Meet Me in Kansas City

There's times when you just need to be home, or some place as close to it as possible. I was feeling a little family sick last week and craved time with people we loved. Jonathan was driving back from Colorado so it was the perfect opportunity to meet each other in Kansas City and spend the weekend home with his family and our friends. 

Friday night we had dinner with Phil and Rachel at The Foundry in Kansas City's Westport area. The restaurant's main gig is an endless assortment of craft beers, so its specialty was a little lost on this non-beer drinking gal. Lucky for me, I could still enjoy its food. We have an unspoken duty to try soft pretzels wherever we eat, so that was a must eat as an appetizer. It didn't make the list of our top favs, as Jonathan pointed it out it might very well have been frozen at some point in its life (if you're curious, our current pretzels to beat are those from Flat Branch in Columbia and Dressel's Pub in the Central West End here in St. Louis. We accept any and all challengers). I had fish tacos as my entree—this recent Houstonian is missing her TexMex...bad! The tacos hit the spot for me with delicious fried fish and fresh pico. 

Abby joined us after dinner and we all played a new-to-us game called Six Word Memoir. The premise of this game was to write six word clues for each of six words on your individual card. Your teammates would then guess the people, places or things you described. Clue highlights included: "Don't bounce this democracy, eastern Europe" (Czech Republic) & "City in Africa not sure where" (Zimbabwe). Lesson learned from this game is that we could all use a refresher course on world geography. 

 

Philip and Rachel's adorable pup, Eudora

Saturday we grabbed lunch with Abby and Cameron at a fun and trendy burger restaurant called BRGR. We felt the need to sample every single one of their fry options (except onion rings). Abby and I then wisely split our entrees: Waldorf salad for me, chicken burger for her. Oh, and to top it all off, a chocolate shake. (Why do weekends fool me into thinking I can eat anything, and should eat anything, in sight?)

We then shopped around at an outlet mall and met Jonathan's parents at a new casino just to check it out and try our hand at Lady Luck. With $20 in hand, I had my first gambling experience. I wisely stuck to the $0.10-$1 slots so that I couldn't do too much damage in any given turn. I quickly got down to $5 only to climb back to $21.65 at a dime slot and then decide to pull the plug and end on a good note. Jonathan made $49 in one turn! So not too bad for us Klamms.

Dinner was at Cascone's where we over-ate (running theme?) yet again on some toasted ravioli, fried calamari, stuffed mushrooms, bread, caesar salad... and then an entree. The oversized sampler entrees ended up serving as our dinners the following night too (win-win!).

We caravanned back home Sunday afternoon, just in time to eat leftovers for dinner and settle in for Downton Abbey. It was a short but refreshing weekend full of food, laughter and catching up with people we love.