Mary Janes Cafe in Warrensburg Mo – A review of sorts

I went to Mary Jane’s Cafe for the second time today. The first time I went, I went with Jordan and we thought it was okay. It’s no five star resturant but really, I don’t think we have any of those here in Warrensburg. It was good home cooking though which is nice. Jordan enjoyed his food and I agreed it was good, but I didn’t like mine. I ordered an omelet and the cheese is sliced cheese. I have food issues and I really just do not like sliced cheese. The couple bites I did eat were good tasting but the texture just wasn’t something I could handle. Which again, wasn’t them, it was me and my food issues of which I have many.

I went back there today with Cody though and we enjoyed ourselves.

The biscuits and gravy were pretty darn good and his sunny side up eggs were perfect. I had french toast with scrambled eggs and bacon and thought it was pretty yummy. The portion sizes are pretty big so neither of us were able to finish our meals, but the food was pretty good.

I loved the dishes (and the food) and our waitress was the right amount of attentive. Not so attentive that she interrupts our conversation but attentive enough that our needs were met. The only thing I would change about Mary Jane’s is the wall color. That’s also a personal thing, but I think the orange isn’t very welcoming. Love the red. Love the vintage cafe feel. I just think the orange looks like a mix of mustard and ketchup.

Mary Janes Cafe is on twitter and you can follow them here. Their facebook fan page can be found here.

All in all we give them two thumbs up. It’s a very down home type of place with pretty good food at reasonable prices. If you’re in the Burg area and looking for down home cooking or a place to eat the morning after a night on the town, we recommend this place

Edited: May 10th, 2010

Planet Comicon 2010 – A disappointment…

I went to Planet Comicon today and I must say that it was a bit of a disappointment. It was basically one big vendor room and you had to pay to get in. They had one panel going on, a little food that I’m pretty sure made me sick, and the vendor room. That was it. I didn’t understand why people were leaving when we showed up an hour after the con opened, but I quickly figured it out.

I did meet fun new people and met up with Director Dave from Visioncon, but there wasn’t a whole lot to do except for meet the couple other people that were in costume and/or pose for photos with people (which was fun).  I did dress in my Alice costume from my birthday party though and had my photo taken lots of times and I met a couple new fun people so it wasn’t a complete wash.

This lovely girl asked to take my photo and I loved her costume so much that I had our photo taken together. Someone asked to take our photo together and then asked how old we were. I’m 27… she’s 14… it made me giggle. She did seem like she’d be fun to hang out with though in about 4 years

Then Jordan and I talked to Bethany from Bethany sew and sew while we waited our turn for her husband to draw our picture. She makes the coolest aprons (aka instant costumes) and I’m hoping to show her an idea I have for a new Alice apron for her to make and me to purchase. She’s fun and her items were really neat. She also does different types of bags and will be making a special laptop bag for Jordan and I (separate bags of course lol). Her husband was also fun. He is Lee Leslie from Rigby the Barbarian.

If you sit and pose for him, he will draw a lovely picture of you. Jordan and I  had one done since we were in Wonderland garb and it would go well with the living room.

Then we moved on to Dane Ault and Ashlie Hammond from Monkey Minion Press. They were really fun and Ashlie and I discussed selling handmade. She gave me an earring idea and I have to call Brianne later to discuss it with her. I hope to add it to the store soon though. Ashlie does crocheted hats, comic page wallets, and more. Their booth just had some neat stuff in it.

I have to email a couple other artists i met because I have things I want from them that they couldn’t do at the show. And that about wraps up planet comicon. There wasn’t a lot to do and we didn’t stay long. I was fairly disappointed in it although I did like wearing my costume and having my photo taken. Jordan assured me that most conventions are not this bad and that I will enjoy future ones. I hope he’s right because I’m looking forward to doing more this year.

Edited: March 28th, 2010

Happy First kiss Day or Happy St. Patty’s Day

Yesterday while everyone else was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day by getting drunk, Cody and I celebrated our happy first kiss day. Awe. Cheesy? Yeah, it is but it’s meaningful to us and I like that we both remember it. We did go out to a local bar with some friends though. It was “Fitters” if you’re local to Warrensburg, MO.

O.M.G. there were some people there that wow. I was embarrassed for them. From the old drunken saber tooth (so old she was no longer a cougar) hitting on my male AND female friends to the chick that was so drunk she was throwing up by 9:30… Fitters had interesting people watching.

I’m glad it’s within walking distance so everyone can park at my house and we can walk down but I also am glad we don’t go that often. I don’t think I could handle it… My friend Ro invited us down (us being Cody, Udom and myself) and we almost didn’t go since we were all so tired (at 8:30 omg) but we went anyway. Kind of glad we did or I would have missed all the fun. Okay. Now Photo dump:

Edited: March 18th, 2010

TaD – Painted luggage and teal carafe

I started out with a bland piece of luggage and a plain teal carafe and painted them today. This will not be going to my Etsy store though because they are headed over to my booth at Those Were the Days in Warrensburg, Mo. I have some other stuff I need to bring over too and honestly? I need to clear out the whole booth and start over. It should be fun…

Back to TaD though.

Sorry about the glare from the window :-p

At the advice of my sister, I added some grass on the bottom of the luggage. I like it more now and this is why I like Tad. It allows me to share what I’m working and receive advice on how to make it better.

Edited: March 3rd, 2010

Listing on Freecycle

I’ve been listing things on Freecycle today because I want them out of my house and it made me wonder… how do you list on freecycle? Do you do first come, first serve. Do you have a method to picking the person? Do you do whoever picks it up first? Do you hold it for someone or no?

I apparently listed my first thing wrong. It was a bookcase that we put at the curb and I emailed the group when the bookcases was taken. Some ahole emailed me to tell me the way I did it was against Freecycle etiquette and he hoped my bookcase was hit by a car. … I think he had issues.

In any case. Do you freecycle? Do you have a method to the madness if you do? I have a bunch of stuff we’re selling/donating/freecycling depending on what the item is and how big it is…

Edited: December 15th, 2009

UCM Homecoming Parade 2009

So last week was homecoming for UCM (University of Central Missouri). I’m not sure what all goes on during homecoming since I don’t attend the college and don’t devote time to what they’re up to, but my friend Cooleen let me know all about the Friday night homecoming tradition of go out, get hammered until the bars close at 1 am, go to an after party, stay awake until the bars open again between 6 and 8 am, eat “The breakfast of champions” and then go attend the parade. It sounded just a little too much not fun to me except for the parade part. I like parades. So where does this parade go? Right past my house! Cooleen, Cody and I sat in the front yard with our blankets, chairs, and tea and enjoyed the parade. Cody made biscuits and gravy at one point so we ate those outside too. I felt a bit awful eating a warm breakfast while watching the parade, but I guess it’s a benefit of living where I do. It was awesome! And I also realized my boys had never seen an American parade. They’ve seen loads of Japanese ones, but never an American one. It was great explaining things to them and watching them collect candy.

We had Chinese dragons and Storm Troopers, Darth Vader and President Obama (in the form of a cutout) plus LOADS of bands and globes. It was… interesting.

There are more photos, but I won’t bore you. I’d like to give a shout out to the dude the passed out in my flower bed at 3 pm. You’re lucky I didn’t have my camera handy or your pretty drunk face would be plastered on my websites. No hard feelings though. You only passed out on the one plant I’ve managed to not kill yet. Really. No hard feelings at all. Just friendly advice. Learn to hold your liquor or don’t drink so much Then go find the chick with the pink hair and beg forgiveness for crushing her plants with your drunken body. OH! And thank your nice female friend for coming to find you because we were debating on calling the police for you or poking you with a sharp stick…

Edited: October 12th, 2009

Drink *REAL* Milk

I was trolling the interwebs this morning because I can’t sleep and started reading this article on “real” milk. I buy “real” milk from a local farmer (breezy hill farms near centerview) and I came across this gem about how grassfed cow milk can help reduce your risk of breast cancer.

For example, French researchers compared CLA levels in the breast tissues of 360 women. The women with the most CLA in their tissue (and thus the most CLA in their diets) had a 74 percent lower risk of breast cancer than the women with the least CLA.(Bougnoux et al, Inform, 10:S43, 1999.) If an American woman were to switch from grainfed to grassfed dairy products, she would have levels of CLA similar to those with the lowest risk of cancer.

Amazing isn’t it? We’ve been buying real milk from Art and Debra that is just… it’s delicious. Truly. My food tastes better with it on there and even though it still has cream in it, it doesn’t taste overly thick the way store bought whole milk tastes to me. I bought it for the taste because it just tastes better than even the organic milk I bought in the store. Now I’m researching it to see what health benefits it has for me. Apparently there are a lot of health benefits to drinking grassfed cow milk and I didn’t know it.

Growing up, my dad always said milk was milk. He didn’t get at all why my sister and I would HATE one brand and not drink it because “it tastes funny.” After all, milk is milk right?

It’s not though. When the quality of the ingredients is low, the quality of the product is low. It’s like comparing velveta cheese food product to Amish cheese. They’re both in “cheese” section but which one really tastes good? The one that can actually spoil. The quality of ingredient in the the Amish cheese would win every single time. It is the same thing with milk. When you pump your cow full of cow junk food (grain) and then hormones and shots to make up for what the cow isn’t getting from it’s food, and then more stuff so it produces for longer… you end up with an inferior product. Yeah… it’s cheap but at what cost?

At what point do we decide that we don’t want cheap food, we want GOOD food? At what point do we realize it’s quality over quantity and decide to change how we eat? At what point do we decide the way we’re treating our food supply is inhumane and we won’t take part in the process anymore? For me, that point came when I started educating myself on what was in my food and how my food was treated.

My husband and I have slowly been changing how we eat. By slowly I mean it started in Japan when we’d buy produce off base simply because it tasted better and was fresher than what was sold on base. We’ve moved on to the farmer’s market here, “real” milk, and now we’re looking to buy 1/2 a cow from our milk guy. You know what we’ve noticed over the years? When you eat better, you feel better and you’re a more productive human. Added bonus of eating better quality food? You need less of it to fill you up and thus you lose weight quite easily… as in without even trying to lose it.

So there’s my little food blurb for today. Try real milk from a local farmer that feeds his cow grass. Cows were meant to be in a field eating grass and enjoying the sunshine. A popular image used in commercials on tv and yet so few cows in the American food product production line actually get to live that life. Sad isn’t it?

I’m headed to the farmer’s market in a couple hours with my MIL and then we’re headed to Breezy Hill farm to pick up real milk from Art and give him some buttons I made this morning while I couldn’t sleep. After that? To the blackberry patch for picking blackberries

Edited: August 22nd, 2009

Breezy Hill Farm and the yummy food found there

My friend Laura and I have been going to the Farmer’s Market lately and she found this little farm that sells grass fed cows, milk, eggs, chicken, and honey. We arrived at the farmer’s market late the other day so most of the vendors were packed up and gone. I did meet some fellow estians (people who sell on Etsy) and I bought some pattypan squash to try out. That was about it. We headed over to Breezy Hill farms in hopes that we’d find something good and boy did we!

We were given a tour of the farm, saw how the chickens are raised, met a calf, did a walk around the gardens etc. It was lovely. … and definitely breezy! The owners were awesome and gave us both some cucumbers and tomatoes to take home. I’ve tried both and they’re delicious. Even more delicious though was the farm fresh real milk and the honey we bought. I ended up buying a gallon of milk on Saturday and half of it is gone already. Prior to the farm fresh milk, we’ve been going through a gallon every two weeks or so. It’s mainly used for cooking when we buy it from the store. This stuff though, this stuff was great on granola with local blackberries and strawberries. OMGosh YUM! They also sell grassfed beef and you can meet your steak before you eat it! That part tripped me out a little bit because it’s a little too close to my food chain, but I liked being able to see where the cows/chickens live, how they’re treated, what they eat etc. We were able to pet one little calf and she was just the cutest little thing although a little shy at first.

How cool is this pillow btw? It’s on etsy at gobuggygo and her stuff really fits with this post’s theme. moving on…

So where do we buy this stuff? Breezy Hill Farm has their own site and they are happy to answer food questions if you’re looking to get in to eating local, farm fresh, organic foods. The Farmer’s Market in Warrensburg Mo, is just across the street from the library on North and Holden. It takes place in a parking lot reserved for church and/or market use only. You can find vendors there from 7 am to 11 am on Saturdays and 4:30 pm Wednesdays. The prices are about as awesome as the produce. Some of it was slightly more expensive then the store and some of it was far far less than the store but all of it was better quality. Having such good quality produce makes it easy to eat healthy foods and the growers are always happy to explain how to eat something new to you. You may even find a handmade item seller or two!

La Sous Terre shows up on the Breezy Hill Farm website a lot and they’re showing a movie tomorrow at 6 pm for all you locals. Laura and I will be there Tuesday evening, I’ll be the chick with the P!I!N!K! hair

Edited: August 10th, 2009