Stl250

“Everywhere there’s Cake”

The Soulard Art Market is currently celebrating St. Louis’ 250th birthday with a special exhibit, “Everywhere there’s Cake.”  Of course I was at the gallery opening with the whole family, because one of my Cakeway to the West pictures (of the Comptom Hill Water Tower) is part of the exhibit. There was a nice crowd, and it was fun seeing all of the art displayed…mostly photos, but a few other types of art as well.

There was even live music:

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And, of course, cake!

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The prototype made an appearance:

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And outside, there was not only the Barkus Pet Parade cake, but also the final (no really, it is!) cake, not quite complete, but still on display for the night:

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I can’t tell you how exciting it was to be a part of that, and to feel like an artist, if only for one evening. The exhibit is open through the first few weeks of January, so if you’d like to stop by and see all of the talent the cakes inspired, you have time!

 

Cakeway to the West–Another Seasonal Retake

I’ve mentioned before that some Stl250 cakes are fun to go back and photograph again with the change in seasons. My favorite cake for this purpose is definitely the one at SLU.

When I first saw it in the spring, it was surrounded by yellow tulips…very pretty and appropriate to the season:

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I went back in the fall, and the tulips had been replaced with red flowers, which were, again, very seasonally appropriate, and really brought out the blue in the cake:

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Yesterday, I stopped by once more, because I knew there were Christmas lights where the fountains had been. This was also my first evening shot of the cake:

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I have really enjoyed this cake journey for so many reasons. The most obvious one is seeing so many places that I’d never been before, but seeing familiar places in new ways as the year rolled by was an added bonus that I didn’t initially consider!

The Creole Colonial Corridor

As a gift to St. Louis for her 250th birthday, the group “Les Amis,” a French heritage preservationist organization, has placed French street signs along the “Creole Colonial Corridor” downtown near the riverfront. I tried to find as many of these sings as possible, although I’m still not entirely sure how many there are in total (it appears one street may have two different French names, but I’m not sure, and never found the second one). Seven unique street names is pretty good, though, so I’m happy even if I didn’t find the last one.

I also located a few signs detailing the history of the streets. I don’t know where the rest of those signs are, but it was interesting to get another glimpse into the history of St. Louis this anniversary year!

Another Year with Eckert’s

2014 has been another good year for our family at Eckert’s. It all started in March, when we stopped by to see their STL250 cake. We went on to visit it many more times, and enjoyed seeing how it changed with the seasons, but there was something special about seeing it that first time with the snow around it.

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In May, we went strawberry picking for the second time…but it was the first time for Chickadee! She loved it because the strawberries were right at her level.

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June found us picking blueberries for the first time ever. I loved the way the nets covered the bushes to protect them from birds…it looked like a fog over the blueberry patch!

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We picked blackberries more times than I count from the end of June through July. Most of them were eaten plain, but I did make a few special desserts with some of them, including the conclusion to our Fourth of July feast!

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Sadly, due to weather-related reasons, there were no “pick your own” peaches this year. Eckert’s made up for that with “pick your own” vegetables, though, and we had a great time doing that in July. Picking corn was everybody’s favorite, although it was also fun to find ripe tomatoes, summer squash, and cucumbers!

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In September, we finally visited Eckert’s restaurant. It was the first time for the children, and the first time in over a decade for Ryan and me. The biscuits and apple butter were just as good as we remembered, and all of the food was delicious!

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Of course we had to go apple picking in September…another first for Chickadee!

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And October found us in the pumpkin patch, where we picked a family record of 70+ pounds of pumpkins!

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In November, we celebrated a family birthday at the restaurant for the first time…Moose has decided it’s one of his two favorite restaurants.

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And the end of November meant time for the Holiday Open House, where we got to try lots of samples, see all the pretty Christmas decorations, and do some crafts.

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Eckert’s has become such an important part of our family’s year that I can’t remember a time when we weren’t constantly visiting and doing something fun there. I still haven’t taken an Eckert’s class yet, but that’s about the only thing left on my list of things I haven’t done at Eckert’s yet, and I look forward to finding a fun learning opportunity to take part in sometime in 2015!

An STL250 Tea Party

I know I’ve run pretty far afield of what constitutes afternoon tea, but I wanted to do something special for St. Louis’ 250th birthday. I decided to go with some famous St. Louis foods, and a lot of fleurs-de-lis to celebrate St. Louis’ French heritage. Our soundtrack for tea was also a nod to St. Louis: Chuck Berry’s The Great Twenty-Eight.

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The tea of choice for today was French Vanilla. It was the best I could do in tying it in to the theme somehow, just because it has the word “French” in the title. I did consider using the 1904 World’s Fair connection with iced tea, but it is November, after all!

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I made a Gooey Butter cake, which is one of St. Louis’ most well-known baked goods:

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And toasted ravioli, another St. Louis favorite:

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We also had provel cheese, a St. Louis anomaly that I actually kind of like, and Volpi Roltini, which is prosciutto wrapped around mozzarella, from the meat market on The Hill:

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I made finger Jell-O in the colors of the St. Louis city flag (red, yellow, and blue, although I ended up with a cool rainbow effect where the colors blended), and shaped like fleurs-de-lis:

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And our favorite chocolate chip scones, also shaped like fleurs-de-lis:

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We also had finger sandwiches, shaped like, you guessed it, fleurs-de-lis:

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This was a kind of challenging tea party, because the theme was so different, but it was also really fun finding another way to celebrate St. Louis’ birthday that’s also unique to our family!

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Sebilj Fountain in St. Louis

The most well-known Sebilj Fountain (a kiosk-shaped wooden and stone public fountain), was built in 1753 and is found in the Baščaršija square in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian community in St. Louis, the largest of its kind outside of Europe, gifted a replica of the fountain to St. Louis in honor of the city’s 250th birthday this year. It can be found in the Bevo Mill neighborhood (also known as “Little Bosnia”), which is the heart of the St. Louis Bosnian community.

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The fountain here in St. Louis, while a replica of the one in Sarajevo, does have a local touch…a fleur-de-lis graces the top:

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And just in case you think it’s simply decorative, I tested it out, and it is a functional fountain!

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One Cake, Three Locations

Now I’m going to take a look at a cake that has traveled not across town, but within its own neighborhood. We first saw the Dogtown cake right on Clayton Ave., more or less. It was a great location, but not really safe for us photographers, I suppose. It was then moved to the sidewalk outside Chuy Arzola’s of Blessed Memory (OK, now Latitude 26…whatever), but it wasn’t the best location as far as good photos go. It’s now across the street from St. James the Greater on Tamm, and while I wish it was actually in front of the church, I really feel that this has been the best location so far. The church is the center of Dogtown life, and it’s the perfect place for the cake. I just hope they don’t move it again!

One Location, Two Cakes

A I mentioned earlier, we’ve had the opportunity to see one Cakeway to the West creation at two different locations in the St. Louis area. Because of this, we also saw two different cakes at the same location, the Big Mound Memorial, also known as Le Grange de Terre.

The first cake we saw there back in April, and we thought it was very suitable to the location, so close to Interstate 70.

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When we heard that cake had been moved to the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles, we knew we had to go back to the Big Mound in August and see the “new” cake there.

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It turns out that the “new” cake had originally been placed at the Audubon Center in West Alton, but they requested it be moved, so it landed here. You wouldn’t think cakes would travel, but occasionally they do!

One Cake, Two Locations

Back in April, we visited the Big Mound Memorial (Le Grange de Terre), and took pictures of the cake there:

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You can imagine my surprise, then, when I saw a picture of the same cake at the Ameristar Casino in St. Charles this summer! Apparently another cake needed to be moved from yet another location, and that one ended up at the Big Mound, while the cake that had been there traveled farther west.

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We did finally get around to seeing it at the casino for ourselves. Fortunately, the cake makes perfect sense in both locations, as it’s the I-70/President Eisenhower Interstate Highway System cake. In it’s new location, it’s closer to where 70 began (and also close to the former site of the Noah’s Ark hotel in St. Charles, which is pictured on the cake), while in it’s original location, it was closer to the I-70 Mississippi River crossing. I still think the original location was best, from a photography standpoint, but I also enjoyed the excuse to visit a casino for the first time!