How Do You Measure a Visit?

One of our nearest and dearest paid us a visit this weekend. As Abby herself said, the cool thing about her visiting us is that she's one of both of our good friends (but I kind of like to hog her to myself ;).

We kicked off the weekend on Friday night with dinner at Pi. We were blessed with an unusually warm Friday (70 degrees, people!) and enjoyed wonderful food and drinks sitting al fresco.

When I started thinking about the rest of our weekend, the number two seemed to come up a lot, so I'll let it do the talking for me:

2//new restaurants tried

brunch @ Half & Half
Fitting enough to the name, Abby and I shared half and half of our entrees (it's becoming a regular thing and I love it!). Biscuits and gravy with scrambled eggs & a Waldorf salad with chicken. A perfect brunch combination shared over great conversation among the three of us.

dinner @ Seoul Taco
The Loop is overflowing with tucked away, ethnically-diverse, local eateries, and we're just beginning to take advantage of them. This place boasts just a few menu options, but those few are just enough. I opted for a pork taco & steak taco with Kimchi fried rice (all great) and Abby and Jonathan went for the burritos (which they raved were borderline as good/better than Chipotle...whoa!)


2//goodies baked

salted caramel chocolate chip cookies - Abby's recommendation, our gluttonous delight (recipe)

soft pretzels - Yes, those same pretzels I've mentioned a million times before. Go make them already!


2//people loved re-watching Pitch Perfect

One guess as to who didn't love it as much? :)


2//games of Pandemic lost

What's there to say: we didn't cure all four diseases in time to save the world. Twice. Sorry, world. But it doesn't mean we won't try again.

Snow, dogs & football ( + food, always food)

This weekend was a great reminder that even though we're in a new city, building a new little life together, familiar comforts are close by, too. Like old friends and game nights and unplanned snow-ball fights and cute dogs and delicious food.

In the middle of game night with Jim and Sam on Saturday, a sudden dump of snow beckoned us to head outside and frolic in the snow. There were snow angels made, hill sledding, snow-man building and snow ball fights. Ah, to be young and carefree. 

Sunday was a fun-packed day, starting with the Purina Beggin Pet Parade in the historic Soulard neighborhood. My heart could barely handle the abundance of beautiful dogs.

A man rigged a bicycle for his two dobermans to ride. What can your dog do?

And then I saw the biggest rabbit/hare/mutant animal I've ever seen. Whoa!

Lastly, Sunday would not have been complete without a Super Bowl shindig. We hosted a few friends over at our house, and I learned that I have terrible skills at estimating the appropriate amount of food for any given group. Let's just say we have a lot of leftovers in our fridge and meal-planning for the week was a breeze!

We made some prop bets to keep the game more interesting:

... will Beyonce's hair be straight, curly or crimped?

... will her top be black, gold or silver?

... what color will the Gatorade be?

and then there were game-related bets which I completely got wrong. So I ultimately lost. Surprise, surprise. 

I tried a few new recipes, but the homemade soft pretzels I made were by far my favorite! I wish I made extra (the one thing that wasn't leftover) so I had some handy in the freezer to boil and bake on a whim. If you like soft pretzels half as much as we do, try this easy and delicious recipe.

A great weekend all around.

On the Menu: Super Bowl edition

We spent some time today prepping food for tomorrow's Super Bowl food fest. We're excited to have a few friends over to watch the game, make prop bets, laugh at commercials and, most importantly, eat tasty food. 

We're trying out a few new recipes for the occasion. The recipe for the soft pretzels was a Pinterest find, and beer-braised carnitas were featured in this month's Bon Appetit. Today, Jonathan cooked the pork in the slow cooker to get a head start on the nachos for tomorrow. 

(We're enjoying playing around with Twitter's new video app, Vine. The app lets you shoot a short video—6 seconds—continuously or out of various shorter clips . It seems like it could be a cool tool for cooking tutorials.)

I also made the dough for the pretzels and formed them to freeze overnight. Oh, how I hope they turn out tasty because you know how much we love a good soft pretzel!

Happy game-watching, everyone! May the best team win and may Beyonce sing beautifully.

42 Hours in St. Louis

It's so special to get to have friends visit, especially when I'm still getting the hang of this "make new friends in a new city" thing ;) Jennifer took the train in from Chicago on Friday night. It was a short visit, but I'd say we used our time to its fullest (and foodiest!) 

9:30 a.m.

On Saturday morning we took a nice walk down the street to Kaldi's for some coffee and delicious scones. We were lucky to have temperatures in the 50s for half of the day. 

11:30 a.m.

I had compiled a list of places I wanted to explore while she was here, and our first stop was Soulard Farmers Market in downtown St. Louis.

Even though it's the dead of winter, it was so great to see fresh (& cheap!) fruits and vegetables at more than 20 different vendors. There was also fresh bread and pasta and a dangerous candy and chocolate station. We bought some peanut butter chocolate pretzels that were pretty tasty. And then we found some mini donuts, which we of course also had to sample, and those too were tasty. Pretzels, mini donuts —they're small snacks right? :) We paced ourselves for the rest of our eating exploration. 

2 p.m.

Next we headed to the Central West End since the nice weather was still holding up (but not for long). We explored a few book stores and boutiques and grabbed lunch at Dressel's Pub. After a long deliberation of what to order, I think we made a very wise choice: soft pretzel with rarebit sauce (because you can't go to this place without ordering that), sweet potato & smoked gouda tart with salmon and fennel salad, and a citrus salad with romaine, oranges, grapefruit, avocado, shaved parmesan and a delicious, I-want-to-replicate-this basil vinaigrette. Sharing everything left us just the right amount of full and kept the guilty feelings at bay.

5 p.m.

The weather took a turn as soon as we left the pub; cold rain drenched us on the way to the car. So we headed to Redbox, rented The Words and People Like Us and took refuge back at my place for a few hours. Both movies were good, although The Words leaves you with some questions. 

8 p.m.

Our late-night dinner consisted of delicious pizza at Katie's Pizza (thank you to my friend Emily who introduced me to this gem only blocks from our place). We did the sharing bit again and enjoyed a pizza with half artichokes, prosciutto and mozzarella and half sun-dried tomato, pesto, pulled chicken and goat cheese. Both were plain delicious. We finished the night with our second movie and sangria at home (now that the cold rain was threatening to become an "icy glaze" in a matter of hours).

Speaking of sangria —or what can't really be called true sangria so will henceforth be named Resourceful Girl's Sangria —it was good! I mentioned on Friday that I was going to throw a few things together with some leftover zinfandel and hope for the best. The not-so-precise ingredient list ended up being: 3/4 bottle zinfandel, 1/4 cup 7-Up, splash of lime juice, juice of 1 orange and 1 sliced orange. Missing were the brandy and triple sec, but it was a refreshing and a fruity drink.

11 a.m.

Sunday the gastronomy tour of St. Louis continued! The first time I visited Jonathan in St. Louis we went to the Missouri History Museum's restaurant, Bixby's, for their Sunday champagne brunch, and it's still one of my favorite special things to do. It combines my love for food and museums beautifully. Plus, the food is prepared with seasonal and mostly local ingredients. And it's a buffet-style, so gorge to your heart's content (this is where sharing food all of Saturday really paid off!)

 

12:30 p.m.

After brunch we enjoyed an exhibition downstairs about the history and evolution of women's undergarments, titled Underneath it All. More on this in a later post because there's too much to say about it. It was fascinating and really made us think about women's fashion, rights, societal roles, and so much more. Plus, there was a dress up station at the end of the exhibit —I couldn't resist that!

3 p.m.
After the museum we walked around the Galleria for a bit before I had to drop Jennifer off at the train station.

I had so much fun exploring the city with a friend this weekend and also getting to show her pieces of our new lives here. To all our potential future weekend visitors: book your weekend now at Casa Klamm; you won't be disappointed!