and head north, this time on Skinker.  I get to Delmar and discover that there is a hold up at the intersection.  There’s a traffic guy waving traffic through, and suddenly, with the first jogger, I realize that it is the St. Louis Marathon.  The thought briefly crossed my mind again that maybe I should consider trying to run a 5K this summer, but I quickly squashed it.  I also killed my thoughts of trying to go to the Mac-and-Cheese place for lunch.  Traffic on Delmar was going to be a snarl for hours.

Not sure where to go from there, but certain I don’t want Arby’s or McDonald’s, I crossed Delmar and headed west on Olive, and proceed to drive in circles looking for someplace to eat.   I made it up to the airport and back before I remembered a place that is just a few blocks from my apartment that I’ve been thinking about trying.  I really wasn’t sure if it was pizza or steak or burgers, but since their claim to fame is “wood fired fare”, I figured it would be something up my alley…

And so, I had a very nice lunch at twinOak.  Unable to even get past the appetizer menu to the real food (next time, I’m trying one of the pizzas), I had their Wood Fired Dough for Dipping, Mac-N-Cheese, and an order of Chicken Wings.  The Dough for Dipping was the best part- it was liberally sprinkled with seasonings and sea salt and came with a dipping sauce that consisted of olive oil with sautéed red peppers and crushed garlic.  Next time, I might just get that and skip to dessert – but if I do that, I might have to decide to run a 5K after all….

twinOak: www.twinoakstl.com

Dogs, cats, and ... sheep?

Last week, while Thumper and I were out running around, I discovered that not only is Manchester Road the most pleasant route out of St. Louis if you are traveling west, it is home to a plethora of interesting places to shop.  In addition to the very nice shopping mall at the intersection with I-270, there is a Best Buy, Kohl’s, DSW, and Hobby Lobby.    While I did stop in at some of those places yesterday, what I really had fun exploring were the unique local shops that give Manchester Road character.

The Cat’s Meow is a little shop that is filled with all sorts of wonderfully frivolous stuff, from flip-flops that allow you to change out the decoration on the strap to elephant shaped piggy banks for your favorite safari loving niece or nephew.  What the Cat’s Meow really specializes in is personalization; they offer embroidery, engraving, and screenprinting services.  There are examples of their handiwork all over the store.  On the more practical gift giving side, they have very nice selections of items for weddings, new babies, and young children.  My favorite really was the elephant shaped piggy bank.

Continuing with the animal theme, I accidently stumbled on a pet bling store named Treats Unleashed.  In addition to a variety of organic foods and expensive toys, Treats Unleashed sells fresh store-baked dog biscuits.  If I had a dog to spoil, I would be one of their most regular customers- even if it is a bit longer of a drive than I would normally make for regular errands.  The biscuits looked and smelled delicious.  The only reason I knew they weren’t people cookies is that they were being sold in a pet supply store. 

My next stop, and by far the best for my personal interest, was a yarn store called the Kirkwood Knittery.  As yarn shops go, it is one of the smaller that I have been in, but it packs a powerful punch, and I subsequently added another fifty bucks to the local economy.  The selection of yarns is diverse, but there weren’t any yarns that I couldn’t imagine using because the texture was wrong or the colors were bad.  Just the opposite, I was imagining how fun some of them would be to play with.  The gal running the shop was very friendly and helpful.  She left me alone to browse when I came in and helped me to figure out if a yarn that I had picked up was a good substitute for one used in a scarf in the shop.   Apparently, one of the owners is a very active designer, and many of the patterns for display items are free with purchase of yarn- so I even got a new pattern out of the deal.

 

After a hard day of shopping, I sat down and worked a few rows on my new scarf.  I guess that this means that I am now settled into my new home, as I have one knitting project sitting unfinished in my yarn bag while my next one is already in progress.  The knitting shop has a weekly get together for knitters; perhaps I should take my project bag and join them until the new class schedule comes out…

The Cat's Meow:  http://www.catsmeowpersonalized.com/

Treats Unleashed:  http://www.treats-unleashed.com/

The Kirkwood Knittery:  http://www.kirkwoodknittery.com

Road Trip! Highway 19

                Saturday, all of my boxes were unpacked, the sun was out, and my motorcycle, Thumper, was feeling abandoned in the parking garage.  So, I put on my gear, put some air in Thumper’s tires, and took off into the unknown wilds of Missouri’s country roads.  For my first trek, I picked a triangle of roads: I-64 to Route 19 to I-44 and back home.  Highway 19 was the road I looked forward to.  On the map, it promised to be a quiet country road, with easy riding and, hopefully, pretty scenery.  In my experience of Missouri, as long as you are off the Interstates, pretty scenery is generally guaranteed.

                Coming off of I-64, Highway 19 was everything I hoped for.  The redbuds were still in bloom, but green leaves were quickly replacing the pink flowers.  The dogwoods stole the show.  It was as if there were snow covered trees dotted throughout the woods.

                At one point about fifteen minutes south of I-64, I saw this enormous house next to a barn.  I distinctly remember thinking to myself- “Wow! That is an enormous farm house – it is big enough for a country club.”  I then noticed a dozen golf carts out behind the house, and the large sign for the Loutre Shore Country Club.  I guess that explained that.

                A few miles later, I crossed the Missouri River into the town of Hermann.  One day when I’m not on my bike, with a helmet and gear to lug around, I’m going to spend a few hours wandering around Hermann.  It's an old river town that transformed itself into a historic district.  There is a beautiful river front with a boat ramp and easy access to the water.  In town, a variety of stores beckon including antique shops and a guy who builds tire swings. These swings aren’t just tires on a rope, they are hobby horses gone wild.  When I get a tree to hang one in, I can see one in my own personal backyard playground.

                Leaving behind the beautiful brick buildings of Hermann, I headed toward Cuba.  No, I’m not hoping to foment a democratic revolution in a small Caribbean nation; there really is a town in Missouri called Cuba.  I haven’t driven around it yet to figure out if it has an unusually large population of polydactyl cats.

                Until this ride, I hadn’t really realized that Missouri had working vineyards.  However between Hermann and Cuba, there is a vineyard around almost every curve.  It is like corn fields in Kansas- well, perhaps not that prevalent.  I think that there are four wineries in the area; at least of one of which prominently offers tours of its “cool cellars” knowing that in the summer time air conditioning is a big draw for any attraction.

The ride down Highway 19 was a beautiful, easy trip, which whether done on two wheels or four offers beautiful scenery and a lovely side trip through the charming town of Hermann.

www.hermannmissouri.com

Breakfast in a Greenhouse

Following the advice of one of my Alaskan friends, when I wanted to find a new place for breakfast this last weekend, I Googled “Best Breakfast in St. Louis”.  I located a listing for a restaurant that was located (I thought) about a ten minute drive from my apartment.  It’s description immediately brought to mind The Middle Way Cafe in Anchorage through use of key words such as “organic” and “locally grown”.  Nostalgic for a bit of home, my Mom and I headed over to the Cafe Osage.

Now, recall that I have been a resident of St. Louis for all of four days at this point.  My ten minute drive turned into more of a twenty minute adventure with an unanticipated trip on to I-64, a missed turn at Lindell (which really wasn’t a missed turn) and a quick stop to consult my IPhone’s map to figure out just where in tarnation I was. 

After driving along a section of Delmar that is best described as a rougher neighborhood, we were delighted to discover the cafe was in a beautiful old building in a neighborhood that is slowly being reinvigorated.  Having personally expected a place with the bustling energy and modern hippie feeling of Middle Way, I was thrilled to find a cafe that had a refined but delightfully unique personality.

The Cafe Osage is a small restaurant attached to the Bowood Farms greenhouse.   The entrance is actually located inside the greenhouse, and there is seating inside the restaurant, inside the greenhouse, and outside in a courtyard.  The building has large windows that let in a lot of natural light and fabulous transom windows between the restaurant and greenhouse.  It is a white napkin, full service restaurant, and most of the patrons seemed to be there for breakfast dates with friends. 

While you can certainly get two eggs over easy, with bacon and toast, who would want to when there are interesting sounding variations on classics such as cheddar chive biscuits with gravy made from creamed chicken, mushrooms, and leeks.  Mom and I are both suckers for chocolate, and when we discovered that the whole grain pancakes were served with raspberry compote with white chocolate sauce, we were sold.  The pancakes were as delicious as anticipated, and Mom and I contemplated the probability of finishing off the generous servings.  In the end, we succumbed to the sweet raspberry compote and cleaned our plates.

At the end of the meal, the check was presented to us inside an old library book enigmatically titled Drink and Be Sober.  This unique touch sealed Cafe Osage as one of my favorite new places in St. Louis.  

www.bowoodfarms.com

A Jewel in Forest Park

In between the craziness of finding and securing an apartment, trying to buy a car, and working to restrain both myself and my mom from completely furnishing the apartment in one weekend’s worth of shopping trip (chairs really don’t fit into the tiny trunk of a Miata, no matter how good at three dimensional puzzles you might be…), Mom and I found a little time to play tourist.  On our first trip, we had seen a delightful glass building while driving through Forest Park.  This turned out to be the Jewel Box, a gigantic greenhouse built in 1936. 

To get to the Jewel Box, you walk up a lovely garden path with a sundial and large fountains.  We were a little early in the season to see the fountains running, but with the rain, we were treated to a large number of worms squirming along the pavement.  Well, perhaps treated is the wrong word.

Once inside, it is like walking through a tropical garden, with enormous treelike ferns, beautiful pink and red lilies, and other flora.  You almost forget that you are inside a greenhouse until you realize that many of the plants are hanging from massive baskets suspended from the rafters. 

There is a small balcony at one end which brings you close to the tops of the plants.  From here, you can look up and appreciate the beauty of the structure of the greenhouse.  The sun came out while we were on the balcony, making the view through the windows nearly as memorable as the view over the railing.

My advice: one day in spring when you have an hour to kill, take your camera, or maybe your book, and relax while enjoying the garden.  Sure you can walk through and see it in three minutes, but why do that when you can take a leisurely stroll through a lovely glasshouse?

Looking For Beauty

Anchorage is a city built of utility.  It is here because of mining and the military, and in the last thirty years, oil money has certainly helped it grow.  But the Pacific Northwest does not lend itself to the warmth of brick buildings and limestone facades.  The saving grace for the beauty of public works in Alaska has long been its commitment to funding public artwork alongside the building of roads, bridges, and trails, creating surprising little nuggets of creativity throughout the state.

Having enjoyed the beauty of Raven trailing a curtain of auroras at the intersection of Tudor and Lake Otis, the cleverness of A Street being turned into a giant stream for fishing, and oddity of the mountains on the Glenn Highway overpass at Bragaw, I was delighted to discover sculpture scattered around the communities in St. Louis.

Everywhere as we drove around, we saw different pieces of artwork to admire.  From the alternate takes on the Totem Pole off of Delmar Blvd to the ballerinas on Carondolet Plaza, we kept finding interesting, beautiful, odd, poignant pieces of art to admire.  The man on a horse sculpture at the intersection of Wydown and Hanley became one of our landmarks as we drove in circles and rectangles around Clayton, Brentwood and other communities.

My Mom and I made a special trip to the Brown Shoe Company just to see a shoe sculpture that I had found online.  When I found it, it was just an oddity – a picture that came up when I searched Google Images for St. Louis that wasn’t of the arch.  The shoe was worth the side trip – it is a giant woman’s dress shoe made out of thousands of the same shoe- only in size 10.  From the pictures, I was expecting it to be a dull grey, but up close in the light, it sparkled just like the glittery shoes that I had picked up for dinner with the hiring manager the evening before my interview.  Ironically, even the shape of the shoe was similar to what I had chosen.

Come a nice day this spring, once I am settled into my new home, I am looking forward to driving around St. Louis just to check out the sculptures.  I want to see the ballerinas when the water is running, find the dancing chairs, and look for Awakening Spring.  What better way to explore my new hometown than to get lost looking for beauty?

Links to information about public art in St. Louis:

http://www.art-stl.com/public-art/public-art.cfm

http://www.claytonhistorysociety.org/public_art.html

Where To Call Home?

For the next couple of weeks, I just get to daydream about St. Louis.  I’m reading different bucket lists of things to do, places to go, and where to eat.  This simply whets my appetite for my new hometown.  But the biggest question on my mind these days is “Where am I going to live?”

The neighborhoods have more flavors than Baskin Robbins, and housing prices stretch from the jaw droppingly low to the eye poppingly high.  Knowing that I would like to live within 20 minutes of Forest Park narrows the field a bit...  University City, Richmond Heights, Brentwood, Maplewood, Clayton, Ladue, Webster Groves; these are all names of communities that I am becoming familiar with – at least in the online space. 

A quick search on Zillow reveals this lovely donut of affordability that centers around Clayton and Ladue.  I guess that the old adage of “location, location, location” is alive and well.  And I must admit that the properties in Clayton and Ladue are beautiful – large old brownstones with great landscaping, newer homes with enormous yards, lovely parks nearby, and I’m sure great schools.

Then you have University City, with charming old houses in intimate streets.  With the universities nearby, you have a youthful culture running through the neighborhoods.  Or take a look at Richmond Heights, with its quiet neighborhoods with funny garages that seem to be part of the basement rather than an addition to the house.  I’m not sure, but those driveways seem an awkward way to start my weekend rides…

Once you get familiar with the names of the cities, you suddenly discover that there are these community lines that cross cities, or take up small neighborhoods within a city.  Again each has its own character and personality.  My favorite (by name) is Dog Town.  It seems to be most well known for its St. Patty’s day parade and Imo’s pizza.  It is also nearby the Turtle Playground.  The homes in this area seem to be smaller, closer together, and not built with the idea of cars in mind. 

Still though, I haven’t even figured out the key questions for what kind of home I want.  An apartment with a pool?  A condo close to my office?  A brownstone with a lot of character, but perhaps limited parking?  All of these questions feed into where I find a place to live.  In the end though, however much I may daydream, until I am on the ground, there is no telling where I will end up setting up a cat tree, rocking chair and reading lamp.