Given the recent ideas being debated and decisions being made in our nation’s capital, I think the bumper sticker I’ve seen many times but again this week is appropriate:
If you aren’t completely appalled, you haven’t been paying attention.
The Soup Peddler, an awesome local business that makes wonderful soups and other goodies, is donating 5% of all sales to Greyhound Pets of America Central Texas if you order through through this link.
How does it work? It’s simple… you order your food, and the Soup Peddler delivers it to your door if you live in delivery areas, or you can easily pick it up. The food is tasty, healthy, and cheap.
This is a great and easy way to support a great local cause while supporting a great local business. Please check it out!
technorati tags: austin, texas, dining, food, greyhounds, charity
Tuesday night a very old friend of mine — one that dates back to kindergarten and 1979 — came to Austin for the evening to go to a show. We had the pleasure of meeting her and her husband for dinner, and to try to catch up on the 12 years since we last saw each other.
The thing I love about old, dear friends is that it doesn’t matter how much time passes… you can pick up right where you left off. As I expected, it was a great visit with great conversation.
We took them to Malaga Tapas & Bar for dinner. This is a great place to take people when you’re not sure what they like to eat and drink, and you anticipate a lot of talking during dinner.
We got a table immediately and ordered the following:
Overall this was a great evening, and everyone was happy with the food choice.
technorati tags: austin, texas, dining, food, restaurants
Saturday night we took my parents to Stubb’s for dinner. We had to pick my dad up downtown after the UT game, and as we passed Stubb’s my mother commented that they buy the barbeque sauce. The weather being too bad to go to The Salt Lick, an idea was born.
We opted to sit outside since it had finally cooled off, which was great because my parents got to check out the amphitheatre.
We started with an order of onion rings and fried green tomatoes. While both were fried, neither was greasy. The onion rings are sliced to about medium thickness and served with Stubb’s Original Bar-B-Q Sauce. This sauce has a fluid consistency with a mild tanginess and lots of coarsely ground black pepper. The fried green tomatoes are sliced very thickly (about an inch thick) and are lightly fried in a corn meal batter, and served with ranch dressing. Both were very good, and an order of each was a little too much for four people.
I ordered the smoked turkey breast plate with mashed potatoes and fried okra on the side. The turkey was so tender that it crumbled upon touching it with a fork, and was not dry at all (as turkey breast can be at times). I also used a little of the Original Bar-B-Q sauce on this, which was a nice compliment.
The mashed potatoes had the consistency I liked — a little lumpy with skins every now and again. There was obviously a lot of butter and milk in the potatoes, as they were way too creamy to be only potatoes. The gravy was a nice, standard white gravy, which I had them serve on the side. Because of the creaminess of the potatoes I only needed a little bit. The fried okra was of course good, but it’s also hard to mess this up unless you put too much salt in the batter.
My family also enjoyed plates of beef brisket, sausage, and pork loin with additional sides of cole slaw and potato salad, and all complimented on how good everything was. None of us had saved room for desert this time around, but we’ll catch it next time.
Overall it was a great experience with great service, and I was amazed at how not crowded Stubb’s was at 7 pm on a Saturday. Highly recommended as a place to take visitors when there’s not a show.
technorati tags: stubb’s, austin, texas, barbeque, bbq, dining, restaurants
I saw this article yesterday on CNN.com:
Researchers: Homes have more TVs than people
According to the article, there are 2.73 TVs per household, while there are only 2.55 people per household.
Is it just me, or is there something fundamentally wrong with this? I’ve also noticed what I find to be some additional disturbing trends with children and TVs:
What ever happened to just talking to your kids, or having them interact with the rest of the world? I’m all for some entertainment, but this seems a bit much to me.
technorati tags: family, DVDs, TVs, televisions, consumerism, trends
Today is my dad’s birthday. My parents will be in town this weekend to celebrate.
In honor of my dad’s special day, I’m sharing all things that he likes to do when he’s in Austin:
As you can see, some of these are not Austin chains, but they are things that you can’t do when you live in the small town of Orange, Texas.
I suspect we’ll be hitting a lot of these over the weekend. Happy birthday, dad!
After three days of eating unhealthy and drinking too much at the 2006 ACL Festival, we decided that this week is about organic and light.
This evening I made a great pasta sauce from scratch and no recipe — totally by the seat of my pants with ingredients we had at home. It turned out really well, so I am sharing my newly created recipe with you.
The ingredients (all organic if possible):
Pasta: Sautee onion, garlic, squash, broccoli, and 1/2 the basil in olive oil on medium-low heat until all ingredients are about halfway cooked. Add one can tomato sauce, Herbs from Province to taste, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer another 5 minutes or so. Add tomatoes, remaining basil, tomato paste to desired consistency (I used 1/2 the can). Cover and simmer on low until ready to eat, stirring occasionally. Serve over wheat pasta.
Bread: Brush bread with olive oil or butter. Sprinkle with Tone’s Rosemary Garlic Seasoning. Bake at 350 degrees until desired crispiness. For this I just used sliced bread because we didn’t have anything fancier.
Total preparation and cooking took about 30 minutes, so it’s a great weeknight meal. Serves about 3.
We served this meal with the Paringa 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon, a nice wine that tastes much more expensive than the $12 range it actually costs.
The finished product:
We waited out a short shower Sunday morning and headed down to the festival early, arriving about 12:30.
Bands we saw:
That evening we went to a double taping at Austin City Limits - Sufjan Stevens and The Raconteurs. I’ve never been to a taping before and this had to be one of the coolest things to do in Austin.
Both bands were great, but I preferred Sufjan Stevens’ set more. His music is very orchestral, which makes seeing something like that live so completely different from what you’ll hear on a CD. The Raconteurs were also great, but they also insisted on redoing several songs (they replayed one song three times) which got a little annoying after a while.
So Sunday was the day we discovered new music for us… five bands we had never heard. Overall the perfect end to a great weekend.
