Posted by Lia Bulaong, February 16, 2007 at 1:44 PM
The Kansas City Star published a three-part feature late last year on how schools in their area are working to improve the quality of food, it's well worth checking out whether or not you have school-age children for what's said about trends in healthy eating.
Part 1: Reap it and eat visits the Niles Home for Children, where the fresh produce used in the cafeteria comes from the school garden that the students work on: "Ratcliff, the garden director at Niles, has seen kids who professed a lifelong hatred for vegetables try —and like — everything from cucumbers to kohlrabi, a kind of cabbage. The pea crop never made it to the cafeteria because the children ate them all straight from the garden. Almost all the green bell peppers met the same fate."
Part 2: This is not your father's corn dog looks at how food manufacturers are now making healthier versions of cafeteria staples. Children might be better off at the cafeteria than you think: "Kids who ate school lunch consumed seven times more vegetables and twice as much fruit as brown baggers, as well as 21 percent fewer calories from fat, according to a 2002 study by Eastern Michigan University. Sack-lunch students also ate three times as many chips, cookies and packaged snacks as school-lunch participants."
Part 3: Putting the café in cafeteria discusses how food service directors are getting ideas from restaurants to get savvy students to eat healthier, more varied options: "Once a month the Lee’s Summit district serves a menu selected by students. But surprisingly, the elementary group’s top choice for its first menu of the year wasn’t pizza or chicken nuggets, the perennial favorites, but chef salad topped with chicken strips. “It’s what they’re seeing at Applebee’s,” Hentzler says."
Posted by From Roadfood.com, January 22, 2007 at 6:02 AM
For this week's roundup, we asked our friends Jane and Michael Stern over at Roadfood.com to name some of their fried-chicken picks. And the chicken at these joints comes with a heaping side order of charm.
AL'S CHICKENETTE | 700 Vine Street, Hays KS 67601 [map]. 785-625-7414
Al's Chickenette has been in business a very considerable period of time and there is a good reason for this. And the name of this place says it quite well.
As you can see from the photo the outside doesn't look like much. I believe the building started as officer's quarters at a defunct World War II army air base about 20 miles away before it was moved to Hays and converted to its true calling. But the restaurant tells its own story quite well and it's reproduced here, with permission from the management, along with the rest of its promotional leaflet including the menu. (This is free publicity, after all.)
And it is deserved Roadfood publicity. Now reasonable Road Fooders may disagree on whether one restaurant's fried chicken is "better" than anothers. They will nearly all agree, I think, that the chicken prepared here is distinctive, and it is good. Also the thin cut french fries.
The food is cooked to order and comes to the table hot. Before you dig into it, though, notice that squeeze bottle of honey on the table. It's there for a reason. Take it and squeeze a generous bead over the fries and each piece of chicken. (Leave the ketchup off the fries, at least until you've sampled it this way.) Now, bite into that first piece of chicken, along with a forkfull of fries. You'll savor the thin, crispy, crunchy, slightly salty, mildly spicy crust of the chicken overlaid with the contrasting sweetness of the honey as steam curls up from where it came from. The honey also nicely contrasts with the crust of the fries surrounding the soft, potato-ey interior. You may also notice that the crustyness holds up even as you swallow, continuing its textural treat even on the way down.
If you have the tossed salad with your meal you might try it with the Dorothy Lynch dressing, a regional commercial product which is quite tasty.
As noted in the menu, tea and coffee are complimentary. Other drinks are extra. I always have the ice tea, and lots of it.
I was introduced to Al's as a child when I lived in the area. Even though I've moved away my family tries to have at least a meal here every time we return for a visit.
So if you're passing by Hays, Kansas, on Interstate 70 during the hours Al's is open, take the U.S. 183/Vine St. exit south, going nearly all the way through town almost to the south edge. It will be worth the small detour from your trip. Originally reviewed by Wendler on Roadfood.com
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Posted by Adam Kuban, January 5, 2007 at 7:02 AM
I spent most of last week in the Kansas City area visiting my family for Christmas. And since neither kin nor Claus left me a slab of ribs or a plate of burnt ends under the tree, I had to go fend for myself. My friend Andy, who smokes meat as part of a local KC barbecue team, accompanied me to three joints he said were currently the "holy trinity" of KC 'cue. Here, in words and pictures, a belated gift for you.
LC's BAR-B-Q
Address: 5800 Blue Parkway, Kansas City MO 64129 [map]
Phone: 816-923-4484
We tried to start at Kansas City institution Arthur Bryant's, but the line was out the door and down the block—a queue of such a length neither Andy nor I had ever seen at Bryant's. We chalked it up to barbecue-starved out-of-towners getting their fix (like me) and drove on to LC's Bar-B-Q, on the southern edge of the city and a little more hidden from tourists.
As usual, LC himself sat at a table in the small and spartan dining room while his pit masters tended the smoker and its meaty contents. We ordered a short end of ribs and a pulled-pork sandwich to split. (Yeah, yeah, so our order was modest—we had to pace ourselves for the day's eating.)
I'd never had the ribs at LC's before, having always been steered toward the pulled-pork or brisket sandwiches by friends in the know. The ribs were a disappointment. Much too lean and none too meaty, they drew most of their flavor from the outer char, put there, Andy speculated, by some time on the grill.
The pork sandwich, however, was perfect, as usual. Piled high as a triple decker on soft slices of white bread, the meat was tender and juicy, with a good balance between fat and lean, and the flavor was smoky with a faint applelike finish.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, December 19, 2006 at 11:24 AM
Over on Serious Eats site A Hamburger Today, we started an ambitious multipart series dedicated to sussing out the best burgers in each of our fine states. We got as far as "the First State," Delaware, before pooping out. Today we're resurrecting the feature, which we call "Where's the Beef, America?" This week's installment turns its meaty eye on Kansas. Why? Because it's my home state and I'm heading there in less than a week. What better way to combine personal research with work?
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