Food52 Potluck with Amanda Hesser!

Hi friends! Things are happening! The first Food52 Cookbook is out! I've got two recipes in this beaut- my Olive all'Ascolana and Griddled Polenta Cakes. So much fun!

And that's not all! Amanda Hesser will be in Austin Monday, November 14th to celebrate the launch of the book with a potluck at Boggy Creek Farm! Tickets are $25, but a ticket gets you a Food52 Cookbook as well as admission (retail price $35), so it's like you're being paid to be there! Sort of!

Celebrities abound! In addition to the lovely Amanda Hesser, you can meet the talented Austinites behind these award-winning recipes:

My sister, Helen! These are her Devils on Hatchback, one of my very very favorite foods.  She has two recipes in the book also! Her delightful Figgy Pudding Butter Cookies, and deliciously inventive Feta Frozen Yogurt with Blood Orange and Mint Granita!

Our friend, Abbie! This girl can cook!! These are her amazing Barbacoa Beef Cheek Tacos.  One of the many, many delicious treats Abbie is known for.  Her jams and chutneys are swoon-worthy.

Abbie's husband, Leo! His mashed potatoes are the bee's knees. So is Leo!

Our sweet friend, Nancy! This is her outstanding Heirloom Tomato and Lemon Mascarpone Tart.  She also makes a fantastic chocolate cake!

Our friend, Elizabeth! This is her beautiful Warm Custard Spoon Bread, which will be showcased in the second Food52 Cookbook, due out this spring!

I hope to see you guys at the potluck! I'll have a fat baby with me!

Tickets are available for purchase here:

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/207106

Ok, bye!

Kitchen Makeover!

Don't worry, reader! This is the before picture. Sorry I didn't bother to do the dishes.

(If you just want to see the before-and-after without reading my blabber, skip to the end of this post!)

One month before my due date, Andy and I decided to redo the kitchen.  Believe me, I know it was a dumb timing, but that nesting instinct is a powerful beast. Plus, we have a fantastic contractor who promised he could have it done before Henry came (he was true to his word!), and we figured it would be better to have construction going on before the baby came than after.  Anyway, I figured that this was tangentially food-related, so I could post before-and-after pictures here.  I <3 before-and-after pictures! You could show me B&A pictures of an apple pre- and post-snacking, and I'd probably say, "Wow! Someone ate the hell out of that apple!"

So, first some fun facts about our old kitchen...

• The handle would often fall off of the faucet.  Extremely annoying. (And occasionally hilarious, as when a friend would flip it on quickly and then look horrified because they thought they'd broken our sink.)
• The linoleum came in two handsomely-shaded patches, cream and white! Not sure why they thought it was ok to switch to cream for one fifth of the floor. 
• The drawers were forever falling off their tracks :/
• The counters actually lifted off the cabinets.

Needless to say, we were ready for an upgrade!  Without further ado:
 

 

Hooray for our new kitchen! It's such a huge improvement.  My favorite part is the huge expanse of butcher block counter space.  Rolling out pie crust used to be such a challenge- there was really only one small piece of usable counter space above the dishwasher.  Now look!

Sidenote: If you're in the market for remodeling, Artisan General Contracting gets my highest recommendation.  James Monge (pronounced moan-hay) of AGC has replaced all of our windows with energy efficient ones, built us a new fence, and remodeled our kitchen and bathroom.  All of the work was done quickly for a great price. You can contact James at AGC at artisanremodel@gmail.com or 512-922-5131. He's the best!

How about one last look of the before-and-after!

Austin Bakes for Japan & Other Fun Things!

Good morning, readers! Today is bakesale day in Austin! Check out the five locations around Austin, and swing by and pick up some treats! My baked goods are available for donation at the south location, Hotel San Jose on South Congress (right next to Jo's Coffee).  Here's what I contributed (along with help from two lovely ladies, Molly and Jen!):

Aged Cheddar and Chipotle Jam Thumbprints! These aren't particularly photogenic, but are crazy delicious.  The recipe is my adaptation of this winning recipe from food52.  I just replaced the blue cheese with a dry Grafton cheddar, and the fig preserves with a chipotle berry jam from the farmers' market!

 

Homemade Oreos! These are from Martha Stewart's awesome cookie book, and are always popular! They're big crunchy chocolate cookies sandwiched with a sweet sweet vanilla cream.   Here's the recipe!

 

Chewy Lemon Sugar Cookies! Another one of my faves from the Martha cookie book! These are flavored with lemon zest and juice, and are the size of your head. Yeesss. Here's the recipe.

Other fun things!

The Hill Country Conservancy is hosting an event on Earth Day, April 22 with a dinner from the Salt Lick, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and a concert with Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers!  The proceeds benefit the conservancy, which works to protect open space and water quality in Central Texas, so attend if you can! It'll be swell! Check out this page for more information and to purchase tickets!

 

I was lucky enough to eat at Barley Swine last night, the new restaurant from the folks who brought you Odd Duck!   The food is incredible, and the service was wonderful too.  If you don't mind starting early, you should try to get there before six to avoid long wait times.  If they're still on the menu, you have to try the fried brussel sprouts, grilled carrot salad, and jerk rubbed pork belly- they were all jaw-droppingly delicious. Oh! and the desserts were crazy-time amazing too!

That's it for me! Have a happy weekend!

Bun in the Oven

Hello readers! Andy and I are going to have a baby! I even redecorated my blog for the occasion!  I would have taken a picture of buns in the oven, but I don't make buns, I make biscuits, so I thought that would suffice.

This photo was taken in early October at our first doctor's appointment.  At that time the baby was 3.76 centimeters long, but he/she will have doubled in size since then and should now be about the size of a lemon! And look decidedly less like a gummy bear!

I'm not gonna lie to you, reader- the first few months of my pregnancy weren't the most fun I've ever had.  I felt sick a lot, and really sleepy.  I ate a whole lot of Pirate's Booty (aged white cheddar, of course). And for a long time, it made me feel queasy to read my beloved food blogs and cookbooks.  But I feel a lot better now! And I've been cooking a lot too, which makes me feel more like myself again, so hooray!

I'm really really excited :) Imma keep you posted on all the developments too.  Next up: we'll find out the sex of the baby December 20- huzzah!

The Crossword Cookbook

In less than 24 hours, Andy and I will be off to Seattle for the annual National Puzzlers' League Convention! This convention is one of my most favorite things in the whole world- several days of hanging out with the most brilliant, creative, and kind people, playing amazing and wildly innovative games and solving equally amazing and innovative puzzles.  Also! This year a few of us have scored seats at the private table at Salumi, a Seattle eatery specializing in cured meats. Yes. Yes. And it's owned by Mario Batali's parents, which is neat!

Anyway, a few years ago I met an amazing fellow named Mike Selinker at an NPL Con.  Mike (aka Slik) first wowed me with his brilliant homemade Jeopardy game, Slikardy!  He's also the President of Lone Shark Games, which collaborates with Wired on lots of fun puzzle-y projects.  To sum up, he is both cool and awesome.  Several months ago, dear Mike approached me about turning several of my recipes into crossword puzzles, and I said that sounded totally amazing, and he did it! And now you can see these puzzles and my very own recipes in the current issue of Games World of Puzzles magazine! See? It's even listed on the cover! Mike has taken all the key ingredients out of the recipes, so you'll have to solve the crossword puzzles to fill in the blanks.  I think it's terrific fun, and I'm so happy to be a part of it!  Thank you, Mike! I can't wait to see you and all our puzzling friends! One more day!

I find the pastrami to be the most sensual of all the salted cured meats.

The Summer of George

Here's a list of all of the stuff I want to do this summer, along with a list of restaurants I want to try.  I've written these down here for several reasons: 1. I like to make lists. 2. I think this might help hold me accountable, so I might actually do some of these this summer.  I'll cross things off as I do/try them. 3. I want your ideas for fun summer activities (and corresponding snacks, if applicable!). If you know of a not-to-be-missed summer activity, let me know.  That is all.

Summer of George To Do List

• Slip-n-Slide + Hebrew National hot dogs
• Shakespeare at Winedale + Royers
• classic movies at the Paramount + Sandy's Frozen Custard
• Schlitterbahn + Taco Bell (I can't help it.  One must eat Taco Bell after visiting Schlitterbahn.)
• Zilker Hillside Theatre (Annie!) + pigs in blankets
• Anthony Bourdain at Book People June 29 (!)
• tubing + zucchini bread
• beach/camping + s'mores
• Blanton Museum/Austin Museum of Art
• see the bats at the Congress Ave. bridge
• learn the Single Ladies dance
• see a movie at the outdoor theatre in Wimberley

New (to me) Restaurants to Try

Justine's Brasserie
Pluckers (Yes, Pluckers.  I've never been, and I'm a girl who enjoys a good chicken wing).
El Arbol
Lulu B's
East Side King
Lamberts
Dai Due Supper Club (I'm going next Saturday! Yahoo!)
Franklin Barbecue (Said to rival Lockhart)
Ryu of Japan
Fabi + Rosi
Man Bites Dog
Longhorn Po-Boys & Falafel
Foreign & Domestic

Dallas Eats

Happy Sunday, dear readers! I've been a negligent blogger lately, but I have a bit of an excuse- I spent all last week in Dallas, for work.  Oh boy.  I had grand schemes of blogging about where we ate every night after we returned to our hotel, but Law and Order on TNT, Another Cinderella Story (judge me if you must! but it had Sue Sylvester in it, so I had to watch the whole terrible thing, didn't I?), and the omission of my camera cord kept me from it.

But better late than never, aye? I received the most fantastic list of restaurant recommendations from my friends The Internet Cooking Princess and Allison. We didn't get to most of them, but I've got more trips scheduled to Dallas this summer, so I'm going to keep working my way through those lists!

Here are pics of some of the places we ate (I forgot to bring my camera along a few times):

Our first night in, we tried to eat at Cowboy Chow but it was closed.  Happily, the Twisted Root was on the same block, so we stopped in there instead.  I think this place is hovering in the neighborhood of #16 on the Texas Monthly list of the best burgers in Texas, and I can totally understand why.  I had the Peppercorn Ranch and Bacon Burger with a side of Fried Green Beans (when in Dallas, afterall!).  The burger was fantastic- I heard that they grind up brisket in their burgers, but whatever they do, it was juicy beefy fun.  The fried green beans mostly tasted like onion rings to me, but hey! i like onion rings!

These pics are from my dinner at Rathbun's Blue Plate Kitchen.  Kent Rathbun defeated Bobby Flay in an Iron Chef America battle, so I was happy to support his restaurant (good ole Bobby has some tasty looking dishes, but his behavior in his battle against my beloved Morimoto makes me think he's a bit of a, um, tool box, as we say). Anyway, I had bacon-braised brussel sprouts and grilled asparagus, which were ok, and a fried green tomato app with chevre and honey that was spectacular.

My very favorite dinner of the week was from Tillman's Roadhouse.  ICP said this is the place she tells all Dallas visitors to try, and I can totally understand why.  First off, it's in a perfectly delightful little area called Oak Cliff that's full of happy little restaurants and boutique shops.  A nice change from the more chain-y areas we'd been in.  Tillman's itself is a dream.  For the ladies: it really reminded me of what Anthropologie might look like if they decided to adopt a kitschy hunting theme.  So adorable.  As you can see from the pics above, I ate myself silly.  Delicious truffled popcorn and warm peanuts.  A trio of three types of french fries (I liked the purple peruvian fries with homemade chile powder the best!).  A chicken-fried hanger steak with poblano cream gravy! And to cap it off, a cookie tower with chocolate chip cookies, still deliciously gooey in the center, glued together with chocolate fudge on top of banana ice cream on top of a warm peanut butter cookie.  We had a happy time :)

Our culinary tour continued at Monica's Aca y Alla, a Tex-Mex place owned by a local celebrity tranny!  We had to go. Rumor has it that this place has 75 cent margaritas on Wednesdays, but we went on a Thursday.  Even so, this place is cheap! I had a margarita for $3.50 and the Frankie's Combo (shown above) for only $4.50 because this place keeps happy hour prices all night long on Thursdays.  Good times.

Our last meal in Dallas necessitates that I not end this post on a high-note.  We had to high-tail it to the airport, and so we were on the lookout for a place where we could stop and eat lunch quickly.  We were nearly there and hadn't seen anything, so I proposed that we stop at the very next place we came across.  As we rounded the corner we saw a Popeyes.  Nope. Nope.  We abandoned the game and opted instead to stop at the nearby Grandpa Tony's Mexican.  Sounds promising, no? haha!

We were in a hurry, so as I read the menu, I thought that the bean, queso, and guacamole chalupas sounded pretty good.  Here's what came out:

Three chalupas.  One bean. One queso.  One guacamole.  And I think, technically, that I should have put quotation marks around the words queso and guacamole in the preceding sentences. Why would one choose to deconstruct chalupas in this manner? Well, poorly-made chalupas aside, I had fun exploring the restaurants in Dallas! It made the 40 hour training on educational data disaggregation software just a little more enjoyable :)

Cookbook Time for Me!

I get to be in a cookbook! My olive recipe won this week's food52 contest, thanks largely to Helen's campaigning on my behalf (against her own recipe!).  So thanks, sister-of-my-life! I am so happy I get to be in a cookbook with you! If you'd like to read my finalist Q&A,  you can find it here.  Hooray!

Sister Showdown!

                                                                                                                    Photo by Sarah Shatz via Food52

My fried olive recipe is a finalist for this week's Food52 contest, but that's not all! My competition is none other than my sister, Helen!!  The folks over at Food52 selected our recipes from the 68 entries for the "Your Best Movie Snack" contest, and then realized that they had created the first ever Sister Showdown!  Helen and I are both thrilled to be finalists.  She's been super awesome too, asking all our friends and family to vote for me, since she has already won one Food52 contest, and will be in the cookbook for her Figgy Pudding Butter Cookies.  I have a feeling little sister is going to make it two with this one, since her bacon-wrapped, cream cheese-filled hatch peppers are almost universally adored, but it's been a blast being a finalist with her! Congratulations, sister!

If you have a moment, please stop by and vote for my olives (or Helen's Devils on Hatchback!) for this weeks contest :)

Thank you!