Bristol at P&L

The Bristol is one of those restaurants you visit to get reliably good food. They are a seafood restaurant but you really don't have to get seafood there to have a good meal.

I tried the "Low Tides" 4 course menu. I guess I was just that hungry when the salad course came out because I forgot to take a picture! It was a beet and goat cheese salad and it was really delicious.

Next they served me this mushroom and spinach crepe thing. It was so amazingly good.The main course was crispy short ribs and scallops or something like that. I didn't eat the scallops but everything else there was delightful! In the end, I'm all about sauce and these dishes were very saucy!
You won't be surprised to hear that dessert was wasted on me. This sounded so interesting:
"chocolate butterscotch tart with sweet and sour cherries, sea salt, sweet balsamic syrup"

I just thought it was yucky.

But no matter, the Bristol is fine dining in Kansas City and the P&L location has great atmosphere. We sat in a booth next to a fire feeling cozy while the place buzzed around us.

I like the feeling of P&L. I don't like drinking or bars (although I do love to dance) and I don't like loud music but I like walking around P&L, moving around what feels like a dream. Maybe it feels like playing the Sims or Second Life. It's a long drive and I would always rather stay home and watch a movie curled up under a blanket but whenever there is occasion to haul my butt there I have to say that place is just the coolest.

I remember one of the first times I ever went out in Westport and made a night of it - someone's bachelorette party I guess - and that felt like something familiar. A string of bars, howdy to some strangers having a bachelor party. Any time I went out in Westport it felt like that. It felt small. You could turn to the person next to you and introduce yourself. It seemed like you would run into someone you knew.

P&L feels like you've left Kansas City. I always find myself thinking, where did they get these people? It's exciting and grand there. I looked into how we got such an amazing addition to downtown Kansas City and I see that The Cordish companies along with 360 Architecture delivered this baby.

They both won awards for its creation. They actually set a new standard of excellence in urban renewal with P&L.

In looking up how this all came to be, I solved a little mystery regarding why I was always being carded there. I'm not carded anywhere as a general rule so it was VERY annoying to me that every time I went to P&L they carded me.

But now I know that they were not carding me! You know those scanners they have there? They are collecting demographic data with those scanners! Apparently, you can ask them not to scan your ID because, well they are collecting this data without informed consent.

I'm just telling you what it says on Wikipedia. I don't know if it's true.

Either way, having studied Sociology you won't catch me balking at someone wanting to collect demographic data.

I also find it interesting that there is a dress code there. So far, it has never affected me in any way but what astounds me about the idea of a dress code is that its only purpose, as stated by its creators, is to reduce gang violence.

I don't know the state of gang violence in Kansas City so I'm not going to say that I find this in particular to be an out-of-line endeavor.

Yet, it seems to me that there should be something more transparent than a dress code including: "a ban on bandannas, work boots, ripped or baggy clothing, shorts that fall below the knees, athletic jerseys, and chains."

Because guess what you can wear! You can wear just a bra instead of a shirt and a skirt that is so short you can see underwear and then you can just not wear underwear. In fact, the dress code for the servers in many of the establishments there is just that so I'm thinking when the employees are dressed as strippers any kind of dress code comes off as bizarre.

In any case, P&L is a neat place to go, even on a freezing cold winter night. You can sit by the fire under the stars and watch people doing their thing.

Lenny's Sub Shop

I don't think a lot of people know about this place. I'm not big on sub sandwiches or any other kind of American food but I can appreciate Planet Sub about once a year and I enjoy our kosher subway from time to time.

I guess I first tried Lenny's one time when I was rushing to a movie and everywhere around that theater I would normally grab something from was closed for some reason so I thought I'd give it a try.

I remember thinking it was amazingly good but I also thought that maybe I was just hungry. It was a sandwich after all. How could a sandwich be amazingly good (to me)?

Today Matt and I went there for lunch and it was, as I remembered it, fantastic. He had a philly cheesesteak and I'd say if you really want one of those, this is your place. From time to time I go to the other Johnson county options and nothing stands out - but this place has the real deal.

I highly recommend this place if you want a fantastic sandwich. Get whatever sounds good to you and get everything on it. You will be surprised and delighted.

The funny part of my visit there today was when we were standing at the counter and I pointed to a block of meat and asked the woman what it was. She said it was ham.

I'm not sure how I did not know what ham looked like but now I do. Still not going to eat it.

Thanks Mom!

I had loosely planned out my dinners for the week on Sunday thinking one night we would have yorkshire pudding, one night we would have some potatoes, one night gnocchi and pasta, maybe one night pizza, one night roasted carrots, etc. etc. ... all the things my kids like to eat that are healthy.

My Mom is so great. I wish I were more like her. I have always wished this for as long as I can remember and luckily, at times I see that I have become more like her. But she has coping skills that I only dream of. She is the original tough cookie. She really is the rock of our whole family.

So last night she said, what can I cook for you guys? I said, well, I have good bread, salad, potatoes, carrots, chicken strips but I thought about it and said, you want to make a roast chicken?

I don't know why I said this because she ended up making a roast chicken with stuffing, yorkshire pudding, potatoes, carrots, salad... it was really good. I have lots of leftovers too.

I am adding a segment to my blog, a sub-text I'll say, called Why You Should Never Get Divorced. So whenever you see this, you can just skip it if you don't want to hear it. I could write about this topic for an hour so I'll limit myself to one topic each time.

Why You Should Never Get Divorced
Having to be away from your kids sometimes. That's the biggest "what was I thinking" that hits me week after week. Holidays are the worst. I don't care what I am doing or who I am with, being away from my kids on a holiday ruins it 100%. My kids are my life and I can't believe I was stupid enough to do anything that would make it so they are away from me sometimes.

How Do I Get There?

This year, 2010 all I can think about is how I am getting out of the USA. I want to take my two little kids somewhere, anywhere where people first and foremost don't speak English.

Japan is my first choice but I can't actually imagine finding the guts to do this on my own. Israel might be an option if one of our local Synagogues does a family trip and I can get us in on it.

Somewhere in Europe might be possible but where and with whom?

It has been almost 2 years since I have taken my children somewhere and I have a voice in my head yelling at me, "TAKE YOUR KIDS ON VACATION!"

I am desperate to hear a foreign language spoken on a regular basis. Maybe I need to pay Uverse the $25 a month again for the Japan channel. I watched that maybe once a week but it might be a good first step.

This blog should want me to take a trip to a foreign country more than anybody because I will catalog each and every meal right here and, if I make it to Japan, I'll be careful to figure out the details of my favorite recipes so I can repeat them back home.

Don't I have any friends who want to go to Japan? Come on people, anyone?

Book Club, Christopher Elbow and Japanese Breakfast

I have the best book club in the entire universe. The women in my book club are smart and interesting and beautiful and fun. I always find a way to get my ass to book club.

I'm not sure what the book is for next month or where we are meeting - I offered my house so maybe that's where - but the main thing I have to say is that last week, at book club, there was Christopher Elbow.

As if she had to put it out like this and make it look beautiful! It's Christopher Elbow!!! The chocolate that is so good it can't be eaten alone.

I don't know of many delicacies so good that I refuse to eat one by myself. I must share the flavor in order to fully enjoy it. I want to see someone else experiencing what I am.

My favorites are definitely passion fruit, banana curry and mint. Oh Christopher Elbow. You are more than a man to me. Do we have any finer culinary claim to fame in this city than Christopher Elbow?

Passion fruit. Heaven in a little chocolate.

On another note, last week I was playing with my daughter early in the morning and neither of us had eaten breakfast yet. We were playing house and pretending that our Hello Kitty Pez dispenser gave us pills that turned into whatever breakfast we wanted when put in water.

We both wanted Japanese breakfast. So, after a few minutes of playing I got up and made us Japanese breakfast.There she is eating a little tuna roll I made for her.
We both want to go to Japan this summer so badly. Anyone else heading there so I don't have to travel all that way by myself?

So Many Pictures and So Many Food Experiences

I have been taking pictures and I have lots of wonderful stories but something happened last week that has just been making me not want to write.

I wrote a note on facebook about my kids and someone didn't like it, and called me up to tell me just how much he did not.

I have been thinking about my cousin because he has a blog so inflammatory I don't even dare link to it here in case I get accused of writing it. It is totally x-rated and geared towards uncovering scandal wherever possible.

I can't imagine how he deals with the hate mail!

Why do I write a blog? The answer is writing practice. I like to share funny stories with people I know on facebook and that's one place I practice writing but a blog with a topic I enjoy thinking about all the time is a place to consistently practice my writing. That's why I do it.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of things that I think about and like to write about that are not exactly food related and I do often write about them here on my blog.

Still, it's not often that I get zinged for something I wrote and usually I don't worry about it but this time, because of who it was, it really ruffled my feathers.

I am trying to move on, so here is my post, maybe I'll get some food pictures up tomorrow. Maybe.

I have been thinking about feelings a lot lately because honestly I have been feeling quite terrible. Not because of anything either. And I know this for sure.

I am the kind of person that feels joyful when the sun shines and feels like a zombie after a few days of no sun. I hate myself and everyone else when I have PMS. When something goes right I am elated, when something goes wrong I feel as if my insides are going to shake apart. This includes my children whining at me.

My feelings are not my friends, in general. I think about it a lot and am coming to the conclusion that I need to start ignoring my feelings wholeheartedly.

The Tao says, when there is no desire all things are at peace and I for one chase peace. It is the emotion I look for and thank g-d for whenever I have it.

I have also noticed lately that I am afflicted with something called, "I-can't-believe-anyone-loves-me." This is very serious and a totally unacceptable state of existence.

I am trying to have compassion for myself so as to not make things worse but I am too irritated with me for not believing I am lovable, not loving myself, not being loving etc.

I am trying. I will never give up. Food tomorrow, I promise.

Easy Bake Oven

Although I am not feeling well, I wanted the kids to have a good dinner tonight. When my girl asked if we could make a cake in her Easy Bake oven I said of course.

It's really easy to use and I realized that this is not a girl's toy and that my nephew definitely needs one of these things... birthday coming up.

So I got out the tiny bit of cake mix and had the kids stir it and the frosting right up.

I wanted to take a picture of the final product for you but it kind of fell apart - I used cooking spray but not enough!

I have a great video for you though and I realized that my kids will make my cooking videos much funnier so next time I make one they will be teaching.

Tonight, just before bed my son said to me, "how am I ever going to be a grown up?" in a very quiet, nervous voice. He explained that he doesn't even know the months in a year.

I put my arms around him and said, "you are 7 years old. It's a long time before you will be a grown up. "

I promised him that I would always take care of him and that he didn't have to be a grown up until he was ready no matter how old he was. I also promised him that he can't imagine how much he'll learn over all the years until he is a grown up.

I really don't know how people do it with more than two to raise.