Day 5: Restaurant Review

Ingredient Review

by Meghana

Today I visited Ingredient, a chain restaurant. My friends and I went to the Leawood branch, located near Town Center. During our walk to the restaurant from the parking lot, we got a feel for the surrounding area. It has a family-friendly vibe and is home to many restaurants, boutiques, and stores of all kinds. It’s a nice part of the city.

As we walked into the air-conditioned restaurant, I took in the black and white, part-modern, part-rustic decor. We arrived around 12:15 p.m., Ingredient’s busy lunch hour. If you don’t have a lot of time on your hands, I don’t recommend going to Ingredient at this time.

You order food at Ingredient like you would at a cafeteria or fast-food place. It reminded me of Noodles and Company or Chipotle. There was a rather long line. After we ordered, we filled up our cups at the soda fountain and sat down at the tables.

Our food arrived pretty quickly. I ordered a make-your-own burger with a pretzel bun, basil pesto, avocado, bacon, and cheddar cheese. The burgers are a clever idea. As I bit into the burger, I could taste the crispy bacon, smooth avocado, and the savory pesto. My side of sweet potato fries were flaky and delicious. It was an overall delicious meal.

The service we received was pretty good, especially considering how crowded Ingredient was. Our food arrived in 10-15 minutes, and the staff was pleasant and helpful. They did accidentally forget the cheese on one of my friend’s burgers, and they forgot another friend’s second order of deviled eggs. Many of my friends ordered burgers. They all found them generally satisfying. Keep in mind that Ingredient will prepare your burger well-done unless you specify otherwise.

Ingredient does not have a dessert menu, but their decent selection of foods makes up for that. They have a wide selection of salads and burgers, and most options can be ordered gluten-free. Ingredient’s vegetarian selection is quite vast, so don’t be afraid to take your vegetarian friends and family there.

Ingredient is a fantastic restaurant, and I would gladly go again.

Food: Three stars

Service: Three stars

Pricing: $-$$

Not too crowded.

There is a kids’ menu

Ingredient

Park Place

11563 Ash Street

Leawood, KS 66211

913-948-6800

Ratings:

One star: Fair

Two stars: Good

Three stars: Excellent

Four stars: Fabulous

$: Average entree under $10

$$: Average entree under $20

$$$: Average entree under $30

$$$$: Average entree over $30

Day 4: KCUR

Teacher’s note: On Thursday, students practiced reading weather, news, and advertisements for pretend radio broadcasts. They worked on monitoring their volume, pitch, and speed to optimize their vocal deliveries. After that, they wrote and recorded their own news, sports, and/or commercial features. Here is Meghana's performance:

Later that day, students toured KCUR studios in Kansas City. As their kind and knowledgeable host, Stephen Steigman—chief of KCUR broadcast operations—provided background information on public radio and some of the technical details that allow the NPR affiliate to beam its news and entertainment programming to radios throughout the Kansas City area. Mr. Steigman then recorded the students as they had a conversation. 

Here is the full interview.

The students watched in wonder as Mr. Steigman then took an excerpt of audio from the proceedings and added it to a popular song. During the entire van ride back to the school, students laughed and sang along to the new hit song:

Day 3: KCPT

On Wednesday, students took a tour of the KCPT studios in Kansas City, learning about what distinguishes public television from its commercial counterpart. With those differences in mind, each student wrote and directed a public service announcement. Here is Meghana's.

Day 2: KU School of Journalism

BARSTOW STUDENTS LEARN ABOUT JOURNALISM AT UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

LAWRENCE, Kan. — On Tuesday, June 2, 11 students from Barstow’s Media Mania summer camp traveled to the University of Kansas’s School of Journalism in Lawrence, Kan., to learn more about the process of creating print, online, and television news.

KU school recruiter Ashley Anguiano led the campers, teacher assistant Matt Gannon, and teacher Mr. Guldin around the Stauffer-Flint and Dole buildings. Ms. Anguiano informed the group about the different aspects of a journalism and mass communications degree at KU. She encouraged anyone pursuing a career in media to write as much and as often as possible.

"To be a good journalist," Ms. Anguiano said, "you need to put aside your biases and report the truth."

The tour concluded with a trip to the Media Crossroads, located within the Kansas Union building. Media Crossroads Director Cal Butcher introduced the campers to the “green screen” that KU students use to produce the student news show, Good Morning KU.

Day 1: Tomorrowland Movie Review

Disney’s Tomorrowland

Review by Meghana L.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Tomorrowland is a long-waited, action-packed adventure movie. The expectations for this movie have been pretty high throughout Disney’s fanbase. The trailers and different promotional media have even got some people who don’t normally enjoy Disney movies, very excited. Though it was much hyped, Tomorrowland mostly lived up to the expectations set for it, with its original plot and decent acting.

The movie is about a group of people who all have something to do with a place called Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland is a place where all the artists, scientists, inventors, and all the greatest thinkers of the world decided to actually change it. Tomorrowland is in a different dimension than our own world, where people are free to build, invent, and do anything they want to without other complications like the government, or endangering the lives of the civilian population. There is Frank Walker (George Clooney) who discovered Tomorrowland at the 1964 World’s Fair at ten years old when a recruiting robot, Athena (Raffey Cassidy) gives him a pin to enter Tomorrowland. Athena and Frank both get kicked out of the place because Frank built something dangerous. Casey (Brittany Robertson) is a young scientist and dreamer from Cape Canaveral who gets arrested, and finds a Tomorrowland pin with her stuff. When she touches the pin it takes her to a place filled with jet-packs and hope. Little does she know that the pin was given to her by Athena who thinks that Casey might be able to reverse the contraption predicting the end of the world. After a freak explosion and hijacking a few cars, the trio returns to Tomorrowland to reverse the damage that was caused by Governor David Nix (Hugh Laurie).

Tomorrowland was overall a fun and exciting movie, though it got confusing at times. Everyone’s acting was believable, and screenwriters Damon Lindoff and Brad Bird (also the director) made everyone’s dialogue run smoothly, without making it too dramatic. It has a lighthearted, kid-friendly feel to it. When you look at it from the big picture, the plot is easy to follow, and keeps all ages interested. The plot, which was original and well put together, was a bit confusing at times. For example, were all the people in Tomorrowland robots, so they never aged? And how exactly did they get to Tomorrowland? Is inter-dimensional travel really that easy? The list goes on and on. But if you ignore the questions you have about the details, this movie is not hard to enjoy. You can compare this movie to a number of dystopian films such as Divergent and the Legend series. But this picture has something the other films and books lack. It doesn’t follow the overdone cliché about defeating the government through some heavily planned rebellion, but rather says that for positive things to happen, one must have a positive way of thinking.

An original and inspiring movie, Disney’s Tomorrowland lived up to the expectations set for it. Director Brad Bird helped capture an essence of hope we all still have for the human race, and gave us enough inspiration to make us want to do something to help it. Tomorrowland may not be a perfect movie, but it has a sense of hope and inspiration that make it a beautiful movie.