In 2007, Ryan Maybee and Doug Frost started a little thing called the Greater Kansas City Bartending Competition. Well, little in comparison to what that event’s grown into—the Paris of the Plains Cocktail Festival. The week-long event’s already underway, and I wrote about it in today’s Kansas City Star (KC’s cocktail culture births Paris of… Continue Reading
Life’s good these days, but it’s left me precious little time for blogging. Maybe you noticed? No? I’m not surprised. Your life is probably more hectic than mine. As soon as school let out, the pace picked up—swimming lessons, summer theater, preparing for the 4H fair, family reunions, attempting to keep at least the fruit… Continue Reading
Lavender is one of my favorite flowers, but I can never quite decide what to do with it. Dry it and use it in a lamb rub? Or sew it into sachets, like my friends at Washington Creek Lavender do? But it’s so lovely fresh. This year, the scent sent me to my cocktail books,… Continue Reading
There’s nothing new about bartenders using herbs. But no one does it quite like Chris Conatser of Justus Drugstore. That’s why a handful of Kansas City’s bartenders—many of them members of the KC Bartenders’ Guild, a newly formed chapter of the U.S. Bartenders’ Guild—trekked up to Paradise, Mo., earlier this week for Conatser’s take on… Continue Reading
So, were the wild gooseberries worth fighting prickles, poison ivy, ticks and locust thorns for? Absolutely. The season, like everything this year, came on early. Suddenly gooseberries were everywhere. We picked as many as we could stand picking, grateful that Ribes missouriense is a friendlier berry than the Sierra gooseberries Hank Shaw describes as “nasty,… Continue Reading