Breakfast, Cardboard Boat Race, and Custom Popcorn

Another Saturday morning gives us yet another opportunity to explore St. Louis.  The plan was to start with breakfast at Benton Park Cafe then head to the History Museum to see the Vatican Splendors exhibit before ending the day's adventures at Poptions.

Benton Park Cafe is an adorable cafe only a few blocks from our home.  Previously, we had only tried them for dinner.  I want to return one day for lunch to sample their chicken salad sandwich.  They also offer free wifi and are open 24 hours every Friday and Saturday.

There are two sections of Benton Park Cafe.  This is the back section of the restaurant.  The front area which is featuread in the first picture is much more open with a large bar for people to eat at as well.  The two dining areas are completely separate from one another.  We had a great seat in one of the corner windows for breakfast.  There is limited outdoor seating (complete with water bowls for your four legged family members), but even indoors feels a bit like you are sitting outside with all of the large windows that fill every wall of the cafe.

I had never seen a cucumber added to water until we dined at Benton Park Cafe.  I am a huge fan of cucumbers, so Tony will cut some up to add to our water at home now as well.

The largest pancake ever.  Even though I was only able to enjoy a small fraction of it, it was delicious!  Its fluffiness made it easily the best pancake that I've had here in St. Louis.

For breakfast, I had eggs, fruit, a slice of toast, and the largest pancake ever.  Tony enjoyed my two pieces of bacon.  This place probably serves the freshest fruit out of any restaurant that I've ever eaten at.  I've enjoyed it both times that we've eaten here.

In addition to my bacon, Tony sampled the crab meat and shrimp omlet.  While enjoyable, he prefers saving his crab meat and shrimp for lunch and dinner options!

As like many food places here in 'The Lou', we first heard of POPtions through Groupons.  If your city offers Groupons and you haven't signed up yet, do so today!  Anyway, POPtions is a nationally known personalized popcorn place.  All I can say is that when you walk through the doors, there is no doubt that you are in a popcorn place!  The smell is fantastic.  The experience is definitely unique.  First you pick your popcorn flavor, then mix it up with dozens of choices of sweet and savory ingredients and finaly, you top it off with Bissinger's dark or white melted chocolate or Fisher's creamy peanut butter.  Since all of the choices were a bit overwhelming, we cheated and went the easy route by selecting from their Pop du Jour popcorn creations! 

We chose to get a bag of the Caramelt Crunch and a bag of the Gooey Butter Pop.  Caramelt Crunch is basically caramel popcorn with milk butter chocolate melted over it.  Yes, it is as yummy as it sounds!  The Gooey Butter Pop is an interesting take on a St. Louis original.  Gooey Butter Cake is one of St. Louis's most popular desserts.  This was super sweet as it consists of cream cheese, milk, eggs. and powdered sugar. 


There is even a cajun flavor called Cajun Ba-You with is described as a little pinch of dis and a little pinch of dat and seasoned Cajun-style toward the wild side.  Unfortunately, it wasn't being offered the day that we went or I'm sure we would have tried it!


It's definitely not as cheap as regular popcorn, but you get to have a lot of fun with mix-ins such as M&M's and gummy worms.  There are approximately 20-25 different mix-ins to choose from.  We got two of the small bags which was more than plenty for the two of us.  Each of the small bags runs between $6 and $8 depending on your pickings.  We didn't have to pay anything since we had purchased a $15 groupon for $3!

The Gumbo Shop

We finally found good cajun food in St. Louis!  It's still not quite home, but close enough for us to be happy! 

The view walking up to the front door.  It's always a good sign when you see a restaurant growing their own veggies and spices right outside!

One of the many pepper plans in their garden area!

We tried to find out what part of Louisiana the owners are from, but the workers weren't sure.

Tony, of course, ordered the big sampler platter with a little bit of everything.  I had an order of crawfish etouffee.  Sadly, it was the worst thing on their menu.  I'm not sure if it's always like this or I just got a bad batch, but the sauce was overcooked.  The jamabalaya and the gumbo were both pretty spot on!

Thank You, Tony!

It took him like 10 minutes to free hand the drawing! I would have been there all night!

The finished product in my office.  I love it!

Sugar Welcomes You Home

Since my Mom will be returning to the hospital tomorrow, I figured that I'd give her a present to welcome her back home.  A new picture of Sugar on the blog.  Sugar loves you and misses you very much.  He's sorry that he won't be there to comfort you when you get home.  :)

Downtown St. Louis

Last Friday, we met Tony's training group downtown to celebrate the end of their six week class.  Now, they get to join the other outside sales reps in the office!  Of course we've driven through downtown before and even been to a few places, but I had never really taken the time to walk around.  I didn't realize how gorgeous it is!  There are lush gardens and fountains all over the place.  I absolutely love the two wading pools that people are allowed to swim in.

What a gorgeous view of the Arch!

You can see the little kids swimming in this photo.  I was shocked by how clean the wading pools were kept.

The other wading pool.  I took my shoes off and joined in the fun, but Tony wouldn't join me!

Yep, that's my thumb.  Oops!

The AT&T building downtown where Tony has been working these past few weeks.  It's the tallest building in St. Louis aside from the Arch.  City decree states that no structure can be taller than the Arch!

Jambalaya

Tony would be very sad if I didn't include this picture on the blog.  He recently used a former colleagues recipe to give us a little taste of home.  It was delicious!

Pretty Animals in our Neighborhood

From what we can tell, our neighborhood is now home to 4 bunnies!  This makes me very happy.  We would always see them outside of Jean's house, but this is the first time that we've seen any on our street.  It's adorable to watch them chase each other back and forth across the street.  No, there are no plans to turn one into a rabbit gumbo, stew, or anything else food related!