Christmas Feasts, Yum.

For Christmas dinner, I had turkey, ham, green bean casserole, celeriac remoulade, brie en croute, apple pie, and cherry chocolate bread pudding. I made the celeriac and the bread pudding. The celeriac came out of Keller's Bouchon cookbook, and it was awful. I attribute this to not owning a mandoline- the slices were way too large, so the texture was just wrong- mushy instead of crunchy. The bread pudding was an Emeril recipe, and was also delicious and really easy. It would've been better had I used the three cups of cream called for rather than chickening out and using all 2% milk. My cousin made the green bean casserole (good, but it needed a thicker top layer of onions) and apple pie (yummy). The turkey was a little dry, and not quite as good as the spicy turkey I'd had the night before.

Also worth mentioning is the Christmas Eve party last night. My aunt's family is very sweet, and they alway throw a party with an amazing spread of food, so I try to go when I'm around. I snacked on yummy cranberry-sauced meatballs, the aforementioned spicy southwestern roast turkey, italian cream cake, sugar cookie snowmen, and pinot noir.

Holidays= Too Much Food. Yikes!

This week I've had:

-homemade breakfast tacos with scrambled egg, queso fresco, whole wheat tortillas, and weird hot sauce from Malawi (not very good, I can't wait to make it to Belize to buy more Marie Sharps)

-pljeskavice stolen off Jon's plate at a Bosnian restaurant, and my own lamb stew with kajmak and veggies

-strange baked goods from a panaderia. Including dulce-de-leche-stuffed churros, conchas covered in buttery frosting, and some Christmas-themed cookies.

-very lardy yummy tortillas from said panaderia, with spicy hummus and dolmades from the Middle Eastern market.

-gianduja from Cost Plus. It's their house brand, trying to be Nutella, but it's crunchy and soooo much better.

-A cheeseburger with bacon from Whataburger. Very overcooked, and kind of icky.

-A softshell crab po'boy with fried zucchini and housemade potato chips from a beachside restaurant in Surfside, TX, still crushed by the last hurricane.

-Lamajoun from the Middle Eastern market, cooked on my new pizza stone ($7 at Ross!)

-"Bourbon balls" from the ME market, because they're a pain to make and I always crave them in winter. Turns out, it's a REALLY bad idea to buy bourbon balls at a ME market, even if they're really cheap. These were like glorified marzipan, rolled in chopped nuts. I like marzipan, but I wanted bourbon...

-Armenian beer from the ME market (meh), super-cheap Slovakian beer (good), and raspberry brown ale from Vermont (good).

Vietnamese Sandwich Lunch

For lunch, I had yummy shrimp spring rolls, a Vietnamese sandwich, iced coffee, and something labeled "Banh Bo- Puff Cake".

The location was Les Givrals,a Vietnamese sandwich shop that also served pho and noodle dishes. The place smelled amazing, so I was tempted to get the pho, but I resisted. I've heard that you don't want to try the pho at a restaurant that doesn't specialize in it.

Instead, I ordered a bbq pork and pate sandwich. It came on the most beautiful toasted baguette I've ever seen, with lightly pickled cucumbers, mayo, cilantro, and jalapeño. The bbq pork was sweet and nicely fatty, while the pate was barely noticeable. For $2.50, it was truly fabulous. The fresh Vietnamese iced coffee was great with the sandwich.

Then, the "Puff Cake". It was actually four small cakes, two dyed spring green, one dyed pink, and one white. They came with a little tub of sauce, which automatically made it more interesting than the other dessert selections (all of which involved rice flour and more food coloring). The cakes turned out to be a basic rice flour and sugar, and the sauce was coconut milk. The texture left a lot to be desired, but they would be very cooling in the summer, and they had a nice degree of sweetness.

Yummy French Toast!

For breakfast, I had homemade French toast with large puddles of butter and some tea. I didn't feel like dragging myself out of the house for a huge brunch, but I wanted something kind of elaborate and interesting. We had leftover french bread and some rapidly spoiling eggs, so French toast seemed like a good plan. No milk, though, so I mixed the eggs with sugar and dry sherry and hoped for the best. Sherry French toast is good. I soaked the bread, cooked them in my little cast-iron skillet, covered with pats of butter and more sugar, and ate. Yum.

Something for Breakfast.

For breakfast, I made...something. I was going for omelette, but I didn't want to get more cooking implements and bowls dirty than necessary. I poked through the refrigerator for things that could, conceivably at least, go well with eggs. I came up with leftover butternut squash soup and some frozen sweet potato chunks.

I mixed two eggs and the rest of the soup together in my skillet, and stirred, and stirred, and raised the heat, and stirred some more. The egg finally started coagulating into a repulsive yellow-orange mess. Then I added the sweet potato chunks, not realizing how truly disgusting this would make everything. It looked like chunky technicolor cat food. It was also on the watery side, so I finished it off in the microwave and then siphoned all the extra water off and added a little salt.

If you can get past the way it looks, it's actually pretty good. Even without the sweet potato, the soup gave the eggs a nice silky texture and fall flavors without adding more dairy.

To drink, I had some yerba mate tea from the Republic of Tea. Their blends are usually very good, and this one is my favorite. It tastes nothing like real mate, but the flavors are very nutty and earthy, making it a nice coffee substitute without losing the caffeine.

Adventures in baking- or - Bourbon makes everything better

Tonight for dinner, we tried a cafeteria-style middle-eastern restaurant in Montrose. The food was salty, my dolmades were kind of crunchy, and the food made Jon horrifically ill. So ill, in fact, that he is writhing on the couch next to me three hours later. Nothing more to say, except maybe don't take restaurant recommendations from vegetarians, and don't eat at Aladdin.

After said meal, I had a weird craving for cake. I headed to the grocery store, planning on buying a cake mix because it was late and I was feeling lazy, and cake mix is minimally better than grocery store cakes. But I just couldn't do it. I got to the baking aisle, and started inspecting packaging for something at least minimally nutritive and chemical-free. Perhaps I was naive, but there were NONE (save for the equally scary gluten-free mix). So I instead decided to grab some eggs and go make my own, following this recipe. And at that point, the food gods started laughing at me.

I hadn't bothered to check for ingredients before leaving the house, but I knew I had all the basic baking staples. I got home, laid everything out, and started cooking, only to discover:

1. No baking powder.
2. No baking soda to use as a substitute.
3. No vanilla.
4. No milk.
5. Olive oil-flavored Pam
6. Where the hell did my cake pan go!?
7. Why is my butter taking forever to defrost?

But I'm a pretty adventurous cook, and I wanted my damn cake.

So, instead of following the normal recipe, I deviated by:

1. Mixing my half-softened butter and sugar together, forgetting to cream butter first because it was inadequately softened. Oops.
2. Adding only the egg yolks, reserving the whites, fluffed, to stir in at the end in a sad attempt to leaven my cake.
3. Using bourbon instead of vanilla.
4. Adding more bourbon because it wasn't mixing together well.
5. Using (slightly) expired yogurt mixed with water instead of milk.
6. Using a cast-iron skillet to cook the mess.

I cooked it for 45 minutes or so, and was very shocked when it turned out BEAUTIFULLY!! The bourbon gave it a really nice buttery flavor. The texture is a bit more dense than I suspect it would otherwise be, but it's not a problem at all. I iced it with cream cheese frosting (stick of butter, stick of cream cheese, a little superfine sugar) and some cute little star sprinkles. It took longer than cake mix would've, but it's so much better.

Anorexia in Houston

Well, not really. Finals are at 6pm, and I studied all day, so it was hard to find time to eat. The good news is, I started the day with a filling meal from Cafe Brazil, so I didn't have to.

For brunch, I had "Eggs El Salvador". A poached egg, on top of chorizo, on top of a cheese pupusa, smothered in red AND green salsas, with a side of beans and another side of weird slaw stuff. And coffee.

It was pretty good. I've resisted ordering it on principle, because they consistently spell "pupusa" wrong on their blackboard. I'm sorry, a "papusa" is not food. They finally put it on their permanent menu, and managed to use spell-check to boot. They have really nice (allegedly local) chorizo, the eggs were properly poached (Brazil sometimes has issues with over-poaching), and the pupusa was pretty decent, if not exactly redolent with fresh masa and authentic achiclado cheese. I hate salad anyway, so it wasn't a big deal to discover how creepy the slaw was: limp and wilted, dressed with nothing but lemon juice. I like minimalism, but the slaw was kind of pathetic, and very, very sour. In any case, it helped me to stay awake and nourished well into the evening.

I'm too lazy to blog about my late dinner, but suffice it to say that Whole Foods' spinach, goat cheese, and tomato take n' bake pizzas aren't half bad. Shiner's "Holiday Cheer" beer is kind of weird (FRUITY!), but worth a taste. You know you live in the South when seasonal winter beer is PEACH and PECAN-flavored.

(K)atfish n' grits at the Breakfast Klub

No, that's not a typo. For breakfast, I had deep-fried catfish, breakfast potatoes, grits with butter, a biscuit, and the best coffee I've found anywhere in Houston. It was all perfect. The only bad thing about the experience was their annoying propensity to spell everything with "k", which led me to wonder if their "bakon" was real bacon or kosher bacon (aka "baken").


The location was the Breakfast Klub, a soul-food inspired breakfast place on the edge of downtown. I always drive by on my way to school and wonder why there's a huge line snaking out the door EVERY morning. Now I know.


I'm not a huge fan of grits, but these were perfect- slightly eggy and dense, with a puddle of melted butter in the middle. I suspect there was more butter mixed in, because they were that rich and delicious. The potatoes could've been a little warmer, but the flavors were a great balance of sweet and savory. The biscuit was crispy on the outside, and tender on the inside, as was the fried catfish. I was expecting the catfish to be heavily seasoned, but it wasn't- just a nice cornmeal breading and maybe a little pepper.

The coffee was killer. I was somewhat skeptical, considering vacuum-sealed coffee carafes are usually a sign of coffee-as-afterthought, but no. I've whined for months at the lack of decent coffee in this town, but no more. Very strong, distinctively flavored, and a choice of four or five different varieties. I tried the house blend, which was almost too strong, and their Costa Rican, which was great.

I'll be back to try their signature "wings n' waffles".

Bring Back the Weck (and maybe everything else will improve?)

For dinner, I had boneless wings, potato thingies with cheese, and a Bud Light. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings, formerly known as BW3 or Buffalo Wild Wings & Weck, weck being a type of sandwich bread served in western NY state.

First, the service was the worst I've received in years. The worst, in fact, since I ate lunch at an outdoor cafe in Madrid in 2004 and all the employees disappeared for two hours the moment I decided I needed my check- not disappeared like European waiters being unobtrusive and not coming to the table until you stare them down, disappeared like they literally left. Tonight, it took fifteen minutes for someone to come to the table. Did I mention we were really hungry, and in need of a beer after sitting in the library studying for finals for ten hours? He delivered a drink a friend had ordered before we arrived, then turned and left despite our entreaties. I actually started speculating about whether it would be faster to go wait in the very long take-out line. He came back fifteen minutes later, tried to take our order, finally succeeded, and disappeared again, only reappearing to drop our food and run off. Then it took him another fifteen to deliver our check after we requested it, and another fifteen before he would come pick it up, despite walking by every five minutes and staring directly at it. Finals are looming and none of us were in very nice moods anyway, so this was not cool.

It gets worse. Namely, the food. Against my intuition, I decided to branch out and try the boneless wings over regular ones, hoping they were slightly healthier. They may have been, if only because I didn't want to eat very many. They looked like something that came frozen in bulk from Costco, rejuvenated by a swim in the deep fryer. They received only the lightest drizzle of sauce, and the waiter ran off before I could ask for a side of sauce to remedy their dryness, so I was stuck with overly crunchy nuggets of dough. They reminded me of vegetarian chicken nuggets before food scientists cared enough about meatless products to make them palatable, or maybe something you'd find in an elementary school's cafeteria. The "buffalo chips" (aka "potato thingies", because "buffalo chips" is an awkwardly cheesy name for something served at a macho sports bar)were ok, although they are always very bland. I suppose I should appreciate it when something low-sodium comes out of a restaurant kitchen, but they're potatoes! They need salt! And cheese that actually tastes like something! No on all counts.

BW3 has been suffering from more general problems lately. The increased corporate focus on "family friendliness" virtually guarantees food on the floor and screaming toddlers at certain times of the day (fortunately, this evening was not one of those times, or I really might have killed someone). They really don't seem to be focused on the food anymore, if they ever were. The last straw for me is the sheer absurdity of their new wings saucing policy. They will no longer split sauces on small orders- how hard is it to make six wings one flavor, and the other six another? It's such a minor customer service issue, and their refusal leads me to believe they just don't care about their customers or their food. Charge me extra if you must, but to outright refuse is to incite my wrath.

I can only hope Wing Stop catches on to BW3's vulnerabilities and changes their business model enough to poach BW3's customers. Wing Stop has delicious wings (try the garlic parm!), and the most perfect fries in the world, in case you wondered.

Carbanoodle Casserole

For dinner, I had an assortment of Japanese food- ikura and sea bass sushi, philly rolls, gyoza, an "S&M roll" and a tiger eye maki roll, followed by some tapioca pudding at home. Everything was good, except for the tiger eye roll. The jalapeno was a nice touch, but the outside was very doughy and bland.

More interesting, however, is what I cooked for Thanksgiving. My contribution to the meal is a recipe from my MIL she's been cooking for years and years. I think it came from a 1970s cookbook, back when casseroles were still cool without being retro, and simple starches were in. I have fondly dubbed it the Carbanoodle Casserole, due to the preponderance of carbs. Did I mention the recipe requires a half-pound of butter?

The first thing to note is that I wanted to grocery shop for ingredients yesterday while I was getting dinner at Whole Foods, but I couldn't. I wandered around the store for a few minutes in a confused daze, before I realized that WF does not sell most of the required ingredients. In fact, they're things I'd be a little embarrassed to buy, if I didn't know how amazingly tasty the end product is. Like Minute Rice. Imagine my surprise when I actually DID make it to another grocery store tonight, only to see people agonizing over what kind of Minute Rice to buy for Thanksgiving...

Basically, you melt half a pound of butter in a large pot, add a half pound of fine egg noodles, and brown them. Then you add two cups of Minute Rice, just under 22 oz. of canned onion soup (no, not the good stuff), 22oz. of chicken broth, a cup of water, some soy sauce, some canned water chestnuts, and two jars of canned, sliced mushrooms. Mix well, dump into a 3qt. casserole, cover, and bake at 350 until the liquid is mostly absorbed, 30-45 min. Sorry my camera batteries are dead, this mess looks so bland yet icky I'd really love to share step-by-step photos.

The first time I saw the recipe, I was seriously confused at the canned carby asian fusion weirdness of it, but it's addictive. The leftovers are even better, if there are any. If I have time after finals, I plan on trying to recreate the casserole in a slightly healthier incarnation- whole wheat noodles, brown rice, higher-quality onion soup. The butter's not going anywhere, but Minute Rice just scares me.

Greasy Breakfast Tacos- yum.

For breakfast, I had a barbacoa taco and a potato and cheese taco. They were very good. The accompanying coffee, however, was awful.

We went to Villa Arcos, a little red shack of a restaurant on the other side of the tracks close to downtown. It is in the same neighborhood as the original Ninfa's, Houston's most famous homegrown Mexican-American food. Ninfa's has strayed into Tex-Mex yuckiness as it has franchised out, which is why I hesitate to call it Mexican food. The above pic is of Ninfa's, but it gives you a vague idea of the atmosphere. Villa Arcos is known for the best breakfast tacos in Houston. Having visited, I know their secret- lard. So much lard that their flour tortillas are almost translucent. I love my tortillas de maiz, but these were, by far, the best flour tortillas I've ever had. The barbacoa was heavily seasoned, kind of greasy, and very delicious. The accompanying salsa verde was painfully spicy but full-flavored, and complemented the greasiness nicely. My only complaint was the cheese on the second taco- it was a yellow cheese that failed to melt well, and remained rubbery and flavorless. The potatoes were smushy rather than crispy, but it turned out to be an asset to the overall texture.

The other great thing about our journey to the other side of town is that we discovered a strange, completely out of place beer garden down the street. I didn't get enough of a look to determine if it's really a beer garden or just a creatively named Mexican bar with a little side yard, but it's definitely worth looking into.

Welcome to the South.

God help me, I had chicken fried steak for lunch. I'm pretty sure I'd never, ever, ever eaten it before, just on principle. That said, our school cafeteria cooks southern specials three days a week (somehow Monday and Tuesday aren't special enough to merit their own special), and today was CFS day. I don't know what I was thinking.

I certainly wasn't thinking about gravy. Gravy doesn't exist in my universe. I will eat gravy if the turkey is very dry on Thanksgiving, and that's it. Not being a southerner by birth or inclination, I didn't realize that CFS would come utterly drenched in gravy. I ate it anyway. It was pretty decent, and I probably would have enjoyed it if I'd been able to get my mind off clogged arteries and gooey gravy. The batter formed a nice lacy crust, and the meat was relatively tender. Accompanying the steak were surprisingly tasty mashed potatoes, a salad, and black-eyed peas. Only the potatoes were exciting. Their smooth texture suggested reconstitution, or maybe just huge amounts of margarine, but the flavor was great, probably due to the garlic and parsley mixed in. An interesting food experience, but not one I'd like to repeat anytime soon.

Hummus at Home

For dinner, I had salsa-flavored tortillas dipped in hummus, with chocolate chip cookies and a Red Stripe.

I don't have much to say about the actual meal. The hummus was Sabra's extra-spicy flavor, and the cookies were from Whole Foods. I do, however, have an exciting cooking tip, courtesy of my college Spanish prof. We are friends on Facebook, and he posted a story awhile back about how his (Spanish) wife lights the toaster on fire pretty regularly by using it to heat tortillas. I tried it tonight, and it's utterly brilliant. Just watch them to make sure the house doesn't go up in flames...

Oh mai.

For dinner, we went to Mai's, a Vietnamese place downtown that's been around for thirty years and is family-owned. The decor was eclectic, in a kitschy neon and glass block kind of way. I had "salt toasted tofu" and Vietnamese pork dumplings topped with bbq pork...I wanted to like the place.

First, it should be said that I tried to order eel sauteed in curry and coconut sauce, but our waiter reacted with "NOOOO. That is BAD. Very bad!!! Bad. No, get this instead (points to "our most famous dish", "traditional" garlic beef). He seemed to be in a huge hurry, and was so emphatic that I didn't try to clarify if he meant "don't eat it, it's cat meat contaminated with arsenic", or if he just meant "white people don't order that here, you'll hate it and get grossed out and complain". I know this is the reaction I've gotten before at Vietnamese restaurants when I try to order something strange, so it was probably #2 (unless you are in Waco, where I swear I was once served cat). I was weirded out, and didn't want the boring-sounding dish he suggested, but I also didn't want to risk eating something he had such strong feelings about. So I scanned the menu for something else that sounded interesting, and came up with salty tofu. Big mistake.




Granted, I've never been to Vietnam. I have strong opinions about what makes good pho, and that's about it. But the salty tofu, along with a number of other dishes on the menu, looked and sounded like Chinese food. We theorized that maybe it's northern Vietnamese, but either way I didn't like it. The tofu was not particularly salty, nor was it toasted. It was battered and deep-fried, mixed with veggies and garlic, and covered in a mysterious tan glaze redolent of MSG. The menu calls it a lemon sauce, but I had no inkling of lemon when I was actually eating it. The most exotic part of my dinner was learning to remove the husks from garlic cloves with chopsticks, because they didn't peel them before adding them to the veggies. Halfway through dinner, it struck me- the "salty tofu" tasted just like Chicken McNuggets! A spongy protein, surrounded by a thin layer of undercooked batter goo, enveloped in deep-fried batter, dipped in additive-laden sauce. Seriously, click on the photo below to appreciate salty tofu in all its glory (and my dirty fork...)


Not all was bad. The pork dumplings were delicious. The dough resembled what I'd call Chinese dumplings- white, translucent, very soft and pillowy, with a slightly chewy consistency- and was amazing dunked in fish sauce. The presentation was a little strange: dumplings laid on a bed of lettuce, on top of which was a huge crown of BBQ fried pork that reminded me of Filipino tocino, on top of which was a mound of fried shoestring onions.

Jon's meal was more interesting- a bed of rice with minute steak, sunny side up egg, veggies, and a "pork cake". Minus the cake, it reminded me of the food that developed when Japanese immigrants moved to Peru in the 1900s.

I'll give them another chance to evaluate their pho, and maybe next time they will deign to let me try their eel. I really hope it's good, because, based on tonight's experience, I'm really not understanding how they've managed to stay in business this long.

Mon Poulet Roti avec Soupe a L'oignon

For dinner, I had roast chicken, French onion soup, and spaghetti squash. I was in the mood to cook, so everything was made from scratch except the soup stock.

The chicken was easy and surprisingly quick to cook- one hour for a five-pound roaster. I based it on Keller's perfect roast chicken recipe- high temp and completely dry skin to develop crispiness. I modified it by using fresh thyme (left over from making the soup) and garlic under the skin, and by cooking it in my cast iron skillet, for convenience. Despite its near-impossibility to clean, I love using my cast iron skillet in non-traditional ways. The chicken turned out flavorful but slightly tough- I assumed the chicken had been pre-brined because it was a typical supermarket non-organic bird, but I think I was wrong. Sanderson Farms needs to define "minimal processing" on their packaging. I've also cooked a whole chicken in my dutch oven to great effect in the past, but it results in nice meat at the expense of a crispy crust. Moreover, my dutch oven was busy making soup.

The soup was a recipe from Cook's Illustrated I've been wanting to make for the better part of a year. I'd been putting it off because of the time commitment and the lack of winter weather; today I caved, figuring it was better than writing papers. The first hard part was slicing the onions- I am hugely sensitive to onions, and generally either wear ski goggles (seriously), or make my loving husband do it. The LH was away, and my ski goggles have disappeared since we moved. I struggled through SEVEN onions, taking several wash-hands-cry-blow-nose-wash-hands breaks. The dog looked on with amusement. The next two hours required minimal involvement, but I continued to have trouble with onion sensitivity- the whole house reeked, and my eyes wouldn't stop tearing. Then another hour reducing the onions further on the stovetop, toasting bread, and adding stock, and it was done. I felt like the result lacked depth of flavor, and the sweet-salty balance was off. The recipe encouraged caramelization for "depth", but the result was very sweet, not deep. It may have had something to do with the onions. I went to Randall's over Whole Foods because it was on my way home, and they carried only "Texas Sweet" yellow onions, and some unlabeled yellow onions. The recipe called for yellow, stating that white onions were too sweet, so I chose the unlabeled ones and hoped for the best. Maybe it will taste better tomorrow.

You can put ANYTHING on a waffle.

In the interest of the impending election, and general weirdness, here is a photo of the presidential candidates (and 'Ol Hillary) sculpted in hummus.


Today for lunch, I had an organic flaxseed waffle, toasted and slathered in lemon hummus. I was rushed, trying to prepare a butternut squash dish for my grandmother's birthday dinner. Lunch was an afterthought, prompted mostly by the annoying man blocking my path to the milk at the grocery store. While trying to squeeze by him, I happened to look over and notice about twelve different varieties of hummus for sale. Lemon hummus sounded interesting. I got home, and discovered I'd forgotten to buy anything to dip in it- no bread, no pita, no tortillas. The only breadlike substance in the house was flaxseed waffles.

It was interesting. Not bad, a blend between sweet and savory. The lemon flavors bridged the gap between the salty hummus and the slightly sweet waffle very well. Something about it was a little off-putting, but I think it was more the concept than the actual flavors or texture.

The most exciting part of the evening was my grandmother's mention of her Meyer lemon tree in the backyard. Her backyard is amazing- I am already lusting after her persimmon crop in a few weeks. The lemons are getting ripe, so I took a few to play with. Unless I find something better to do, I'm going to candy them. This recipe looks utterly amazing, but I'm not terribly confident in my sea urchin butchering skills.

Luling City Market BBQ in Houston

Please see amazing visual aid here. It is too large for my page, and I am computer illiterate.
For lunch, I had some brisket, a sausage, potato salad, and iced tea from the Luling City Market in Houston. There is an original location in Luling, TX, while this is their big-city outpost. It represents the "Central Texas style" of BBQ, whatever that means. It was nothing like Waco BBQ (which is frankly not very good, but makes up for it with kitsch and sheer quantity of food). Regional BBQ styles usually have to do with smoking wood (at LCM, oak) and sauce. Their sauce was strange. I'd classify it in the vinegar category, which seems to agree with what the map says. It just wasn't very pungent, very spicy, or very sweet; kind of nondescript.

The meat was so good! This is the best BBQ I've had in Houston by far, and the best sausage anywhere. (FYI, stay away from Goode and Co. I was shocked to discover how many people like their brisket while researching BBQ online. They're an awful Houston chain, and the reason I hated BBQ for the first eighteen years of my life.) Luling was so good, I proceeded to rhapsodize about my wonderful meal with a friend shortly thereafter. A friend who I cleverly forgot was a vegetarian. Oops. The brisket was a little dry in spots, but it had really nice texture and caramelization, and I appreciated that they trim off all the really fatty, gristly bits before weighing your meat. I found it delectable all by itself- BBQ sauce would've masked its meaty goodness.

The sausage was even better. I have no clue what was in it, I suspect all pork. It was very finely ground, mixed with spices, and contained within a crisp-cooked casing. It was clearly not healthy, and tasted amazingly rich, but did not ooze grease. I have very mixed feelings about eating pork, but it is so very good.

Boring Chicken at Home

For dinner, I had parmesan-crusted chicken and roasted kabocha squash from Whole Foods, with a glass of Cotes du Rhone.

The chicken was awful! I wish I'd chosen the pecan chicken instead. The crust was crumby rather than cheesy, and got progressively mushier as the baking time went on. Most of the bottom crust became irreversibly stuck to my baking sheet, and the rest remained a pallid, spongy white. The flavor was of mush, not parmesan, with little clusters of parsley and maybe some onion powder.

The kabocha was interesting. I'd never had japanese pumpkin before, so I selected it over the acorn squash, mostly for the novelty and its adorably ugly shape and color. It's similar to sweet potato, with a slight pumpkin flavor. I also roasted the seeds while the squash was baking, and then snacked on these while the chicken was finishing in the oven. Freshly toasted seeds are tasty! Everything I read suggested scraping off all the pulp and leaving them to dry for a day, but I threw them in a well-oiled pan with some pulp remanants, and they turned out fine.

The Cotes du Rhone was pretty good, it was Les Violettes. Just a typical, nondescript
wine that was a little too light. It would be nice with a salad.

Azuma Japanese in Houston

For dinner, I had vegetable tempura, a cucumber roll, a spicy tuna roll, and some sake. It was all rather unexceptional. The location was Azuma, a mini-chain of Japanese "sushi and robata bars". I had never heard the term 'robata' before, and wondered if it was some sort of robot kitsch takeoff on Benihana. If only.

The food wasn't bad, just boring and average and kind of pricey. I usually end up spending too much time and brainpower with the menu at this sort of place trying to cobble together a meal out of appetizers and a la cartes, because all the yummy-looking entrees are $20+.

The tempura was doughnut-like. Tempura should NEVER be doughnut-like. Anything deep-fried is still delicious, but the whole point of tempura is a light coating of crispy batter. The cucumber sushi tasted clean and refreshing, but it's pretty hard to screw up sushi rice, cucumber, and seaweed. I got a chunk of cucumber by itself, and the flavor was not very good- they had some produce sourcing issues. Likewise, the salmon was spicier than any I've ever had (good), but it smelled pretty fishy (scary). Jon said his hirame was likewise very fishy tasting.

Brunch at the Empire Cafe

For brunch, I engaged in a bit of cultural anthropology by trying the "Northwestern Breakfast". It was interesting to see what a Houston restaurant thinks of as Northwestern. It consisted of a smoked salmon, onion, and tomato omelette, some not-very-ripe fruit, and oatcakes with blackberry syrup.

The Empire Cafe is a cute cafe with nice outdoor patios and great trees. It's in Montrose, almost across the street from Cafe Brazil. I'd forgotten how interesting the menu is at Empire, and how good their coffee is. We'll probably end up here more often (assuming we wake up before the huge crowds that materialize around 10am).

Overall, not bad. The omelette was good. The smoked salmon was cold, but that also meant it wasn't cooked into pallid mush, and maintained texture well. The oatcakes were bizarre- very flat, on the raw side, with gummy chunks of steel-cut oats, weird texture, and a troubling shine. I can only presume they were very, very healthy. The blackberry syrup was good, and the cakes had a nice cinnamon flavor, texture notwithstanding. The fruit was like cardboard. Interestingly, I learned from my grandmother how to pick honeydew melons yesterday- if the skin is smooth, it's not ripe. The key is slightly rough, chalkboard-like skin.

Goat at the Taqeria

I really need to back off the unconventional meats. Last weekend it was lamb, now it's goat. For dinner, I had the "Birria Platillo" at Taqueria Tepatitlan, with tamarindo to drink.

Tepatitlan was my favorite sketchy taqueria in Houston before I moved here. They usually have interesting aguas frescas (hooray for Mexican fruit Kool-Aid goodness), and their refried beans are truly a mound of lard-studded beauty.

The first problem with dinner was the beans. Or lack thereof. I must be on their frijole boycott list or something, because the TWO times I've been there since moving to Houston, I have failed to get my beans. The first time I was there, I asked for a side of beans. The waitress completely forgot, and I was too full of tacos to complain. This time, I requested all beans and no rice (I may have an obsession with my rice cooker, but I really hate Mexican rice). Instead, I got a huge mound of rice, and no beans. I felt bad for the waitress, who had been having trouble understanding our Spanish anyway, so I contented myself with mooching Jon's beans. They were typically fluffy, flavorful, and undoubtedly lard-filled.

The goat was okay, on the greasy side. I'm not even quite sure how I ended up with goat- I guess I was feeling indecisive and it looked interesting. I like cabrito (baby goat), but haven't been up to eating it since I milked a goat in college and met its adorable babies. Birria is adult goat- musky, a little gamey, greasy. Meh. I don't think I'll be eating goat again. The dog certainly enjoyed the leftovers, though.

I'm always impressed with Tepatitlan's extras. They offer only two salsas with the chips- a garlicky tomatillo and a smoky red- but they offer pickled spicy carrot slices as condiments with dinner, and their corn tortillas are beautiful. They're freshly browned on the griddle, thick and puffy, and probably also filled with lard. The guacamole is always fresh and delicious, and they make the labor-intensive aguas frescas no one wants to make (watermelon, cantaloupe). Tonight, their selection was limited, so I chose the tamarind. It was good, with a slightly astringent flavor. It's probably the only agua fresca that tastes better with less sugar rather than more.

Butter Makes Everything Better

For dinner, I had crab meat with purple sticky rice, rosemary sourdough bread, and a glass of viognier(!!!).

Steamed and pre-packaged crab meat is awesome. Not as expensive as fresh fish, but very tasty covered in butter, and super-easy to heat up. It smelled slightly funky, but tasted great. Chalk it up to the sodium benzoate preservative, at least until I wake up vomiting in the middle of the night...

My love affair with the rice cooker continues, but I wanted something a little healthier than refined basmati rice. Whole Foods had a few interesting varieties- Himalayan red rice, Canadian wild rice (pricey!), and my final choice, the aforementioned purple sticky rice. I think it's supposed to be used in Thai desserts or something, but it was nice by itself, covered with some butter and salt. The texture was not as horrifically grainy as brown rice, but nicely chewy and fragrant. Complimented with some toasted rosemary sourdough with butter, the meal was very easy and yummy.

To make dinner even better, I actually found a reasonably priced vionier! It is my favorite summery wine, after vinho verdes, and always amazing with seafood. This one was under $10, from Loredona Vineyards in California. It's pretty nicely balanced, although I'd like it better a bit leaner and drier. The flavors reminded me of Ironstone Vineyard's Symphony, an amazing wine in its own right (symphony being a grape variety developed in mid-century California), although Symphony is very, very sweet.

Punjab Eggplant and Rice at Home

For dinner, I had Indian eggplant mush and rice.

The eggplant was vaccuum-sealed in a foil pouch, courtesy of Tasty Bite. Their food items are awesome: cheap, relatively healthy, and super-easy to prepare. I microwave them for less than a minute; Jon somehow thinks the flavor is magically better when he takes the time to boil the foil bags in water. My faves are the Punjabi eggplant and Kashmiri spinach, with the peas paneer a distant third place option. The eggplant is always very good, just spicy enough. The texture takes some getting used to, but that is the eggplant's fault, not the preparation's. To go with it, I once again trotted out the trusty rice cooker and made some fresh basmati with butter and salt. Yummy.

Sausage at Home

For dinner, I had boiled sausage with baked acorn squash and a glass of vinho verde.

The sausage came from the meat section of Central Market, and was chosen for its bizarrely tasty-sounding composition- chicken, kalamata olives, and feta. We chose to boil them to prevent the cheese from leaking out of the casing upon melting. They were surprisingly yummy, in a strange sort of way. The feta added a peculiar tang and good texture, while the olives added moisture and a nice saltiness. The chicken was on the dry side; ideally, the ratio of chicken to olives would be dialed down a little to improve texture.

The squash had been lingering around the house, one of my sad attempts at pretending it is fall despite the temperature outside. I baked it, cut in half, cut side down in a pan of water for about 45 minutes at 400 degrees. Every internet source I found said to cook it for an hour, but it was on the overdone side after 45 minutes. Slathered in butter and fleur de sel, it was still awesome.

The wine was decent- Famega vinho verde, about $7. Aveleda is still my favorite vinho verde, but this was better than Casal Garcia, and about on par with La Santola. It is relatively dry and tastes primarily of apples.

Khorashe Bademjan Outside the Loop

For dinner, I had an Iranian lamb dish with eggplant, tomatoes, rice, and the best hummus in the world. You can see the morning-after carnage, above.

We went to Kasra Persian Grill, a nice (but not pricey) restaurant tucked into the corner of a strip center halfway to suburbia. It seems very obscure and off the beaten path, but it apparently won best Persian restaurant last year.

It is "outside the loop" in Houston parlance, meaning that it may as well exist in another universe for the large swath of people too snooty to venture outside the Hwy. 610 loop. That means more great food for me!

I ordered the khorashe bademjan, lamb shank slow-cooked with amazing eggplant slices, tomato, and apparently a sour grape sauce. The sauce tasted mostly of tomato, with a nice acidic bite that could be the grapes. We also ordered hummus to go with their freshly baked pita, and it was the best hummus EVER. It was very, very heavy on the garlic, with a relatively smooth texture, dusted with sumac powder and some fruity olive oil. The garlic made it wonderful.

Today for lunch, I had the leftovers. They were even better, because the flavors had blended together nicely overnight. I was able to recognize the raisin-size green orbs as small, sour grapes. I was also feeling brave enough to go after the marrow. It is the best part of the whole meal, salty and meaty and very fatty. Yummy.

Salmon at Home

Last night, I ate baked salmon and rice for dinner.

The salmon was from Whole Foods, one of their pre-seasoned fish selections. I chose the almond-encrusted honey seasoning because it sounded revoltingly sweet and a little strange. In fact, it was very good, in a buttery-sweet sort of way. We'd planned on eating our fave canned fava beans (Palestinian recipe is the best, btw), but I ended up making more tasty basmati rice in the cooker instead. To drink, I had a Lone Star beer, the PBR of Texas. Yum.

Light Dinner at Home

For dinner, I had a large bowl of rice and some French Onion soup. Jon and I have been sick and lazy today, so we didn't want to cook real food. Jon had leftover tofu for dinner, but I found the concept a little depressing.

So, I measured out some basmati, washed it in my Japanese rice washer (the most versatile and under-rated kitchen tool I own), popped it into my rice cooker, and pushed the "cook" button. Lest anyone think I'm overly lazy, note that rice cookers have literally changed the world for millions of people in Asia, and may be used to cook full meals. I don't think my mother has noticed I neglected to return it to her when we moved, and I'm not giving it back if she does. I love that thing. The fluffy rice, with a paper-thin crust of toasty yumminess on the bottom, was ready in no time. I added some sea salt and butter.

I decided I was still hungry, so made an unfortunate (very unfortunate) foray into the world of Campbell's Soup. I am terrified of all their soups- between the rampant use of MSG and weird starches, and the salty-tangy flavor, I am not a fan. Moreover, I appreciate a good bowl of real French Onion soup more than anything in the world. Unfortunately, there was a lingering can of condensed soup in our pantry. I suspect it was a holdover from my bunker-mentality pantry in Wyoming, food only to be consumed in case of extreme snowstorm emergency. But I ate it. Yes, it was that bad. I added some Alessi garlic breadsticks to float around like bread chunks, but it didn't help. The flavor was tangy and metallic, with a vague undertone of beef.

Pelmeny at Home

For dinner, I had chicken, beef, and onion pelmeny, roasted butternut squash, and some prosecco.

The pelmeny were a holdover from my jaunt to Phoenicia. They were pretty good, if a little on the salty side. I was not in a very carnivorous mood this evening; I would probably have much better things to say if I'd been craving red meat. Also, I forgot to buy sour cream to go with the pelmeny, which made them kind of sad. Butter helped, as did the nice onion flavors in the pelmeny.

The squash was similarly meh. I've been craving Watercourse Foods' roasted and crispy squash hash, so I really wanted some good squashiness. It's also a harbinger of fall, so I figured it would make me feel a little better about it being October and still not cold enough to bring out the knee-high boots, scarves, mittens, OR sweaters...I really miss me some snow. It was tasty, but I never managed to get it crispy. It was a much smaller squash than I'd cooked before, so I think that was responsible for its overwhelmingly ridiculous sweetness.

Finally, the prosecco. Some random Italian stuff. I rarely drink prosecco, but where is all the good stuff hiding? I've had great prosecco in Italy, and that's about it. Maybe it's like Italian olive oil- they don't export the cheap good stuff, just the crappy cheap stuff and the expensive good stuff. This stuff is not awful, just kind of boring, with slightly sweet melon flavors.

Note: while looking for a blog post graphic, I learned that Paris Hilton's ridiculous prosecco-marketing ad campaign is the first thing that pops up on Google. Forget Italian export habits, it is clearly Paris that's ruined prosecco for America.

Lunch at Phoenicia Market in Houston

For lunch, I bought an assortment of tasty groceries from Phoenicia here in Houston. It's a bit of a drive, about 10 miles from my house, but it is the absolute best mix of strange ethnic food, exotic produce, good wine, and expensive groceries I've ever seen. Their prices are also far cheaper than your typical posh grocery store...I had serious difficulty dragging myself away from the $12 liters of unfiltered Greek and Italian olive oils.

I bought all kinds of great things (handmade pelmeni) and passed up others (vaccuum-packed lamajun, italian orecchiette). For lunch, I settled on freshly made whole-wheat pita with store-made hummus and sumac, some store-made vegetarian dolmades, a roasted head of garlic, and some preserved lemon, with a sparkling pomegranate-lemonade of French origin to drink.

The hummus was nice and garlicky, with a great, mostly smooth texture. I think it's the first hummus I've had that includes yogurt as an ingredient. I would not have known, although I suspect that's where the great texture and depth of flavor came from. The dolmades were likewise very nice. The filling is a little chunkier than I'm used to- pine nuts, raisins, spices, and rice. I've never liked raisins in my dolmades, but these were really good. The preserved lemon and roasted garlic came from their $5.99/lb cold bar full of the staples and a few strange items (stuffed mini eggplant??). I'd never had preserved lemons before, so I don't know how typical these are...they would probably work well in a tagine, but by themselves are scary vinegary and scary hot. The soda, however, was fabulous. Made by Rieme Boissons, it appears to contain only pomegranate flavoring, making me question the "limonade" label. Despite the false advertising, it's flavorful and sweetened with beet sugar.

For further rhapsodizing about this wonderful market, check out this blog I found (and borrowed the pic from...)

Hurricane Weirdness in Houston

Too much hurricane misery to post lately, but I've had a lot of interesting and strange food in the last few weeks.

First up, I had a pungent fish stew at Mai Thai near our house. It is the greatest little Thai place, and a great discovery. Pretty cheap, with $5.95 lunch specials that sound yummy. We went for dinner and had some dumplings, followed by fish stew. Jon had drunken noodles. All were delicious. The fish stew came blistering hot in a large aluminum pot. It had shrimp, scallops, mussels, chunks of fish, and some glass noodles. Very fishy, in a good way. The only bad thing is that they put the fish in the pot raw, and let it cook as you eat it...a nice touch, but the fish was on the raw side, and the shrimp got overcooked over the course of dinner. I got a few bites of Jon's food, and it was likewise delicious. Perhaps best of all was the decor, consisting of hundreds of orchids, bamboo plants, pots, and fake flowers, all of which is for sale. The music also contributed to the atmosphere, consisting of bizarre synthesized stuff of undetermined origin. Non-Asian but ethnic-sounding music...maybe Central Asian? It was that strange. Kudos on the wicker furniture, too.

Next, we were staying with a friend in Meyerland, the Jewish suburb of Houston, who recommended a Kosher dairy restaurant. Saba's Kosher Kitchen was in a little strip center storefront, with a menu encompassing pastas, salads, salmon, and a bunch of strange Israeli things I'd never heard of (despite having been to Israel). I settled on something described to me as a "sweet pizza dough pancake" (Malawach, apparently Yemeni Jewish comfort food). It came out fragrant and fried, with little plastic cups containing a whole hard-boiled egg, hummus, and something Thomas Keller would probably call 'tomato water'. It was accompanied by a cucumber, tomato, and green pepper side salad kind of reminiscent of Ya Hala's delicious Fettoush salad in Denver. I wasn't quite sure if I was supposed to use the condiments to make a pizza, but the hummus resembled the icky canned kind, so I did not. Our friend later confirmed that one is NOT supposed to make a pizza of it. Despite this, the tomato water was very spicy by itself, and very nice on the pizza dough with a little egg yolk. The salad was ok, as was the Israeli mango nectar I had to drink.

Alamo Drafthouse in Katy

For dinner, I had PBR, chips and salsa, and a burger and fries from the Alamo Drafthouse. The Drafthouse is a chain of movie theaters out of Austin that serves food and adult beverages. They used to do a MST3k-style show out of their main Austin location with some UT students turned stand-up comediennes that was amazing. Alas, they have moved on in their lives, and "Mr. Sinus Theatre" is gone forever.

The salsa was the best part of dinner. It tasted homemade. For a theater chain, they make a lot of things from scratch- the pizza sauce, the sangria, maybe even the salsa. It had a nice level of heat, good tomato flavor, and a texture that was not too chunky. The chips came out warmed, but would have been mediocre had the salsa not been so fabulous.

The PBR was exciting. For some reason, we've had a ton of trouble finding it for sale in Houston. We figure there aren't enough snotty hipsters here to enjoy it, or that they choose to drink the local hipster beverage of choice, Lone Star.

The burger and fries were decent. The fries actually consisted of wedges too thin to be described as 'homefries', but too thick and wedgey to qualify as french fries. In seasoning, they were closer to a french fry, with salt and a little herbed seasoning. The burger was rather dry, and was too low-fat to make a decent hamburger. I requested "rare, if possible" on our little ordering sheet, and it was maaaybe a tiny bit pink in the very middle. I just think it's a little sad that nobody wants to serve me raw meat for fear of a lawsuit. It seems clear that all these restaurants believe their meat is dangerous; I'm just a little bothered that it seems to be ok in the U.S. to serve dangerous meat, as long as it's been fully cooked. Maybe next time I'll bring my own grass-fed, family-farmed hamburger meat with me. Or maybe I should just go veggie.

Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa Cake

I guess I've been a remiss food blogger for not noticing this earlier. I can't help but think there's a little bit of racism in putting corn nuts on a cake.

Bush's Fried Chicken in Cedar Park

For lunch, I had fried chicken, french fries, and a 32oz. sweet tea from Bush's Fried Chicken.

Bush's is not related to THAT family, for which I'm very grateful, despite being started just down the road from the ranch in scenic Waco, Texas. Over my college years, they branched out from Waco to the small surrounding towns of Central Texas, and now they have a franchise in north Austin, Cedar Park. Their chicken is better than most chains, and a tie with Popeye's. They're completely different chains, so the comparison isn't fair to either, but the overall tastiness quotient is similar. The batter is much lighter and crisper than Popeye's, and there is no 'spicy' option at Bush's. Hence, I end up dumping approximately half a bottle of Louisiana-style hot sauce on my chicken strips, but it is worth it.

I had the #1 combo- four chicken strips, cool zigzag-cut fries, gravy, and a huge sweet tea for $6. I hate soft drinks, but my vice all through college was a 32oz sweet tea from Bush's...at least until I gained ten pounds off sweet tea alone. It used to be .50, and comes with "good" ice (yay pebbly ice!). With inflation, it's now a whopping .92, but still, without a doubt, the best sweet tea anywhere. I can't be sure, but it tastes like it's still made with real sugar (no HFCS here), and lots of it.

The chicken was pretty good- crispy, super-hot, with a really nice cracker-crumb saltines flavor and doused with hot sauce. Their fries are always nice, with a retro grade-school cafeteria thing going on due to their prefab Ore-Ida shape. They also get doused in hot sauce. I'm not a huge gravy fan, but I gingerly dipped a few fries into the quivering goo for research purposes. It was creamy and peppery and kind of bland (I think gravy is supposed to be bland?); if I didn't think I'd need a quintuple bypass tomorrow, I'd dip my fries in more often.

Bonus excitement:
I adore Central Texas, and try not to make fun of people who live there (particularly when they make yummy food). However, I checked out the Bush's Chicken website in an attempt to clarify the sweetener used in the sweet tea. No dice there, but whomever wrote the copy for their site is illiterate. Check out the inappropriate apostrophes and grammar (and their pics of zigzag fries) here.

Weirdness in Austin

For dinner, I had a chicken-stuffed chorizo with refried beans and a 'Texas lemonade'. God help me, I think this is the weirdest thing I've ever eaten.The location was Trudy's, a Mexican restaurant on the north side of Austin. It looked like an old-fashioned cantina from the outside, but the inside setup was reminiscent of a sketchy nightclub. The clientele included a good number of Guidos dressed in silly-looking designer t-shirts to show off their bulging biceps.

The chorizo was...interesting.It was called "chorizo stuffed chicken" on the menu, but when it came, I discovered it was really chicken-stuffed chorizo. It consisted of a chorizo sausage casing sliced open, filled with chicken and crumbled chorizo, breaded, deep-fried, and covered with velveeta-like cheese sauce. Oftentimes, inappropriate proteins stuffed inside other proteins can be good (George's Crazy Wings up in Waco, for example, or maybe turducken), so I was feeling optimistic. Unfortunately, it was a dish of mediocrity- the chorizo was not very good in terms of spiciness and texture, and the cheese sauce was truly frightening. I still ate it. I think the concept has potential, but not at Trudy's. It should also be noted that the menu contained several items labeled "flauquities". No matter that the word cannot be pronounced in Spanish, they are flauquities...I wasn't going near those things.

I'd heard tales about Tito's vodka from Austin, so I had to try it when I got the chance. Texas lemonade consisted of Tito's, fresh lemonade, and some muddled mint. I'd go back for the lemonade. Chorizo, not so much.

Today's graphic is not what I ate- it's to give you an idea of plate presentation at Trudy's. It also looks about as disturbing as what I ate. I tried to take a photo, because the chorizo-chicken was truly unique, but the nightclub atmosphere made it too dark.

Ravioli in Houston

For dinner, I had whole wheat cheese and asparagus ravioli with arrabiata sauce and a glass of malbec.

The ravioli was Safeway's/Randall's house brand, with an intriguing, but not quite fearsome, three grams of fiber per serving. As might be expected by the 'asparagus and cheese' description, the filling was very, very strange. Not bad, just not the ideal thing to smush up and put in one's ravioli. It tasted kind of lemon-ey, but not in a good way. Also, the cheese part of the filling was also overly sweet, and the raviolis stuck together annoyingly. The sauce was pretty decent. I am very picky about jarred sauces, and Mezzetta's Napa Valley line is in the middle. I adore arrabiata that makes me cry, and this is definitely not it. It's thicker than most sauces, but is also oddly chunky, and the veggies in the sauce are very crunchy, giving it a pasta-with-veggies feel rather than a pasta-with-sauce feel. That said, the flavor isn't too bad.

The best part of the meal was the wine. Gascon malbec from wonderful Mendoza, Argentina. My loving husband has been on a malbec kick of late, and it's a very good thing. I'd forgotten all about malbecs, having gotten quite distracted with the Iberian Peninsula. Anything from Spain or Portugal is a delicious, amazing value, but the same can be said for most wines from South America. This one is garnet-colored, with smooth berry flavors and nice tannins, and under $10.

For purposes of edification (and because more photos of ravioli would be boring), the graphic is the official flag of Mendoza province.

Arugula at Home

For dinner, I had some arugula with TWO kinds of Annie's natural dressing, THREE kinds of grapes, garlic bread, and a glass of milk.

First, arugula is the best salad green, hands down. Would you trust someone who doesn't like arugula to run this country? I wouldn't. It depresses me that the "red" half of this country is so ignorant and sheltered they will not even TRY this tasty little green. I KNOW they haven't tried it, because if they had, they wouldn't mess with it. Forget 'Don't Mess With Texas', it should be 'Don't Mess With Arugula'. Bumper stickers, anyone?
Learn more about the humble green here

So why two dressings? Elitism? No, just misplaced optimism. I love Annie's Shiitake Vinaigrette, but they had a new cucumber-yogurt flavor I wanted to try too. The cucumber-yogurt tasted like tahini wallpaper paste, so I quickly switched to my fave. The consistency was atypically thin, but the flavor was as yummy as always.

I'd also purchased a mixed pack of grapes, so I enjoyed black, red, and green grapes with dinner. I toasted some rosemary bread with olive oil and garlic to make a tasty garlic bread, which made me miss my old grill. Grilled bread is so much better.

And finally, the milk. My lovely husband informed me this evening that we should not drink so much wine, so I consoled myself with a glass of milk. It is organic (good), but also skim (bad). A nice light vionier would've been so much better.

Bali BBQ Tofu from Whole Foods

For dinner, I had a lovely three-course meal prepped by Whole Foods and brought home by my loving husband.* The presentation was very exciting- three plastic compartments packed into a large Whole Foods paper bag, with a stapled-on label describing each menu item and the low, low price of $15.99.

The main dish was a "Bali BBQ Tofu". It looked like it aspired to be Sesame 'Chikin'- tofu in gooey sweet sauce, garnished with a few obligatory green veggies and sprinkled with raw sesame seeds (lazy Whole Foods). It actually tasted relatively good, though the tofu was a little -erm, squishy? It didn't appear to have been fried, but its texture was similar to inari. A little weird. But good.

The sides consisted of "Emerald Sesame Kale" and a cold soba salad (no cool name there). The kale was definitely the winner. Who doesn't love kale? I suppose it is an elitist salad veggie, as those things go, but it is also full of vitamins and fiber, and way more interesting than broccoli. It was dressed with ginger, garlic, sesame oil, and tamari. It was also sprinkled with more of those dastardly raw sesame seeds, but otherwise delicious. The soba salad was pretty bland- maybe all the seasonings migrated to the bottom, but I definitely didn't taste any green onions, garlic, vinegar, sesame oil, OR ginger. The ingredient list also boasts MORE raw sesame seeds, but they were thankfully absent from this dish.

*isn't my husband nice to help me edit my blog? What would I do without him? For the record, I returned the favor by taking my loving husband out for some Ben and Jerry's after dinner. It was tasty too.

Calling Jason Sheehan: Please Move to Houston!

This post is not about what I had for dinner. This post is about bad food writing.

The Houston Press food critic, Robb Walsh, is illiterate and I am sick of it. Apparently, he also writes cookbooks, but he must have a damn good editor to combat his poor writing skills. Seriously, check out this tangled paragraph from his latest review:

"The ginger-scallion preparation is a favorite with live seafood because of its simplicity. The idea is to savor the incredible freshness of the seafood that was swimming around a few minutes before you ate it. But unfortunately, East Wall messed up on the lobster, as far as I am concerned. It was cut up and stir-fried in oil with the green onions and chunks of ginger as usual, but then the chef coated the lobster pieces with cornstarch."

Okay, so it sounds like something I wrote. Badly. But I'm not getting paid to write about food, and he is. It makes my inner grammar nazi all twitchy just thinking about it. I realize that Denver is the most highly educated city in the country, and that perhaps Houstonians would be unable to grasp the subtle wit that is Jason Sheehan. Regardless, it's sad that the Houston Press is lowering the intellectual caliber of discourse in this country via its shitty food writing.

Skillet in Montrose

Today for brunch, I had two poached eggs, local chorizo, black beans, two kinds of salsa, and breakfast potatoes, all covered with mozzarella cheese. The location was Cafe Brazil, a tasty coffee shop/bar/restaurant in Montrose, the hipster gay neighborhood of Houston. It should also be noted that this Cafe Brazil is (as far as I know) NOT related to the Dallas mini-chain that also has awesome desserts and a hipster atmosphere. If I'm lucky, I'll make it up there one of these days and review it separately- the location in Deep Ellum holds a special place in my heart.

I love the Houston Cafe Brazil- it's like a converted garage full of art, with a nice (at least in January...) ivy-covered patio, and a slew of tasty desserts. No dessert with brunch, alas. Even without some early-morning sugar, Brazil makes some mean Mexican food. Beyond the skillet I had, they also have migas, a breakfast taco plate, and a pupusa plate. I'm a little concerned about the quality of their pupusas, considering their orthography ("papusa"???), but I did have their migas last week, and they were likewise tasty. My only complaint this morning was the eggs, which were poached into don't-sue-us-for-food-poisoning oblivion. Maybe the eggs were old and they were worried? Otherwise, very nice, especially with the two accompanying salsas: sassy green chile, and a sweeter roasted tomato one. Extra points for the piping hot corn tortillas and toasted cinnamon house blend coffee.

Italian Chicken Sandwich at Second Baptist Church

No, I have not undergone an evangelical conversion. But I did eat lunch at the biggest, creepiest bastion of televangelism in Houston. Perhaps lesser known than Joel Osteen's carnival extravaganza, Second Baptist is the original megachurch. I couldn't even guess what the square footage of this place is, but it's about eight stories high and boasts a school, sanctuary, gym, restaurant, bookstore, and g-d knows what else.

Jane's Grill is a cafeteria on the second floor with seating for maybe one hundred and a nice terrace. Their menu is not very creative, but is cheap and not too bad. Today, I had an herbed sub ($5.99) with chicken, weird seasoned mayo, and some processed white cheese slices. It was rather greasy, and the mayo tasted like generic jarred crap mixed with chopped herbs and maybe a little food coloring, but it wasn't awful. Plus, it came with TATER-TOTS!!!!! Oh, the fourth-grade cafeteria nostalgia. I'm pretty sure they were frozen and then reconstituted in the deep fryer, as they were crispy and mushy and absurdly greasy all at the same time. Not too bad. The locally-made flavored iced tea is a plus, too.

Orzo and Frozen Yogurt at Home

For dinner, I made some orzo with butter and parm. It went nicely with some leftover red wine and amazing Greek yogurt frozen yogurt.

I've never cooked orzo before, so it was quite exciting. Especially exciting was the fact that our spaghetti pot has a built-in colander that is generally very useful, but the holes are large enough for orzo to escape. Straining the cooked orzo was ineffectual, but I was able to salvage enough for dinner. I covered it with butter, kosher salt, and some Kraft parmesan cheese. Oddly, it tasted exactly like Kraft's Mac N' Cheese.

The best part, as is usually the case, was dessert. Greek Gods makes fabulous frozen yogurt! I think it's the best ice cream product I've ever had, and is slightly lower fat than real ice cream. My fave is the chocolate fig, so much so that I've never bothered to try their others (which include pomegranate and honey, and also sound tasty). The bizarre ad copy on their website includes these tasting notes:

"Greek Gods Chocolata Fig Pagoto Ice Krema is a rich unique blend of flavors. It combines our signature honey cream base with a mixture of pure fig and chunks of dark gourmet chocolate. The fusion creates a stunning flavor profile that has hints of butterscotch, fig, chocolate and nuts in a creamy and smooth delicacy."

I also learned from their website copy that the yogurt's texture comes from mastic gum...yum.

Frozen Pizza at Home

For dinner, I had a Safeway Organics frozen spinach and cheese pizza, and a glass of gloriously tannic Portuguese red table wine.

First, these pizzas are fabulous. If generic brands would import all of their foods from where they are made best, it would create a revolution of sorts. The pizzas are made in Italy with a list of tasty ingredients and no weird additives. The crust contains only (organic) wheat flour, salt, olive oil, and yeast, and is topped with spinach, four cheeses, tomato sauce, and olive oil. I hate frozen pizza, but these taste like something I could have made; at about $4 each (maybe $5 when they're not on sale, but they always are), they're cheaper than any other organic frozen pizzas, and taste way better.

The wine is also very good. Can you really go wrong with wine from Portugal? It's nice, a little less rich than others I've had, very tannic. Yay dinner!

Posh Grocery Store Food in Houston

Central Market is crazy, and crazy expensive. Despite being owned by the H.E. Butts company, this place gives Whole Paycheck a new name- maybe Quarter Paycheck? If I had a real job, I think I could spend days in this place. I'm a pretty educated food person, and they stock fruits and potato varieties I've never heard of. They stock more Amarone wines than I've seen in one place in my whole life. They have a chocolate AISLE. The whole aisle. I think I could happily live there. Long story short, I bought whatever I felt like, and ended up consolidating some beets, microwave organic popcorn, and awful blueberry beer for dinner.

The beets were amazing, as always. Beets really are the perfect food. I roasted them with olive oil and green garlic, then sliced and covered them with more of the same and some salt. The microwave popcorn was a bizarre craving I had, although the butter remained stuck to the sides of the bag, hindering my enjoyment. The beer was not Central Market's fault, it should be noted. This beer is so bad, Jon thinks it deserves its own blog post...

I had encountered this beer back in May, when I was caught in a tornado and ended up at the Anheuser-Busch factory in Ft. Collins, CO. I sampled several beers, but had a cold, and was confused when all their flavored beers tasted like cough medicine. Knowing A-B, I figured they might be as sickly-sweet as they seemed, but figured they deserved a second chance. I also noted that the packaging has NO mention of their corporate overlordship, and that they have a cute cartoony label that looks very microbrewery.

Fast forward to this week, when we were at a convenience store in Houston looking for expensive cigarettes and cheap beer. Jon was fooled by the cute package, the "North American Brewer's Association Gold Medal" claim, and the statement that it was brewed by the "Blue Dawg Brewing Co." of Baldwinsville, NY. I thought it was the A-B beer I'd tried, but wasn't sure, due to the cutesey packaging and lack of A-B labeling.

I do not currently have a cold, and it still tastes like cough syrup. I have no further tasting notes, because that is all. Eau de cough syrup. In fact, I think the alcohol content (8%) may be similar to cough syrup. Assuming the label is not trying to mislead further, the label claims that the flavor is completely natural. If this is true, A-B must just add blueberry juice from concentrate to the final product, as it is a freakish purple shade. I can only imagine this product survives due to the 8% ABV and the malt beverages market.

More than anything, I'm appalled that A-B is so obviously misleading the public about the origins of "Wild Blue". Not as though I harbored much respect for large-scale American brewers, but really. Maybe if you have to lie about your beer to sell it, you should just give up. It's that bad. If you're ever in Ft. Collins, go to their brewery's tasting room and try it, along with their "hefeweissen" style 'Shock Top' beer...you can guess why I put hefeweissen in quotes. Please don't encourage its production by buying it, but it is so morbidly awful it must be sampled. Perhaps it would be ok reduced and drizzled over cheesecake.

Designer Burgers in Upper Kirby

For dinner, I had a cheeseburger and fries from Beck's Prime. Beck's is a Houston burger chain boasting fresh-cut fries, 1/2 pound burgers cooked over mesquite coals, and $22 steaks. Imagine Good Times with bigger burgers, minus the frozen custard and plus $15.

The fries were very good. They are allegedly hand-cut on site every day, which is worthy of praise in an age when even Thomas Keller has given in to Sysco. Having never tried TK's fries, I will refrain from further judgment. These had a nice potato flavor, good crispy-smushy balance, and were dusted in a sassy blend of spices. Yes, sassy. Maybe some cumin? They were actually a little weird.

The burger was interesting. It was huge, and contained a slice of cheese on each side of the meat- a bit too cheesy for me. They considerately sliced the onion into little square chunks, and smushed them into the melting cheese so they did not slide off the burger, which is a huge (if neurotic) pet peeve of mine. They also agreed to cook my burger medium-rare, and actually followed through! This made it perfectly cooked for my tastes, and (hopefully) shows some confidence in their ground-beef sources. Inshallah, E. Coli is not in my future...

People watching was ok. This place is down the street from the most expensive and storied neighborhood in Houston. We shared the place with some wealthy-looking elderly ladies, and a weird couple- snobby, botoxed, wedge-heel-and-capris-clad woman with balding, fat, denim-from-head-to-toe guy. Maybe she is having an affair with her gardener?

Finally, I apologize for the random photo of Thomas Keller. He's kind of a handsome guy, I guess. I couldn't find good photos of his fries. Seriously though, what kind of burger joint's website lacks photos of burgers?!?

Ravioli at Home

For dinner, I had store-bought ravioli from Nuovo Pasta, with leftover pasta sauce from Alessi and a beloved Cerveza Cusqueña. The ravioli flavor was appropriately bizarre: Crawfish and Andouille, with caramelized onion and peppers. I'm a little disappointed in the company- apparently, they make other interesting flavors (Crab, leek, and lemon; asparagus, lemon, and mascarpone; squid ink, etc.), but they are only available to food service professionals. The crawfish ravioli was ok, but I really hate red and green peppers. They were not noted on the packaging except in the ingredients, and by the time I noticed, it was too late. Still, I think it's the strangest ravioli I've ever had, which is worth something.

The Cusqueña was very exciting. I haven't had it in years, because the importation supply lines were that bad. I think it might actually be on the menu at Los Cabos II, in downtown Denver, but every time I was ever there, they were out. The story they told me was that one company imported it into Los Angeles, and that they sent some poor employee off driving through the desert to bring it back to Denver in the trunk of his car, at which point it sold out in about a day. No, it is not the best beer in the world, but it's pretty good, and it's from Peru, which is one of the best places in the world. Hence, my ridiculous joy at finding it in the expensive grocery store here in Houston. In Peru, it's about $1.50 a liter. Here, it's almost $8 for a six-pack. I really hope some of that money makes it back to Peru.

More Greek Food in Houston- Niko Nikos

For dinner, I had a Greek roast chicken half, with fries, tzatziki sauce, and a Red Stripe. The location was Niko Nikos, a Greek place on Montrose introduced to me by my lovely cousin Kristen. They recently expanded a bit, resulting in even more congestion despite more square footage and a larger parking lot. Their food is just that good.

The roast chicken was not quite as good as my fave Greek chicken place in Denver, Central II (by Swedish Hospital), but it was pretty good. Just your typical roast chicken with garlic, rosemary, lemon, and olive oil. Their fries were delicious, as usual, especially dipped in their yummy tzatziki sauce. They also make great oven-roasted potatoes with lemon and olive oil, although I did not have any tonight.

Likewise, the people-watching was fascinating. There was a Greek family eating near us that clearly had some drama going on (gesticulating hands, a little screaming), and a very Texas family consisting of overweight mom, overweight dad, and, sadly, overweight five-year-old girl. The food was a little heavy for the heat, but I'd been having a huge craving for their food since we moved down that had to be sated. I think it will be a nice go-to place for wholesome Greek food, although it lacks the charm and grease of a traditional Greek coffee shop.

Hobbits in Houston

No, I did not eat hobbits for dinner. I ate a cheeseburger and fries made by hobbits, with a beer from the local St. Arnold's brewery.

The Hobbit Cafe has been around since the mid-70s, in an old house tucked behind some trees just off of one of the city's main thoroughfares. Their menu is part hippie relic, with smoothies and brown rice, and part tasty burger joint. I had a buffalo burger with cheese and onions, and seasoned fries. It was slightly better than mediocre. My 'buffalo' tasted quite a lot like beef, was overcooked, and placed in a multigrain bun- par for the course here, but does anybody really want a grainy bun with their cheeseburger? The seasoned fries were nice, particularly dipped in Tabasco.

St. Arnold's is, as far as my uneducated and unresearched self knows, the only local brewery in Houston. They give tours of their facility on Saturdays with generous free samples, I'm told, but I have not yet visited because I've also heard there is no A/C. They make a mean Christmas Ale, and a nice summer ale, Lawnmower Ale. All of their beers are rarely available outside the state. I'd never had their Amber Ale before, so I went for that one. It was decent, if a little hoppy for my tastes.

Greek Food in Houston- Yia Yia Mary's

For lunch, I had a mezze portion of taramasalata and a small salad at Yia Yia Mary's. YYM is the only Greek-themed outpost of the Pappas restaurant chain (See: Pappasito's Cantina, Pappadeaux's, Pappa's BBQ, Pappa's Grill, etc.), with only one location, which is here in Houston.

I had visited a few months ago, and was excited to see they have taramasalata on the menu, as it is very rare in American Greek restaurants. In fact, every other time I've eaten fresh taramasalata has been in Germany. Taramasalata is a spread made of cod roe blended with lemon juice and olive oil, which is eaten with pita bread. It can sometimes be found in the U.S. at grocery stores in jars from Krinos, but does not seem to be a popular dish at restaurants on this side of the pond. Despite its eerie pink color and ghastly saltiness, the flavor is awesome and somewhat unique. The accompanying pita bread was freshly baked and perfectly crisp, with a light sprinkling of kosher salt. It was tasty alone, but I had to brush off most of the salt before dipping it in the salty taramasalata.

The side salad was ok, if generic. It consisted mostly of sweet onions, black nicoise-looking olives (rather than the larger Kalamatas I would expect to see), tomato, very salty feta, lemon wedges, and some spices and olive oil. My only complaint would be the feta, which was too salty to enjoy. I have not had Greek feta in a very long time, so I am not sure if this was normal or not.

Pappas tends have pretty solid, if somewhat expensive, restaurant food, and YYM is no exception. Their prices do not change according to the time of day, so there is actually a $23 entree (I think it involves lamb chops?) you can order at lunch. I ordered off the appetizer and side menus, and I still spent about $11 on food. It's worth an occasional splurge when I'm in the mood for taramasalat, but not otherwise compelling.

Tortellini at Home

For dinner, I had Buitoni's "100% Whole Wheat Three Cheese Tortellini" with marinara sauce from Alessi and Haagen-Dazs Chocolate Sorbet for dessert.

(On a sidenote, I had to Google "Haagen-Dazs" to figure out how to spell it, and it was not the first, second, or even third suspected spelling. And it's not even a real word, in any language. Somehow, this really bothers my inner grammar nazi.)

The tortellini was shockingly good, especially for something that contains a fearsome SEVEN grams of fiber per serving. I do like whole grain everything, but I'm a little skeptical of the alleged quantity here- not even scary, chunky, super-duper whole-grain bread has that much fiber. The packaging does not indicate the presence of added wheat germ (which could conceivably boost the fiber to that degree), only whole wheat flour and a little gluten. Does gluten contain fiber? The package also lists about thirty other chemical-ey ingredients, presumably to mask the flavor of real wheat. I do own a ravioli maker, but I am willing to ingest all this extra crap for convenience's sake.

The sauce was likewise very tasty. I have yet to try an Alessi product I don't like. They are made in Italy with relatively high-quality ingredients (olive oil only, yummy Sicilian tomatoes), and not as pricey as other imports. This sauce was $4.99/bottle. The only problem with Alessi is that their sauces are viciously hard to find, particularly in Denver. I went years without their sauces, only to discover them one night at Queen Soopers, hiding on the bottom shelf. Their puttanesca is also very good, if a little sweet.

Dessert was awful! I never thought anything bad could be said about Haagen-Dazs, but Haagen-Dazs and low-fat do not mix, apparently. I had intentionally avoided the fudge bars on the ice cream aisle, because they're disgusting. I would rather eat Adria's doggy ice cream, even the peanut-butter-and-cheese flavor she loves so much, rather than eat a fudgesicle. Guess what Haagen-Dazs Chocolate Sherbert greatly resembles? Yuck. I suppose I should have been put on notice by the term "sherbert", as this tends to denote a water-based frozen dessert, but the fact that it was Haagen-Dazs falsely reassured me.

Indian Food in Houston- Madras Pavilion

Today, I had lunch at a South Indian vegetarian restaurant in Houston, Madras Pavilion. Their specialty is dhosas filled with various veggies, but we were there for the lunch buffet. Overall, it was pretty good, and included many things I'd never seen before, despite having been to India and eaten at a South Indian joint in Delhi.

Among the "new" foods were deep-fried lentil doughnuts and lentil-rice pancakes (see photo, above). They were very into lentils- at least half of the buffet items included them in one way or another. Lucky for me, I like lentils. The lentil doughnuts were tasty, with little black flecks I assume were lentil chunks. It tasted like a very dense potato cake, with a bit of Indian flair. The lentil pancakes reminded me a little of my beloved Ethiopian injera- no relation, obviously, but they were great for soaking up the curry-like sauce from my paneer and peas. I was shocked they contained lentils, as they looked more like a bleached-white Little Debbie snack cake than anything else, but they had a nice texture and a sour flavor kind of like injera. Everything else on the buffet line was pretty typical- a curry dish, a lentil dish (actually, several), a few more veggies-in-curry dishes, some rice pudding. Not bad, as Indian buffets go. They apparently try to represent Indian food as a whole, with dishes from many different regions in the buffet line. They will also make fresh dhosas for you to wrap your veggie goodies in, but we were too full.

As we ate, we noticed a little boy wearing what looked like a smallish knit hat. We speculated about the sense in wearing a wool hat on a warm summer day. A few minutes later, as several orthodox Jews walked in, we realized the 'hat' was actually a large yarmulke. Walking out, we noticed a large plaque advertising the restaurant's status as a kosher dairy restaurant, and the seal of approval given by the Houston Kashruth Association. I don't know if it would drive mohels wild, but it was definitely tasty.

Olive Garden by the Medical Center

Today, I had lunch at the much-maligned Olive Garden. Not my choice, but it was interesting after so many years away. Even their menu seems to have changed significantly from what I remembered; to me, it looked less classically Italian (if you could ever have labeled anything on the menu 'classic Italian') than ever before.

Not too much has changed otherwise. I tried to order a glass of their rose wine, but the waitress misunderstood me. I can't help but wonder how many people order wine by requesting "rosso", "bianco", or "rosato", as they are listed on the menu. Apparently the linguistics were sufficiently misleading so that I ended up with a glass of RED wine. Maybe I shouldn't expect someone who works at Olive Garden to know what rose is. It was very sweet and otherwise undistinguished, kind of like cheap wine from California. I was, however, encouraged to see that there is a Nero d'Avola on the menu, as this is not a very commonly imported Sicilian grape that I adore.

I could not decide on food. Their menu is kind of pricey (even at lunch) for my perception of the quality of what's served...$15 for grilled fish and pasta? I settled on the $9.95 cheese ravioli, which came with salad and breadsticks. No objection to the salad. The breadsticks were fine, even if I find the concept of spongy, greasy, wheat-germless "bread" kind of scary in general. The ravioli was decidedly not good. Olive Garden gets kudos for not overcooking them, but the filling needed help. It was particularly gross, as one lunch companion had just told me a story about 'The Simpsons' that involved Ralphie eating paste. Very chalky paste. They were covered with a very generic and salty marinara sauce and a little grated mozzarella. Not an awful meal, but nothing to change my mind about the chain. At those prices, I can cook pre-made ravioli at home with better sauce and wine.