U.S. President Barack Obama spent Tuesday night in Kansas City, sharing a dinner of ribs with four lucky city residents at the iconic Arthur Bryant's Barbeque, before speaking about the economy and American working families at the Uptown Center the next morning.

Reuters reports that the dinner was arranged by press secretary Josh Earnest, who grew up in Kansas, with people who had written to Obama in recent months about a mixture of issues.

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Single mother Valerie McCaw emailed the president last week and described how she had to work seven days a week running a small engineering business and sending her son to college, and "struggles to pay the bills." On Tuesday night, she had the chance to tell her story face to face with Obama and the other three Kansas City residents.

Another resident he had dinner with, Victor Fugate of Butler, Mo., introduced him at the Uptown Wednesday morning as somebody who could "really tear up some ribs."

It was a chance for the president to get away for a while from dealing with international crises and being with people who he says remind him of why he ran for office.

He had just finished announcing new sanctions against Russia in Washington before he flew to Kansas City.

At Arthur Bryant's, Obama loosened his tie, ordered a half-slab of ribs and fries, bottled water and a Bud Lite, and later made the rounds to shake hands with other diners, many of whom had taken out their cellphone cameras as soon as the saw the president enter the popular restaurant.

In the same restaurant, a girls' softball team was having a blowout, and a poker tournament was being televised.

The president had visited other places in the country during the past month and met with people who have written to him about the economy.

Josh Earnest says Obama makes it a habit to read at least ten letters a day out of the big stack on his desk and answers many of them, referring the rest to concerned government agencies to respond to.

These visits are part of the campaign to motivate Democrats to vote in the November elections and put more of his party mates in congress, so he could push his legislative agenda better during his last two years in office.

This week, Congress breaks for month-long summer recess with no agreement on Obama's request for emergency funding to enable the administration to grapple with a flood of migrant children from Central America streaming across the border.