Tasty Tuesday (On a Saturday)–Dining Down the Mother Road (At Home)–Part Five (Fourth of July Edition)

Today I have a very special Tasty Tuesday (On a Saturday) because our Fourth of July dinner was inspired by restaurants along Route 66!

For dinner, I decided to go with an American classic, the BLT. But in keeping with our our Route 66 Summer, I prepared the “Heart-Stopping BLT” like they make at St. Louis’ own Crown Candy Kitchen, according to the recipe in The Route 66 Cookbook. Their sandwich calls for a full pound of bacon, so this was for display purposes only…the ones we actually ate had far less, but it was fun to see what it looked like!

For dessert I made Root Beer Bread Pudding like they serve at Pops Soda Ranch in Arcadia, OK. I think this is the best bread pudding I’ve ever made…it was really delicious!

And you can’t have Independence Day without watermelon, so I made a watermelon Agua Fresca to go with dinner:

It was nice to celebrate the centenary of Route 66 on the country’s semiquincentennial!

Tasty Tuesday–Lunch at Fitz’s

Last week, when we picked Ryan up at the end of his in-town, but not at home, business trip, we went to lunch at Fitz’s in the Delmar Loop in University City. We were very excited to go to this St. Louis icon, as the children and I had never been there before, and Ryan had only been there once the previous week with his co-workers.

The inside is bright and colorful, and I was surprised to learn that there are two floors of seating. The music of choice being played in the restaurant was, of course, oldies, which was very fun. You can even watch the soda being bottled through windows in the back of the restaurant!

I loved the menus. They, like the restaurant, are also colorful and fun, and I love the creative names for the various beverages Fitz’s serves. I think the Ginger Rogers wins both for most creative name, and most creative drink!

The food was delicious. I had the “Black and Bleu Burger,” which, as the name suggests, was Cajun blackened, and had bleu cheese on top. I was surprised to see that there were also two whole, (huge!), onion rings on the burger.

I couldn’t pass up the chance to indulge in one of their frozen concoctions–I chose the root beer shake, which was, of course, made with Fitz’s own root beer. It was so delicious–I wish I could go back there just to have another one of those!

The children’s favorite part of the meal was watching the soda bottling. After we were done eating, we went over to the windows to get a closer look. We saw the whole process, from the bottles being filled and capped, to the syrup and carbonated water being mixed, to the labels being applied. It was really interesting. We were slightly surprised that they weren’t bottling their signature root beer while we were there–instead they were bottling cream soda, which was what Ladybug tried at lunch, (Moose went with the standard root beer; Turkey and Bunny choose the slightly more adventurous grape soda).

It was a pretty expensive meal, at least for us, so we probably won’t be going back there often. Still, it was a fun St. Louis experience, and I’m glad we finally made our way down to Fitz’s!

Float Fridays

We started a new summer tradition this year.

We’ve been enjoying different variations on the ice cream float. Root beer floats were our first choice, of course. But we’ve also had Coke floats (my favorite) and Vernors floats (it has to be Vernors; regular old ginger ale won’t do), and Ryan has tried some even more adventurous options, like Strawberry Crush and Sunkist Orange floats.

It’s a simple thing, but it’s also a fun thing to anticipate at the end of the week. We’re looking forward to trying out a few more flavors–right now, Dr. Pepper floats are the number one request!