The Hedgehogs Return To Kansas (RESTAURANT REVIEW - Baan Thai, Leavenworth, KS)

After an extra week in Austin to recover from gall bladder surgery, April was feeling good enough to make the trip back to Kansas so she could perform at the remaining weekends of the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. Before she left, Floyd decided to show her how much he was going to miss her -



...or perhaps he was just being silly. The world may never know.

The hedgehogs were excited to get back on a plane! This time, they were going from Austin to Colorado, then Colorado to Kansas.









Once they got to Colorado, the hedgehogs were both very excited to have their first ride on a moving sidewalk -



After all the fun of the sidewalk (Buttercup felt a bit ill, but Hedgie wanted to do it again!), April and the hedgehogs discovered that they were going to have their first ever ride on a propeller plane.



As neat as the plane looked on the outside, it didn't have very great views from the inside -





(Though, the hedgehogs commented that getting to see the landing gear (wheels) get drawn up into the wing upon lift-off and then come back out at decent was pretty darn cool.)

After getting back to Kansas, April's host, Duane, agreed to go with her and the hedgehogs to check out the Thai restaurant down the street.

Baan Thai
301 S. 4th St., Leavenworth, KS 66048 (also has a location in Manhattan, KS)
Facebook page

They started out with some Spring Rolls (Cabbage, carrots, celery, bean thread, with spring roll wrapper, deep-fried and served with sweet and sour sauce.)



Baan Thai didn't have April's go-to Thai dish (Musumun Tofo Curry) on the menu, so she decided to try Pad Preaw Waan (Sweet and Sour) - tofu stir-fried with pineapple, cucumber, onion, bell pepper, and tomatoes. It was delicious! The flavors went together well, the sauce was great, and the spice level was just right.




Hedgie figures that by being helpful, perhaps he'll get an extra taste.

On the way out, the hedgehogs stopped to make a new friend, who seemed a bit taken aback at their presence -

Ruby Red Stir-Fry

Sorry for the ultra-late post today; I was going to go check out Cafe Gratitude and Mud Pie Bakery today and blog about those, but instead, I've been sewing a couple of Tudor-era shirts for my friend Aaron (who has been so nice as to let me stay with him and his wife pretty much the whole time I've been up here in Kansasouri). The good news is that the shirts are almost done! The bad news is that it's 11:45 pm, I'm not packed at all, and I'm supposed to be leaving to go back to Austin tomorrow morning. The original plan was to leave at 7 am, but I'm pretty sure that I have as much chance of making that happen as I do discovering a TARDIS in the front yard with a certain handsome Time Lord waiting to take me on adventures.

*sigh*

In the meantime, here's some pictures of this really delicious stir-fry I made about 10 weeks ago. I think it fits nicely with my previous beet post.



I started by dicing a tomato, a red bell pepper, and a beet, and sautéed them in a bit of Earth Balance.



When those were nice and soft, I added brown rice and black beans, and made a sauce of peanut butter, mango chutney, Bragg liquid aminos, and salsa. I cooked it for another 5-10 minutes until everything was heated and the flavors had combined. It was super tasty (and so pretty!)

Kale, Rice, Bean, & Tomato Wrap

This was something I made last week. Since I had a lot of brown rice and black beans, I decided to put them together with kale and tomato, sauté them in Earth Balance, and season them with a bit of garlic powder, ginger, and salt. Wrap them up in an Ezekiel 4:9 sprouted grain tortilla, and yum!