Her corkscrew curls rakishly swept off her forehead with a flowered hairclip, Madilyn Elizabeth Garrelts leaned across the bar at Bluestem, twirling a cell phone, jibber-jabbering to anyone who’d listen.
Eddie Crane makes shaking a cocktail look easy. Working behind the bar at the Drop in midtown, Crane deftly fills a glass tumbler, caps it with the metal half of his Boston shaker and hoists it aloft in an easy rhythm that creates effervescent and thoroughly cold results.
A half-hour west of Hannibal, the rivers haven’t devastated the landscape as they have done in Hannibal and so many of the other river towns along the Mississippi. In nooks and crannies of the oak forests of the Edward Anderson Conservation Area, Missouri Department of Conservation foresters draw red “X”s on the trees they deem to be “past their economic viability.”
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Wielding a frighteningly long knife, the waiter pointed toward the skewer of lombo — brined and seasoned pork loin in a rosemary and Parmesan crust — and asked politely, “Would you like some?”
Shielded from the elements by our café table umbrella, a co-worker and I were doing lunch on the Grand Boulevard sidewalk.
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Eddie Crane makes shaking a cocktail look easy. Working behind the bar at the Drop in midtown, Crane deftly fills a glass tumbler, caps it with the metal half of his Boston shaker and hoists it aloft in an easy rhythm that creates effervescent and thoroughly cold results.
I come from a long line of canners, preservers and putter-uppers. But those who are new to the art would do well to pick up a copy of Putting Up: A Year-Round Guide to Canning in the Southern Tradition (Gibbs Smith, $19.99) by Steve Dowdney.
At just 22, Joe West had already assembled an impressive culinary resume. He’s a Shawnee Mission Broadmoor Technical Center culinary scholarship winner and a 2007 graduate of Johnson and Wales University in Denver. He’s also worked alongside some of Kansas City’s top chefs, including Colby and Megan Garrelts of Bluestem and Debbie Gold and Michael Smith when they owned 40 Sardines.
One bite of the Imperial Roll and I was hooked. The waiter at Café Sông had warned me that the rolls were really garlicky. I read the ingredient list: ground pork, shrimp, cellophane noodles, cat’s ear mushrooms, carrots and taro wrapped in a rice paper wrapper. I listened to the happy, splattering sound of the finger-sized rolls sizzling in oil.
Under a Caribbean-blue Kansas City sky with a few poufy clouds skittering overhead, a co-worker and I decided to take a break from the work day.
