The Dough Depot

I feel like I need to give a shout out to The Dough Depot in historic Kimmswick, MO. The Blue Owl seems to get all the publicity, but in my humble opinion, this is the place to eat in Kimmswick. I just discovered it earlier this year after receiving a gift card as a Christmas gift. I took the kids for my first time and was so impressed that I took a friend back for her birthday, and then later planned a girl's day out lunch there. It's unique, affordable and yummy! 

Any sandwich I've had on the pretzel bread has been so delicious! I've heard wonderful things about their mandarin orange salad, but the house-made Strawberry Vinaigrette for the Hawaiian salad is so good, I haven't wanted to try anything else.

 The kid's meals are inexpensive. Always a plus!

I've tried a dessert, too. So good! It's all good. I think I'll have to find a reason to go back soon, even if it's just Ethan and me.

St. Louis Skyline

I instantly fell in love with this piece of artwork when Brenton brought it home from school the other day.

Eagle Watching and Clarksville, MO

Last week Casey mentioned he wanted to go do something fun and different as a family over the weekend. His initial suggestions had me a little concerned (like searching for deer sheds), but luckily, when the weekend came around he suggested going to see the Eagles by the river. That I can do. There are several great spots along the Mississippi River to spot nesting Eagles during the winter months. A couple years ago we went to an event at Chain of Rocks Bridge. It's not being held this year, but this site has a list of all kinds of Eagle spotting events going on in the greater St. Louis area.

Saturday we headed to Clarksville, Missouri. It's a little bit of drive, but it's suppose to be one the best places  in Missouri to spot Eagles. It's located next to a lock and dam, which makes food easily accessible  in cold weather.

It's even set up to with spotting scopes.

Apparently, it was too warm of day to get a really good look at the Eagles, but we did see several. They were really far away though and really hard to catch on camera. There are two in the trees in the picture below.

The big bird in the sky is actually a seagull, but if you look closely you can see eagle flying in front of the trees.

They have a little park along the Mississippi. It's actually a really pretty part of the river.

Then we explored a little bit of the town of Clarksville. They have a couple of specialty shops and antique shops in charming historic buildings. I read this article before we went. It describes the town nicely.

We ate lunch at The Farm Cafe. It's owned by Overlook Farm which operates a couple of inns and another restaurant on it's beautiful, large operating farm.

They serve sandwiches, soups, and salads. Our sandwiches were yummy!

Eagle watching and Clarksville was a fun way to spend a few hours. If you're interested, Clarksville will host its annual Eagle Days this coming weekend.

Chris' Pancake & Dinning

Happy New Year (a few weeks late)! Our New Year tradition is going to out to breakfast on New Year's Day. This year we headed to Chris' Pancake and Dining on The Hill. One of my favorite native St. Louisans, Lindsey, had mentioned it several times as one of her favorite places to eat. Plus, it's been recognized several times for having the "best breakfast" in St. Louis. There's not many people out early on New Year's Day. In fact, the only place we really saw any people was at Chris'. Guess they know it's a great place to eat, too.

The menu said they have the "Best French Toast" in town. It was really good!

The service was good, the food was good, and it was great way to start off the new year!

Gooey Butter Cake "Food Feuds" and Lafayette Square

So...I have rewritten the beginning of this post a couple times, mostly since I've been working on it since November. I'm not feeling very creative right now, so I'll just stick with the last one, and insert some current commentary...

What a wonderful time of year (though now we're in January and I think it is my least favorite month)! So many things to celebrate and be grateful for! One of the many things I'm grateful for is all of my St. Louis adventures! I'm also grateful for all the yummy food we get to enjoy this time of year (until we make resolutions to eat better). I'm so going to have to go on a diet in January (who knew it would take me until January to post and even longer to go on a diet?). Speaking of food, we took a St. Louis adventure the day before Thanksgiving to kick of the holiday with not pie, but Gooey Butter Cake! It's very likely I had gooey butter cake for the the first time at a St. Louis Thanksgiving.

What is Gooey Butter Cake? Well, it's an accident made by a bakery in the 1940's that has stuck around Saint Louis ever since. You can buy it in most St. Louis area grocery stores and bakeries, but lots of St. Louisans swear by their mom's recipe. Paula Deen also has a version out now nationally, but it truely started here in St. Louis (Wikipedia will back me up). Gooey Butter Cake is a dense gooey cake (maybe similar to a pound, coffee, or butter cake). To be truthful, to me it's kind of an acquired taste. Even though it took me years to like, I enjoy eating it now and my kids love it!

We started our Gooey Butter Cake adventure at Park Avenue Coffee in Lafayette Square. While leaving a parade in July, I saw a sign at their downtown location advertising they had been the winner of Food Feuds on the Food Network. Food Network equals St Louis adventure to me, even if takes a few, or many, months.

Here's their trophy for winning Food Feuds on the Food Network.

Here is their Gooey Butter Cake.

They make over 70 flavors and had about 12 flavors available the day we visited. We tried chocolate chip cookie dough, red velvet, triple chocolate and pumpkin caramel pecan (which I think is the one they won Food Feuds with). They were all delicious! The triple chocolate was my favorite. This is Hailey's Red Velvet.

The coffee shop has a patio you can use behind the shop with fireplaces. The kids loved it. It was a fun place to eat our cake (and probably kept all the customer without kids inside happy).

Then we explored Lafayette Square and the park. Lafayette Square is a Victorian-style Historical District and it is GORGEOUS! Who doesn't want to live in one of these cute houses?!

The park is supposedly the oldest in St. Louis. It's beautiful too! My kids were mostly concerned with the playground,which isn't that old.

The park has a couple of statues and Revolutionary War cannons.

These cannons are really cool. They were on a British war ship that was sunk by American ships in Charleston Harbor in 1776.

After a fun, beautiful morning in Lafayette Square, we headed home by way of Gooey Louie's. They were Park Avenue Coffee's competition on Food Feuds. Gooey Louie didn't come out the victor on Food Feuds, but elsewhere it's been voted the best Gooey Butter Cake in St. Louis for the past four years.

We had to buy a whole gooey butter cake at Gooey Louie to try out. It was only $12 for this Chocolate Chippewa cake.

It was nothing like the gooey butter cake at Park Avenue, but still delicious! I think it tasted more like the gooey butter I've come to know in St. Louis than Park Avenue's. Either place though, you can't go wrong if you're looking for a tasty St. Louis treat!

Christmas in Saint Louis

There are so many fun things to do in the Saint Louis area to celebrate the Christmas holiday! Here are some of our favorites and things we'd like to try.

Christmas Traditions in Historic Saint Charles

Last year was our first year visiting Christmas Traditions in Historic Saint Charles. We had so much fun we've already gone again this year. Christmas characters roam the streets and pass out cards for children to collect on Wednesday and Friday evenings, and Saturday and Sundays. You can find more details about our visit last year here. (This picture is also from last year since I have suddenly hit my blogger photo storage limit. Oddly, a whole lot of other blogs hit their limit at the same time, so I'm going to hope it's a fluke and they fix the problem before I have to get too creative to post pictures.)

Bass Pro Shop

While you're in St. Charles you can also stop by Bass Pro Shop for Santa's Wonderland. Most of you will actually pass Bass Pro Shop to get to Historic Saint Charles. Bass Pro Shop has free crafts, activities and a  photo with Santa. We've done several activities at Bass Pro Shop, and the kids always have fun.

Missouri Botanical Gardens

The Missouri Botanical Garden hosts several holiday events, including the Gardenland Express holiday flower and train show. I've never been, but since I'm a member this year, I feel like I should go check it out.

The Butterfly House also brings in special butterflies and holiday foliage for Winter Jewels. On weekends, kids can enjoy making holiday crafts. This is definitely on my list this year...I like to think I'm using my membership benefits to the fullest ;).

Light Displays

Last year we checked out The Way of Lights at Our Lady of the Snows. The drive through display is free. You can also stop for free crafts and displays, or enjoy other activities, such as camel rides, for a small fee.

My favorite light display though is Tilles Park's Winter Wonderland. It's $10 a car, but I've never felt bad paying for it. This display is closed to vehicles on Saturday night, so plan accordingly.

We've also done Santa's Magical Kingdom years ago, but we thought it was overpriced and haven't been back.

Forest Park

The Zoo does a light display called Wild Lights. It does require paid admission, and since I'm so use to the zoo being free, I've never thought about checking it out. I bet it'd be pretty cool though, and now I'm feeling kinda bad I've been so cheap.

The Jewel Box has a Poinsettia display over the holidays. It's an okay extra to another activity at the park. We had fun though when we visited last year.

A couple of the museums in Forest Park host extra activities during the Christmas break. This year it looks like the Missouri History Museum will have extra kid friendly activities starting on the 27th.

New Year's

We've never actually been to First Night, but I've thought about it before and it might happen this year.

Happy Holidays! I'd love to hear about your favorite things to do in St. Louis to celebrate, especially if it's something I've missed.

Alton, IL and Melvin Price Locks and Dam

Oh, my! How is it October? We did this adventures while my mom was here - two months ago! 

But this is a great time to post this anyway because the leaves are changing and if I lived closer I would definitely be driving the Great River Road through Alton to look at all the fall foliage.

An adventure to the Melvin Price Locks and Dam was actually planned for last year when both my parents came out, but they ended stuck in an airport instead and this activity got bumped. This adventure has my dad written all over it, but we went ahead and did it with just Grandma this year. We'll have to take him another time.

The National Rivers Museum is next to the Locks and Dam. It has river exhibits, a movie and a couple of activities.

The kids enjoyed trying to navigate a barge into the locks.

We got to see a two small fishing boat and a large barge go through the locks.

If you visit the locks, I highly recommend planning your trip around a tour (they have them 3 times a day). On the tour, you get to walk out over the locks. Brenton is petrified of heights and was scared half to death. Luckily, candy has very powerful effect on my children and we were all able to go.

On the tour, they also take you down next to a lock so you can actually see the water move up or down in order for the boats to move up or down the river. (This image would not rotate for some reason).

After visiting the Locks and Dam we explored a little bit of Alton. My kids are obsessed with giants, so we found the statue of  Robert Wadlow, also called the Alton Giant and the World's Tallest Man. My kids were very impressed.

Then we also headed up the Great River Road to find the Piasa, a representation of an old image seen along this part of the river years ago by Father Jacques Marquette in 1673.

This picture was actually taken earlier in the day outside the museum.

This was a fun trip. All of these activities were free and there are still a couple other things in the area that I would love to try out. So, I recommend crossing the river over into Alton if you get a chance.