like water into wine…

i do love to cook but baking has never really taken up residence on my radar. don’t get me wrong, i’m quite fond of quiches and casseroles - i’m talking more about the sweet treats kinda baking, with sugar and cocoa, that you are required to consume with either coffee or milk to temper their sucrose content that i haven‘t ever gotten in to. but a couple of times recently i’ve put flour and sugar in pan and marveled at the miraculous results. it really is a mind-blowing event in culinary chemistry if you think about it. magic. like sawing an audience member in half…no, more like putting a dog into a box and pulling out a scantily clad woman. since i don’t understand the exact chemical reactions yet, i’m left in awe when these goods turn out puffy and delicious like they‘re supposed to. we recently had fresh, organic blueberries from the farmers’ market and andy had a hankering for muffins. unfortunately we didn’t have all of the ingredients called for in the recipe i‘d found, so i winged it. here’s how it happened…

preheat oven to 375°

grease the muffin pan

in a bowl, mix 1/3 c. sugar, 2 c. flour, ½ tsp. kosher salt, ½ tsp. baking soda and 1 tsp. baking powder

in a separate bowl, beat together 1 c. sour cream, 1 egg, 1 tbs. oil, 2 tbs. milk and 1 tsp. vanilla. make a divot in center of the flour mixture and pour the liquid mix into it

carefully fold it together, taking caution not to over mix, as i read that makes batter tough. better to be lumpy than tough.

then fold in blueberries

pour into muffin cups and bake for about 20 minutes or until the ole’ clean toothpick trick works.

presto! bravo! if i do say so myself…

oh no... here goes our poor lil' blog... limpin' along...

andy's been so busy with work, which is a great thing. and now i've got a new job with these people. if you divide and multiply all that it equals less time for the blog. there's stuff in the pipe though... any minute now...

When in Texas, do as the Texans do and eat BBQ

austin restaurants seem to love austin food bloggers. so much so, they occasionally invite them to dinner. it’s really awesome that we’ve now become them. that's how andy, logan, rachel and i ended up at the county line, a bbq joint with locations in texas, oklahoma and new mexico.


honestly, after our first visit with andy's family during our texas scouting mission, we probably wouldn't have given it another try. on that trip i'd opted out of the all-you-can-eat madness, choosing a couple of meats, a salad and macaroni and cheese without being impressed. after inquiring about the mac and cheese, i was encouraged by the waitress to try their 'homemade' version. it was a dish of runny cheese sauce and noodles more akin to the stuff out of the box. the brisket and ribs were passable, the salad was fresh and the bread was springy and good. not exactly high marks in the categories that bbq restaurants typically aim for.

when the nice folks at the county line invited us back, we went hoping for the best, and hoping this talk about a tub full of shiner bock was true. the set-up was awesome. we were hosted at the county line location ‘on the lake’. looked more like a river to me…the narrow body of water lined the courtyard that was dotted with tables.

they made our menu options easy by laying out a spread. there were turkey and pork sandwiches, potato salad, pulled pork enchilada-thingys, baked beans and pickles from which to make a plate.

the sandwiches were dry and sent me looking for the bbq sauce that I had surely missed on the buffet.

the salad was a tasty take on the standard recipe and the beans were firm and pretty good. the pulled pork wrapped in tortillas, topped with all the tex-mex fixins, drizzled with a house-made spicy tomato and jalapeno sauce were the stars. I’m not even sure if these are a regular menu item; they definitely should be.

andy is a huge vanilla ice cream fan (how funny and plain jane huh? cute.) and said this fresh made version was rather icy and unmemorable.

the rumors had been true, ice cold texas-brewed shiner bock made an appearance along with wines produced locally by Fall Creek Vineyards which had a really nice representative on hand and a cute tag line, “where the sky fell in love with the earth and gave birth to wine.”

The drinks proved to be a great accompaniment to the view and we loitered and lingered on into the evening.

our soco neighborhood rocks

andy and i had an awesome date in our neighborhood the other night. started out at doc's motorworks, a slightly ramshackle eatery with some of the best outdoor seating, 20 or 30 tables snuggled together on a patio right on s. congress avenue. perfect people watching. monday night- we were kinda in luck...it was 2 for 1 burgers, but they weren't all that stellar. the patio more than made up for it. then we hit the continental club- a fabulously retro, old school country music, rockabilly, punk-y, red velvet curtains and miller high life having bar right up the street. it was crazy; i couldn't quit smiling. there were 70-year-old jimmy buffet look-a-likes and 20-yr-old hipster tattoed chicks doing the texas two step together. the dance floor was full all night to the sounds of dale watson on stage. he's a crazy ole country singer with a silver pompadour, and a voice that's a cross between merle haggard and johnny cash, who employs a stellar guitar player in his band. ah, sweet austin...

when life gives you limes...

we're water with lemon kinda people. thus we've noticed something rather interesting- there don't appear to be any cut up lemons in this whole town. we figure that's why every time we order, our server brings us water with lime and doesn't even bat his or her eye. it never occured to me that the only reason restaurants in south carolina have tubs of lemons is because of the copious amounts of sweet tea sold. here, where the hands-down winner of the drink popularity contest appears to be margaritas, they don't need no stinkin' lemons apparently.

we've come a long way baby...

one, of the 22 hours' worth, of moments that we spent on the road in that big ole truck...

Our place is getting there too. We're almost ready to start entertaining, don't you think?

insert hotdog weiner pun here

One of the first foodie events we accompanied boots in the oven to was this hotdog tasting party hosted by the friendliest local food writer, Addie Broyles. She was researching for an article she planned to write in Austin's newspaper. Simple in theory- a blind taste-test of 15 hotdogs.

Because we aren’t that Kobayashi kid of Nathan’s eating-competition fame, we chose to try niblets in round 1.

We jotted lots of greasy notes. Then came the vote, recorded on a midget chalkboard, where we unanimously separated the pleasantly oily, plump, crisp, flavorful weiners from the mealy, oddly uniform, limp dogs.

After narrowing it down, we threw the finalists back on the grill (along with the Hebrew National which lost on the flavor vote but was resurrected by Jewish lobbyists) and this time we tasted them dressed on a bun.

While the bread definitely toned down some of the saltiness and overpowering flavors in the various dogs, I still preferred the same hotdog from round 1…surprisingly, Andy and I were in agreement…even more surprising was the brand we chose-the HEB grocery store’s Texas Heritage Original Beef. The group of food bloggers voted again. Turned out that our taste buds weren’t too intoxicated by Tecate to pick the ‘weiner’ (c’mon, had to…).

Our fave tied for the overall number one with Nathan’s Famous Skinless Beef. No wonder that Kobayashi kid can eat so many…


Check out the professional’s recollection of the event in this newspaper story complete with cute pics: http://www.austin360.com/food_drink/content/food_drink/stories/2009/05/0520hotdogs.html