Boots in the Oven

Update from ForeclosureTown

Well, I'm not typing from atop a stack of our belongings in the middle of the parking lot, and all in all my adrenal glands are more under control than they were yesterday at 2, so basically it's a safe assumption that everything's OK.

The basic details of how this happened are pretty boring unless you're fascinated by real estate malfeasance.  Suffice it to say that there was some sort of shady underhanded deal that our Austin owner's Realtor might lose his license over.  The Austin "owner" of the condo we've been renting since October isn't on any officially filed paperwork - apparently, he was sending checks to this guy in Cali who was supposed to be using them to pay off the mortgage.

At this juncture, I think we can assume that wasn't happening.

This sleazy Realtor's reaction when he found out that our place was under foreclosure was to sputter repeatedly that the owner in California is a professional athlete.  Sure, those guys are known for their adherence to the moral high ground.

The upshot of the story is that we're seriously considering putting in a bid on this place.  There are some ducks that need to be lined up, but we're starting to feel more confident that we can make this happen.  Assuming the Austin owner and his guy don't find out about it first - the "owner" is on vacation and doesn't get back until Monday.  I sure am happy we blog fairly anonymously... you never know when you might need to hide yourself from underhanded realtors!

Oh F@$#@@#$#$@@#$'n $#@#.

A very nicely coiffed lady came to our door about an hour ago to inform us that our condo has been foreclosed on. 

#@#$#!

And that the person we've been paying rent to since October is apparently not the owner of the property, like we were told.

Double @#$#@@#$#!

I've been spending the time since then reading up on Austin tenant law and trying to track down both the guy we thought owns the place  (who has moved without giving us an address we're supposed to send our rent to) and the guy who apparently actually does, who lives somewhere out in southern Cali.

Further wrinkles just in... it seems like the sale from Cali guy to Austin guy maybe never went through, for some reason, though all parties thought it did?  Oh how FUN it is, being in the middle of this!

Regardless, worst-case we have thirty days from written notice to vacate, which we don't have yet.

Holy poot.  We've turned into a statistic!

Wink leaves us confused.

Since we're in birthday season here, a few weeks ago we visited a restaurant we'd been wanting to try for some time.  It's called Wink, and it's in a small strip mall just northwest of downtown Austin.

The experience was really good tempered with emphatically not good. 

Prosecco by Villa Sandi, for instance, good.  One thing Wink does have entirely under control is their very nicely chosen wine list.

Having to wait a half-hour past our 9:00 reservation?  Well, we didn't really care that much, but I figure it's worth mentioning for those people that get really Teutonic about the timing of their evening out.

Their wine bar looked very nice, and the bar snacks going by were intriguing, but unfortunately the place was full.  We sat with our backs to the camping display at Whole Earth Provisions and watched cars come and go.

When we did get seated, I immediately had the impression that we'd somehow pissed off the waitress.  Perhaps it was just the tail end of a long night, or maybe it's that we're kinda on the young side for this restaurant, but I'd swear she rolled her eyes when we ordered our food.

Wink does offer a tasting menu, but the dishes we wanted to try on their always-changing menu weren't on it, so we devised our own.  Our starter was a kitchen-provided sweet corn soup with chili oil.

BTW, this is a DARK restaurant.  We'd been forewarned and had brought a little tripod.  I'm thinking our waitress didn't care much for this either.

The soup tasted like sweet corn.  It was nice, but not that interesting.  I was a little surprised to see anything with sweet corn on the menu, since Wink prides itself on seasonality and local sourcing, and I'd thought the season for sweet corn was later. 

I do admire Wink for how much they do with local sourcing, and for changing up the menu.  Actually, I'm concerned that the night we were there, we discovered some of the pitfalls of changing basically your entire menu each night.  And this is a large menu - we're not talking four apps and four mains, here.

For instance?  Well, the first thing we ordered, the roasted onion soup with cinnamon oil and brioche croutons ($9) had a pretty strong note of burned onion.  I'm all for the bitterness and small black spots on a good roasted vegetable, but this was difficult to get past.  The cinnamon oil was a nice idea, but the brioche croutons immediately became soggy and their flavor disappeared against the onion.

We do appreciate the kitchen splitting our courses for us, though.

The next dish was more successful - a trio of beets with baby arugula from Boggy Creek Farms and "wink chevre" ($13) - I didn't think to ask if they were making their own cheese?

The trio were roasted, candied, and pickled. 

At first, I thought both the candied and pickled varieties were too strong, but paired together they muted each other's sour and sweetness.  Plus, I'm just a dork for beets - I like them pretty much every which way.

Unfortunately, the next dish returned us to the land of oops.  And we had such high hopes for the seared hudson valley foie gras on pain perdu with roasted cipollini and strawberry coulis ($22).

Let's start with the high points.  The strawberry coulis was nice, quite a bit more tart than I'd been expecting.  Yay for first-of-the-season strawberries!  The cipollini were perfectly roasted, though unnecessary in my mind.  Things started to go pear-shaped with the pain perdu, which suffered from the same sogginess as the brioche croutons - this would have been fine had the outside been crisped.

And the foie gras.  Dangit, it was undercooked.  When our forks cut into it, a puddle of pinkish fluid snaked its way out onto our plates.  The outside was perfectly cooked, but the inside was still just about raw.  If this was a stylistic choice, I'd be surprised... my guess would be that their foie pan was too hot.

Continuing the offal kick- yet another thing I like about this restaurant - we ordered the veal sweetbreads with israeli cous cous, radicchio, and spring onion aioli ($17).  This was much more successful.

The sweetbreads were very nicely done, and I thought the richness got along well with the strong bitterness of the radicchio.  It might have been fun for the aioli to be a little cooler, but I'm sure that would be difficult to pull off in a busy restaurant.  The couscous was fun starchy tastiness.

Our last two dishes came out together - this was fine by us, though we'd been told everything would be coursed.  At this point, however, we'd had some extremely long waits between dishes and the restaurant was starting to empty out.  So, we got our pork belly with our grouper.  Oh well.

The braised karabuta pork belly on fuji apples and caramelized fennel ($15) was nice, but didn't stick with me for some reason.  I'm not sure why, since pork fat and I are always good friends.

It was all good, but nothing really stood out about it.  I know that's sort of an infuriating thing to say about a dish, but I just can't point to anything great or awful about it.  Pork.  Apples.  Fennel.  It's a solid combination that we all know works, and it did here.

The pan roasted grouper on gnocchi with brussels sprouts, fiddlehead ferns, and bcf spring mix ($27) was a little more interesting, though not necessarily in a good way. 

Firstly, the grouper was fricking awesome, cooked just right, firm and meaty and very good.  I was surprised by how good the brussels sprouts were - I wouldn't have thought they'd be a great combo with fish, but they were.  Husbear thought using the two strong vegetables, the sprouts and fiddlehead ferns, was overkill.  I actually liked the two together, but I was a little tipsy by this point and my notes say "FIDDLEHEADS = NATURE'S CURLY FRIES!!!!?!?!!" so maybe I shouldn't be trusted.

But the gnocchi was bad.  Mealy, hard, bad.  I cried a small tear, because gnocchi are my favorite thing in the world (even more favorite than a perfect oyster) and I hate when they're screwed up.

And then we didn't get dessert because it was very much time to go before our waitress tried out the Vulcan death grip.

I have to say before I hit Publish Now on this review that we have food-loving friends who've had terrific experiences at Wink, and I'm certainly not universally panning the place.  But there are a number of other places I'd like to try out before I rush back.  However, our verdict after one visit - spotty food with pretty bitchy service.

Wink: 1014 North Lamar, Ste. E Austin, TX.  512.482.8868.  Reservations strongly recommended, if not mandatory.

Remember the 1970s?

'Cause I don't.

I hear they were a classy time, full of discotheques and polyester and the commercialization of the hippie movement, where everyone traveled to school and work via the power of their hip rollerskates while wearing little vials of cocaine around their necks.

Foodwise, there was fondue, and Caesar salad made tableside was starting to die out, and you couldn't find decent sushi to save your life.

And your city didn't appear on the scale of awesomeness unless it had a rotating restaurant.  Chicago had one.  Even Columbia, South Carolina had one, though by the time I made it there for college in 1997, it didn't so much rotate as loom immobile over the end of USC's campus.

But there's one in Houston that still works, and though their menu has been updated a little and no longer includes lobster Thermidor and Steak Newburg (or did I get that backwards and inside-out?) you can still order a large lukewarm martini and watch the skyline float by in a manner that, well, makes you stick to just one martini.

It's the Spindletop, and it's right at the top of the Hyatt in the middle of downtown.

My brother, his lady friend, my husband, and I settled into one of the tables, which at the time was located on the east side of the building.

This place was seven kinds of cheesy.  The elevator to the top was outlined in light bulbs, which were just calling for a little light Kool and the Gang.  There was a salad bar.  The food we saw being carried by jutted out in every direction from the oversized square plates.   It was fancy circa the mid-90s.

And on we traveled, light reflecting off the surrounding skyscrapers.  Thinking we were smart, we'd timed our visit to this odd throwback for sunset.  Any dreams we'd had of an unparalleled view of the setting sun were sort of crushed by the fact that the entire westward sky was, well, blocked by buildings.  Oops.  Perhaps in 1973, the view would have knocked us right out of our rainbow-striped knee socks.

I won't lie, it was kinda pretty seeing the lights come on around us.  A fair complete with brightly lit Ferris wheel beckoned, but we had approaching dinner reservations. 

January's Gourmet featured a restaurant in Texas - rare enough that we'd remembered and decided to drag my poor brother and his lady there.  From the forty-word blurb, Danton's Gulf Coast Seafood Kitchen sounded like it would be a roll up your sleeves kind of place, where the walls were covered in fishing nets and everything was fried.

Well, the reviewers apparently haven't been within a hundred miles of a real country seafood shack in the last twenty years, because Danton's is emphatically not that.  Yeah, there's crap on the walls, but the decor is decidedly American bistro, all black and white and wood. 

They have great prices on some of the best Gulf oysters I've had, though, even if their prices have gone up.

The bear and I ordered two dozen right off the bat, because we're just those people, while DJ and M looked at us a little askance.  They were game to try one or two each, but I'm not entirely certain I've gotten them converted.  DJ did a great job at the crawfish boil he attended with my in-laws a couple years back, though, so I'm not concerned.

Plus, he saw redfish on the menu, said "what's that?" and immediately ordered it stuffed with crab and with a side of red beans and rice.  I'm telling you, we know how to eat in this family.

Redfish is such a delicious fish, all firm and white and mild.  No wonder Paul Prudhomme almost drove it extinct when he started off that blackening craze.  I split a grilled fillet with the husband, and it was very nicely done - and their okra and tomatoes were the shizz, if you're into okra, which holy crap - yes please.

We returned the intrepid pair to their studies and drove the three hours back to Austin.  On the way, we saw an enormous house fire with three fire trucks, a bunch of cop cars, and a posse of uniformed folks just watching it go.  We didn't stop for pictures, but we should have.

Spindletop at the Hyatt, 1200 Lousiana Street, Houston.  713.654.0195.
Danton's Gulf Coast Seafood Kitchen, 4611 Montrose Blvd., Houston.  713.807.8883.

By the way, did you know that the Houston/Galveston area has one of the largest Vietnamese populations in the US?  This is oddly evident in Houston, at least when you look at the parking meters.

I'm really starting to think Texas is overcompensating for something. If you catch my drift. Ahem.

My brother had but one request when he came through Houston a little over a week ago. 

"PLEASE OUTSIDE PLEASE PLEASE.  SHINY YELLOW ORB SO PRETTY WHAT IS IT?"

Yeah, my brother lives in Chicago. 

So, while his lady M studied, we drove out of town towards the Armand Bayou, where there's a big interpretive center and a boardwalk and the chance to see a crocodile.  But we got there late, and no amount of charm oozing off my husband would entice the mean meanie interpretive lady to let us in (though they weren't actually closing for another 45 minutes).

This meant that we'd be heading to another nearby outdoor attraction, the San Jacinto Battlefield Monument in Laporte. 

After driving through lots of bustling industrial smokestacks and gawd knows what, we arrived at the tallest monument tower in the world, built in the 1930s to commemorate the Battle of San Jacinto, when Texas won its independence from Mexico.

Seriously, the thing is 15 feet taller than the Washington Monument, and it's sort of off by itself in a field.  The base houses a museum and interpretive center, which is free and full of tidbits like Santa Anna's glove and Stephen F. Austin's china service.

Austin's own sculptress Elisabet Ney, whose museum we went to a couple of weeks ago (not that you'd know it by looking at the blog, dammit) was represented.  Here's her bust of Sam Houston.

Plus, they've got fun stuff like a raisin pitter for making mincemeat and an old-fashioned waffle iron, that looks like an enormously impractical extravagance.  I felt it burning me through the plexiglass display cabinet.

But the fun fun thing to do is take the elevator up to the top for $4.  The operator didn't appreciate our joking about our limited stop options - say, letting us get off halfway.

The view was marginally interesting.  There was a reflecting pool, I guess to invite further comparison to DC's monument, which - did I mention - is 15 feet shorter.

There's also a view of the wetlands heading off towards the Gulf.

And then some of the industry the area's famous for, of course. 

Yeah, well.  You're in Texas, so there's none of that nonsense about being able to see other states, and you're in East Texas, so the topography is just flat and wet. 

One father beckoned his children over to a set of pay binoculars.  "Hey, you can see all the way to I-10 from here!" 

Wow - I-10!

Next stop - outside!  Bro was thrilled.  There's a fairly short boardwalk that keeps you above the boggy ground.  Little minnows and guppies and something larger and floppy moved around under the surface of the water, and red-winged blackbirds and bluejays and grackles alit on the trees and bushes.

It was actually a nice little walk, with only a couple of other people around.  Here are a couple of the important men in my life, who don't look quite this much like each other in real life.

There were cool views of the monument from the trail, but unfortunately that was facing just about due west.  Oh well.

There's a little bit of Texas history for y'all.  If you'd like to learn more about the battle or the monument, go here, to the memorial's site.  They're having a big party there in a couple of weeks to mark the anniversary of the battle, so hey - go!

We took the long way back into town to fulfill another request of my urban planning geography brother guy.  The Fred Hartman Bridge is an over-engineered cable bridge spanning the shipping channel. 

It's another thing you can see from the top of the Battlefield Monument - hey, it's not all I-10 around here, baybee!

We got one picture of it in all its glory through my filthy windshield, highlighting the eyelash or something that's found its way into the inner sanctum of my tiny Canon.

And, if you're wondering, this is what it looks like when a $117.5 million dollar bridge decides it wants you for a tasty snack.

After a nice afternoon of unabashedly dorky fun, we regathered Lady M and went to a rotating bar.  Where it's hard to take pictures, but I tried.  Laters.

Xiong's Cafe - I welcome our dumpling overlords.

Last week we drove to Houston to piss off a waitress.

Naw.  Actually, we drove to Houston to see my broheim and his ladyfriend, M, who's attending Rice. 

Pissing off the waitress was gravy on the cake.  Or is that icing on the turkey?  I don't know, my brain's pretty much completely stopped working after four weeks of reading those essays by our Texas 16 year olds. 

Where was I?  Oh, right... DUMPLINGS!

We left Austin a little later than we meant to last Saturday to meet these dear family members, so we asked them if they'd mind meeting us in far west Houston for a few hundred dumplings.  They kindly obliged, so we met in the middle of what seemed to be a freaking mile of various Asian businesses, all in huge strip malls, at Xiong's Cafe.

The dumpling house itself was completely full, but they accommodated us next door in the tea house.

Where we did a good bit of dickering about what to order.  When we finally did get our order together and presented it to our by now already suffering waitress, she said "You can't eat that."  So we dropped thirty dumplings off the list and looked at her hopefully.  Pass.

The first two things she dropped on the table were still wrapped in plastic.

First - preserved egg and jalapeno.  Fugly dish.

I actually liked this a lot, though it was sort of challenging to eat with chopsticks.  I've had preserved egg once before and thought it was a little ammonia-ey (though maybe that was just a bad egg?), but none of that flavor came through here.  Just nice comforting eggyness and a tiny, tiny bit of spice.  Tiny.

And spicy bamboo shoots,  with a fresh bamboo snap and again, like no spice.  Still tasty.

We nibbled on these for just a couple of minutes until the next dish came out.  This wasn't on the menu, but the waitress suggested it after seeing my disappointment at the lack of soup dumplings.  It's a pan-fried beef dumpling with soup in it.  Eeeeeeee!

Turned out to be my favorite by a nose, and it came out first in the dumpling extravaganza.  Go figure.  It had that delicious greasy fried dough thing, with the crunchy outside and the slightly gooey middle where the soup resided.  The beef was a little difficult to keep in the dumpling, but was seasoned nicely with pepper and onion.  Here's a bit of an innards shot for you.

This is making me hungry.

Husbear put together a nice spicy vinegary dipping sauce for our dumplings.  The man can't be stopped if there are seasonings around.

We had a few minutes to commune with our new beefy soupy dumpling friend before the next dumplings were deposited on our table.  Next up - spicy szechuan dumplings.  These were $3.25 for an order of 12 - a good deal, even if they were teeny little guys.

These were pretty strongly reminiscent of Asia Cafe's Xhong dumplings.  Porky goodness with a slightly thicker dumpling skin, barely keeping above the level of the chili oil.  Very nice.

More pork next, with a dish that had specific favorable reviews - Boiled Pork and Cilantro dumplings.  Comes in an excessive order of 15!

I did like these, there were just so many of them.  They had a VERY strong cilantro flavor - I'm a fan, but I'm aware there are some insane people out there with a genetic predisposition to hate the delicate leafy guy, so if that's you - don't order these.  Man, this dumpling skin was good, though.

A brief break from the pork (don't worry, it will be back) for a green onion pie, which seems to be the same as a scallion pancake.

M, who was raised in Bangalore, took one look at these and said "Hey, that looks like something my grandma used to make."  Ah, the universal cultural glue that is the flatbread.

Good, if a little greasy?  These definitely benefited from a dunk in that chili oil/vinegar concoction.

And back to the pork.  That didn't take long, huh?  The waitress walked over with this plate, scornfully surveyed our overflowing table, and said "Make room for this."

I'm pretty sure these pan-fried pork dumplings were the first open-ended dumplings I've eaten in a Chinese restaurant.  Dang, were they good.  All fried and porky and conveniently tube-shaped.

And then we had to consolidate a bunch of dishes, because a huge wok steamer arrived at the table bearing an order of mixed steamed dumplings.

The huge braided ones were the vegetable dumplings, which the table didn't really care for - lots of, I think, green onion tops made for a slightly bitter and not totally agreeable veg flavor.  This from a lady who's a freak for greens.  Don't worry, my champion eater of a brother helped us out.

On the top, with the unfortunately split skins, were the pork buns.  I was expecting, you know, pork buns, not these dumplings, but they were certainly good.  They may even have been Husbear's favorite, with their delicate skins and savory porky interior.

On the right - lamb!  I seem to recall lamb dumplings in a Tibetan restaurant in Vienna in 2001, but I don't think I've seen any on a menu since then.  If you like lamb and dumplings, you'd like these lamb dumplings.  Very lamby.

And, well, that's it.  We followed M and my brother back to her dorm, where she had a bunch of work to do in the afternoon.  We kidnapped bro for an afternoon of being outside (after all, he's been in Chicago for the last few months).  Later on that.

Xiong's Cafe is at 9888 Bellaire Blvd # 150 in Houston.  713.771.8448.  I think they're open until like 2 in the morning, but you might want to call them to check that.

Happy Celebratory Birthday Catfish!

Yeah, we're trying not to fall off the face of the earth, we're just not doing a very good job.  Husbear's working his magic for a new movie, and I'm spending my days reading the standardized essays churned out by Texas 16-year-olds.  The job is simultaneously hilarious and depressing, and had I not signed eleventeen nondisclosure agreements, I'd be filling your ears with some real doozies.

But I can't. 

So... perhaps I can appease you with some food?

Sunday was Husbear's birthday!  Yay!  29!  And still adorable!

The man wanted catfish for his birthday.  More specifically, he wanted a whole catfish.  Fried.  And served in the Vietnamese style, like the elephant ear fish we had in the Mekong, see here.

We'd heard long ago that Le Soleil will happily put on this kind of spread for you, so we called a couple of friends and drove over.

Sorry about the seafood overload, Adam.

We had to order something besides the catfish, so why not try out their Bo luc lac, also known as shaking or shaken or shaky beef?

This has to be some of the tenderest beef I've ever eaten.  We don't really eat much beef in this household, but I did see Husbear's eyes light up over this dish.  Perhaps we'll be seeing a home version?  Or maybe we'll just be ordering it a lot at Le Soleil?

The expertly stir-fried beef came with a side lime and pepper dipping sauce, which nicely cut through the meat's richness.  I've had that dip at lesser restaurants and not understood what the fuss is, but with this beef it was just perfect.

Next came the grilled pork, which I insisted on.  Theirs is the best version of the Viet staple I've had in town. 

And plates of noodles and herbs and rice paper started to hit the table in preparation for the catfish.

The pork was perfect and savory and grilled and delicious.  It's a given that when we're at this restaurant, we have to order some version of this pork.

When the catfish came, we all just stared for a moment.  I should mention that the catfish is listed on the menu with five different prices, and this is the size smack in the middle.  Our waitress's recommendation.   (By the way, is it just that I'm reading the  essays of grammar-deprived 16 year olds, or does "waitress's" look strange to you, too?  I had to go look it up.)

I was reminded of  the hilarity that would ensue in Italy when we asked vendors for enough blank (beef, mussels, pasta) for two people, which is how we ended up with this four-pound steak.

The catfish was... big.  Large.  A fitting centerpiece for a birthday meal.

Few things are more entertaining to eat than fish served in this way.  Wet a piece of rice-paper, then pile up the center with some combination of fish, unidentifiable herbs of your choice, marinated daikon and carrot, bean sprouts, and rice noodles.  I'm pretty sure that some of that pork and beef found its way into a few rolls, too - though not this fine specimen of Husbear's.

I would think it would be pretty difficult to fry a fish of that size in a home kitchen, unless you're like my husband's family.  They maintain large setups specifically for frying fish outdoors, though usually the fish is redfish and it's in much smaller pieces.

Hey, that's why we have restaurants.

Somehow, in between all the conversation and catching up and mid-day drinking, a lot of eating got done, and most of the catfish disappeared.

Dude, I was just as surprised as you are.

And like that wasn't enough?  Husbear brought cake!  Specifically, a Grand Marnier crepe cake he'd been up until 2:30 in the morning preparing.  That man can make a serious bunch of crepes - he did work brunch prep for several months, after all.  He's also a master egg poacher.

The cake was delicious, but was better the next day with a caramel sauce.  Ahem.

Such a fun birthday lunch!  Great company, overlarge quantities of great food, what's not to love?

Things took a small turn towards the odd on our way back to the house - I think I'll blame the seventeen pounds of catfish we ate for the hallucination we had on the way home.  Really, an alpaca (or llama?)  in a trailer?  On the highway?

We were so full, actually we didn't eat dinner.  Instead of eating dinner that night, we went out to Vino Vino with the lovely Electric Blues and her lady, and then to the Will wrap party.  Yup, we got to go even though Husbear's not on the movie anymore!  Open bar and a photo booths, this one with an array of hilarious headgear.  I'm pretty sure I'm not going to show you those photos.

Le Soleil is, as always, at 9616 N. Lamar in Austin.  512.821.0396.

One last Thai meal... in a manner of speaking.

Stepping back into Thailand, June 2006, for the second-to-last time...

(You can refresh your memory, or meet these posts for the first time, over here.)

We got back from our Ayutthaya day trip midafternoon covered in dust and dirt and soot marred by rivulets of sweat.  It was so hot outside that we knew we'd have to retreat for a while to the quiet white coolness of our room at the Baan Sabai. 

But lunch had been really, really lacking in the department of deliciousness and decency, even, so we were hungry.

Street vendor to the rescue!  This woman was almost directly in front of the Baan Sabai.  She offered my two favorite cooking methods rolled into one... grill plus dumpling. 

We got a little variety - one with banana, one with peanut, and one with more bean, if I remember correctly.  This, plus a trusty large Beer Chang - Elephant Beer, that is - helped our moods considerably.  Though I could be confounding my variables... we also each had a bracingly cold shower and a brief nap.

To be perfectly truthful, the rice balls were a little dry, probably because they were being kept warm over the grillwok.

We waited until dark to poke our now quite tan and scrubbed faces tentatively outside.  Almost immediately, Husbear spotted a strolling man with an intriguing mix of... what could that be?

Not wanting to miss out, he picked up speed.

Just as we thought - this gentleman was our first mobile insect vendor!

We'd seen insects a couple of times before - most notably at the market we visited during our cooking class in Chiang Mai -  but we hadn't tried any.  And after a trip during which we found ourselves eating, at various times, hot vit lon (fetal duck egg), field mouse, and traditional British jellied eels, we had to have one last thing you can't find here in the States.

But, having made the decision to try some of the wares, um... how do you choose between all of them?

I wanted to try the bamboo worms, mostly because of their gratifying lack of spindly legs.

Husbear went for the grasshoppers, because, well... he wanted to stick up for all that hopped-on grass?

So, we requested a small baggie of the two types, with some crickets thrown in for good measure.  The guy sprayed a thin brown liquid (fish sauce mixed with something, perhaps?) over our bugs, and handed them over.

We immediately selected one of each type for each of us and snacked.  Honestly, not bad.  A little fishy, from the spray, perhaps?  A nutty flavor predominated.

These definitely needed a beer to help wash them down, so we trudged over to a place we'd scouted earlier that looked to do a good job on whole grilled fish.

Taking a table, we ordered a couple beers and unwrapped our tiny, leggy bounty.

Care for a closeup?  With a full-face view of a grasshopper, who looks like he's being stalked by a particularly brazen cricket?

With the beers, this became a satisfying aperitif.  I liked the smaller insects better - the grasshoppers' legs kept getting stuck in my teeth.  Undesirable.

But, of course, man does not live on leggy hoppers and crawlies alone, so we ordered some food.  After our day in the searing heat of Ayutthaya, I was totally dehydrated and thought the menu's miso soup would be perfect.

Oops.  Forgot we were in a Korean restaurant.  Still, though, the soup was nice, and definitely began the process of restoring my electrolytes.

We had to order a whole fish, of course.  That's one thing that I've found to be lacking at restaurants around here - it's hard to just get a whole grilled or fried fish.  Fillets rule in the States.

It's been so long that I've stupidly forgotten what kind of fish we ate.  A flat one.  Grilled.

It came with so-so panchan.

The fish, whatever it was, was really yummy.  It was served with a nicely spicy tangy sauce and fish sauce, along with a bit of a cabbagey salad for crunch and some greenery.

All in all, very nice.  We left and walked back towards our hotel, stopping at some hostel that was playing the Borat movie.  Nice. 

Only one more Southeast Asia post!  And that one is predominantly airplane food. 

When do we go back? 

SXSW, Chinese, and another reason to Beware the Ides of March

It's been a while, I know.  I've just started a "job" reading exit level TAKS tests, and after a day of scanning overwhelmingly mediocre essays sprinkled with few moments of sheer brilliance the last thing I've wanted to do is come home and write. 

Interestingly, those aforementioned moments are often failing essays.  Go figure.  I think it's another example of how No Child Left Behind is really a push towards mediocrity - from my reading these sixteen-year-olds' two pages, it feels like the those outliers are being slowly forced towards the middle.

Anyhoo, with me burning my eyes out at a computer screen and Husbear working six-day 80 or 90 hour weeks, yeah, the blog's suffered.  But now we're back, to let YOU know, we can really shake 'em down.

And to tell you about this hilarious experience we had last week at Austin's huge music and blogging extravaganza, South by Southwest aka SXSW aka South by.

Thursday, I got home eyes-ableeding from the essays.  Husbear arrived oh, two and a half hours later or so, and we drove over to a nearby Chinese restaurant we'd been wanting to try - China Palace.  I was all primed to ask for the Chinese menu, but apparently they've been getting that request enough that they've added it as the final page of the Western-style menu.

I honestly don't know if they have a beer or wine menu... we stuck with tea.  And a pallet of food from the Chinese page of the menu.

First?  Scallion pancake.  (You were starting to think there weren't any pics in this post, ja?)

Perfect, at least in my limited knowledge of scallion pancakes.  Nice and chewy, and somehow not greasy - I don't know how they pulled that off.  Sort of huge, though.  We probably should have taken half of this one home, but sometimes it's hard to stop eating the crispy fried bready tastiness.

We did bring home huge amounts of our two entrees, though.  First of those was a last-minute decision, the Shrimp with Soft Tofu.

Seriously Cantonese, here.  The dish was really good, but would have benefited from higher-quality shrimp.  Subtle flavors all melded really well, with a nice soothing salty shrimpyness and the smooth taste and mouthfeel of the tofu.  Really fun to eat.

Not as much fun as the Shredded Pork with Mustard Greens and Tofu Knot.  Holy happymouth. 

Again, the sauce here really remained in the background.  The main flavors were the sharp cruciferousness of the mustard greens and the meaty pork, but the fun here was in the texture.  The tofu knot had such a nice chew to it that really contrasted with the crunch of the mustard greens and the barely resistant bamboo shoot.

There was a huge amount of garlic in this dish, but we were surprised to be pretty much unable to taste it.

Here's a closeup of that tofu knot.  It's apparently made from the skin that forms in a layer on a block of tofu while it's being made.  The skin is rolled and tied into a knot.  Ta-da!

Total, for the two of us, before tip?  $23.75.  Noice.

We loaded our six pounds of leftovers into the car and drove downtown to the Light Bar.  A friend of ours here in town who's better at staying in touch with college friends than we are called me to tell me an old friend was playing there with his band.  (I can no longer recognize runon sentences.  Sorry.)

Downtown was PACKED with people wearing wristbands and credentials and looking like they were from somewhere much more self-conscious than Austin.  Lots of metallic shoes, one-color sack dresses, enormous bags, extra-tight jeans, wide-armed glasses... you know the type.  We eventually paid to park and walked over to the Light Bar, where a hip-hop showcase was going on downstairs and a hand-lettered sign pointed us up to the rooftop patio for the Arclight Records Showcase.

Corona was $5.50, as was Shiner.  Perhaps you're from a large town, and those sound like reasonable bottle-beer prices, but damn were SXSW attendees getting ripped off!  Sheez.

Yeah, we bought drinks.

Our friend's band, the Freshkills, went on as scheduled at 10:00.  We were sitting, enjoying the music and enjoying watching a couple of hardcore fans getting their hipster dance on, when suddenly their sound was cut off.

The crowd started chanting.  "Bull-SHIT.  Bull-SHIT."  You try it, it's quite therapeutic.

Turned out they'd been shut off because the club was violating a noise ordinance.  During a huge music festival.  Yeah.

Rumor was some jackass threw a golf ball at a cop car off the roof the day before, and that there were perhaps some other unspecified annoyances, so the cops weren't wanting shows at that particular bar. 

We went and got our money back, but when we waited around to talk to our friend, the doorkeeper snapped at us.  "You gonna take your money back and STAY HERE?"

Well, yeah, actually.  The cover was for live music, and there isn't any.  We did throw away a good chunk of change at the bar, though.

After Mitch talked with his folks and other friends that had come to see him play, we all split and walked over to Imperia to get the boy some food.  We had a great time catching up.  I hate when I fall out of touch with people I really like, especially when it's so hard to meet new folks.

Rapid topic shift.  BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH.

You know why, right?

No, not because we have to fear being stabbed by a Senator we've treated like a son. 

Actually, it's because these particular Ides are the 20th anniversary of the Bloomin' Onion, that scarily delicious allegedly 2200 calorie treat.

I had a very interesting email earlier this week, with some Bloomin' Onion trivia.  Did you know that the type of onion used in the gutbomb appetizer was specially devised by what the Outback folks choose to call an "onionologist" at Texas A & M?

No?

Well... how about the fact that the chain serves about 40,000 Bloomin' Onions a day? (That's 84 million calories and just under 5.4 million grams of fat, for you party-poopers.)

A piece of personal history, since I'm on the subject of not only Bloomin' Onions, but also long-lost college friends.  I had a good friend my first year of college that used to order a knockoff Bloomin' Onion from WingZone or somewhere once or twice a week.  Then he'd eat the whole thing. 

Great, now I want a ginormous batter-dipped and fried onion with deliciously spicy dipping sauce.  Curse you, Outback!

No, seriously, thanks to their Blogger Outreach program for sending me lots of detailed information and pretty pictures of the process each restaurant goes through to turn out the tasty. 

All from me.  Look for a post about bugs soon.  I hope.

Wow! This Series of Tubes is Amazing!

I'm not saying that I did this post from my sexy new iPhone while sitting in a field- but I totally did! I know I'm paragraphs behind, but I don't come from a first adoption kind of family. Call me naive but I can't help feeling a little like I'm on some weird Star Trek episode.

I mean seriously, all this wireless and internets business totally kicks ass.

Alright, enough bragging and amazement. I'm going back to work.

Does anyone know if these things work overseas?