Tonight, Paul, Kim, and Katie met up with Jen and I to take in a half-price Cardinals game, thanks to a promotional email that Kim received yesterday. On the spur of the moment, we grabbed some cheap tickets, but still behind home plate. Here’s the view:

Not bad, eh?

The game was an awesome one, we won 7-2, and Skip Schumaker played a hell of a game. On top of that, we are lucky to cross off two of our items on the STL101 adventure:

#85 – One of Gus’ Pretzels, if not outside Busch Stadium then on one of the city streets (try Jamieson just south of I-44).

I gotta say, it was definitely a pretzel. Not bad at all, just probably not in the top 101 Things I Gotta Do.

#64 – The Cards take on the Cubs at Busch Stadium. If you don’t have your tickets already, you’ll probably pay an arm and a leg from a scalper, but you’ve got time to save up for our biggest rival’s second trip to town over the Fourth of July weekend.

OK, so technically it wasn’t a Cubs / Cards game, but I’m way too cheap to pay scalpers, plus, the chance of having to sit next to some asshole is greatly reduced when the Cubs aren’t in town.

All in all, a successful evening. Good work on the coupon, Kim (and good eye on the pretzels, too!).

Yesterday, Jen and I got together with Andrew, Beth, Paul, Matt, Katie, Kim and Brandon to go to Bacana to celebrate Andrew’s and Matt’s birthdays. If you recall our previous trip, you might remember that we are very big fans. And when we left, we are even bigger, for we had filled our gullets with meats of each type. Once again, we hit every type of meat that was brought around our way, and of course, took advantage of the awesome roasted pineapple.

In fact, I think that this visit was even better than the last one, because the lamb was awesome this time, when last time, it was dry and over-seasoned. Although, our previous visit did score major points for being on the first Friday in Lent.

Anyway. Great food, fun times. Go here to check out the rest of the pictures.

We just got the May issue of St. Louis Magazine and right on the front cover was “101 Things Every St. Louisan Must Do.” To me, that sounded like a challenge and I knew that Bob would be totally into it because you know how much he LOVES St. Louis.

After flipping though the article, I come to find out that I had already done quite a few of the things listed but for this challenge, we are starting with a clean slate. That means, we will be revisiting Casa Loma Ballroom (geez!), the City Museum (wheee!) and the Anheuser-Busch Tour (if you’re nice to me, I’ll give you my free beer), just to name a few. It will be fun, it will be fabulous, it will be food for the brain. If you love St. Louis or you just love our company, come join us on this fantastic voyage and discover (or rediscover) the many splendid things this city has to offer.

So, stay tuned for future posts as we document our adventures in the Gateway City.

Another beautiful day, another dish on the grill.

Appetizer: Layered Hot Artichoke and Feta Dip Due to a business meeting, Monika was a little late so her dish couldn’t be considered an appetizer. Instead, her dish was served alongside the rest of the entree and it was delicious! I think the dip was gone in 10 minutes. We have found a new trivia night dish to bring.

Entree: Caribbean Jerk Chicken Breasts This recipe has a lot of flavor to it and was tasty but it did not have the heat that traditional caribbean jerk sauce has so it was perfect for the non-spicy eaters. Some tips: pound the chicken so there is more surface area to take in the marinade, double the marinade and marinade the chicken longer than 2 hours.

Salad: Caribbean Grilled Scallop Salad (without scallops) “Mango chutney is a myth!” Apparently Kim had a bit of trouble finding this ingredient for her salad but she improvised and it turned out wonderfully. I love grilled pineapples and the salad complemented the entree nicely. I didn’t even miss the scallops so it’s a thumbs-up for all the seafood-haters. So, if you are in the mood for this salad and you find that you don’t have mango chutney on hand, just substitute strawberry jelly and whisk away.

Dessert: Brownie Buttons

Grated zest of 1/2 orange
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 stick unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
2 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg

Glaze:
2 ounces white chocolate, finely chopped

Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Lightly butter two miniature muffin pans, each with a dozen cups, and place on a baking sheet.

Combine orange zest and sugar in small bowl, rubbing them between your fingertips to blend; set aside. Whisk together flour and salt. Melt butter, chocolate and brown sugar in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over very low heat, stirring frequently with a spatula and keep from burning. Once mixture is smooth, remove from heat and cool for two minutes. Stir in vanilla, egg and zest into chocolate mixture. Once the mixture is well blended, add flour and stir only until it is incorporated. You should have a smooth, glossy batter.

Spoon batter into 16 of the muffin cups, using about a teaspoon of batter to fill each cup 3/4 full. Put 1 teaspoon of water in each empty cup. Bake 14-16 minutes until tops of buttons spring back when touched. Transfer pans to racks to cool for 3 minutes before removing buttons to cool further on the racks.

Glaze: Melt white chocolate carefully (it burns easily – we microwaved it). Dip the tops of the buttons into the chocolate and refridgerate for 15 minutes to set the glaze.

Adorable little desserts that were not as sweet as you would think they would be. The orange zest gave the chocolate a little zing and reminded you of summer. I could have eaten a whole lot more but refrained…must have willpower.