TakeBetsywithyou

Fine dining en route to dodge city Kansas from Des Moines for Christmas:

– Stroud’s (“we choke our own chickens”) off I 35 north of Kansas City). We didn’t think we’d be able to stop here because there is usually a long wait but we drove right into a prime parking spot on a Tuesday night at 8:15 pm (albeit holiday date) and sat at the small bar rather than waiting  40 minutes for a table. Great pan fried chicken and what everyone needs after a chicken dinner – killer cinnamon rolls, buttery and warm. Perfect stop before picking our son up at the Kansas City airport.

– Wheatfields bakery in Lawrence where we learned we could avoid the long line for take out pastries and bread if we ordered breakfast as well at a counter with no line. And good grub too although I just had a small croissant (still recovering from Stroud’s.) Our waitress enthusiastically recommended another old tome bakery in town for its cream cheese donuts. Next time. (And there will be…)

– Cozy Inn, we took up three of the six seats at the counter in this shoe box of a burger joint, with a great view of the two tattooed guys cooking sliders on a griddle. Forgot how good those sliders are..small and mighty, slightly rare with grilled onions and pickles (no cheese or fries allowed) on a small moist white bun.

– Ad Astra, a hipster coffee shop around the block on Salina’s main drag where I had a good chai latte and found a great used book about Elizabeth “Grandma” Layton, a sweet older lady from small town Kansas who painted brilliantly wicked self portraits. (One of which hangs in our kitchen nook.) We met her in the late 1980’s when some friends and I were playing pool at a bar and met her nephew, or some such, who called her to see if she was receiving visitors. She was . So we went to her house and she served us lemonade and showed us around and let us buy signed posters of her work. Only in Kansas!! She died in 1993 I see from the book (which I had to buy!)

The sun is finally out with endless blue sky, bald brown hills, the occasional wind-whipped tree and lots of gleaming white whirling wind turbines. Life is good.