Update

My apologies for my prolonged absence from le blog. I’ve started writing for a not-yet-published blog and while I’m only required to submit one post a month, somehow this takes a lot of time. It takes considerably more time when I have to retrieve my own snacks because my loyal but unhelpful assistant does not have opposable thumbs. Here I am, in the midst of a typing moil:

1. Be not fooled by the facebook you see on the screen. T'is merely a cover for the sensitive material I can't leak via my blog.
2. My desk is a box on the floor.
3. That is what my hair looks like when I don’t shower. I hardly ever shower.

I do have an update, however. Max’s South American adventure was cut short when his boss came down with the flu. While I rejoiced in someone else’s misery, Max arrived early with not only the [promise of] disco, but also a $10 can of Chilean razor clams. He worked his magic with butter and garlic and we feasted:


About the disco…..apparently it was deemed a suspicious package and was confiscated by the Houston TSA. Now considered a person of interest, Max was momentarily detained and consequently missed his flight. I almost felt bad (for a millisecond), but then he got on a flight an hour later. All’s well that ends well.

My Pending Divorce

A great injustice is currently underway. Max is in Chile. Without me. Even more baffling is that he has the nerve to send me pictures like this:

I’m been left here at home to work, carry the world’s fastest growing baby, and look after an insolent pug. Divorce may be in our future.

Granted, he is there technically “for work,” and I’m too big to handle an 8-hour flight, nor do I have any vacation time, but still.

On the bright side, I have no problem requesting that he bring me back the disco I’ve so desired for the last year. If you recall, a disco is a cast iron wok-like apparatus used for sausage/shellfish feasts. It’s made of iron. It’s heavy. I don’t feel bad.

Because I like to torture myself, I ask either Max or a member of his family what they are eating each day. This was his sister’s report of last night’s dinner, and it’s too cute to keep to myself.

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there will be pecking nuts, guacamole with nachos, cheese philadelphia with soy sauce and sesame.

input a mixture of leaves of letuce with shrimp background plate will be in foil baked salmon with a timbale of quinoa, corn and avocado.

dessert will be papaya ice cream with papaya and strawberrys

cool is in it?

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It is NOT cool, Maria Jose, not cool at all.

Green Thumbed? Plant Whisperer? You decide.

The day has come, my friends.

We’ve reached trellis.

If this blog featured audio, a montage would now commence, and you’d scroll back through times such as these and these to the tune of “Halo.” Tears are appropriate.

I hope this is just the amuse bouche, and that the main course is my bean plants vining up to virtual infinity and covering an ugly expanse of fence. But for now I’ll be basking in the surprisingly not awkward (besides the kitchen string and twisty ties) teenage years of my bean plants.

Oh, and remember my heirloom tomato sprouts?

Here is one in present day:

Deep in the heart of Tay-hoss

Austin is certainly on a cutting edge of food trends, but methinks maybe they’ve taken certain trends a step too far. I wanted SO BADLY to get on board with the food truck trend, but the mere prevalence of these trucks diminished their cool factor for me. I was tickled when I passed the first, still interested when I spied the second and third, and downright bored come truck # 15 and 16.
Austin’s mantra (repeat after me): Farm to table.

Neat. WE GET IT. We like it. Good on you. Can we move on, please? But oh no my friends, it seems that half the fun of farm to table is talking incessantly about farm to table. At our first dinner we were regaled with the location of EVERY item that appeared on our plates, which of course meant very little to us, being NOT FROM AUSTIN.

Even though I may be particularly enamored of a trend, if I have to hear about it non-stop, I’m going to end up hating it. You’ll soon find me ordering caviar from Russia and making mango avocado salads mid-winter. I had to bite my tongue sharply when our waiter finished his sermon by telling us that the restaurant does not serve specials, but instead changes its menu daily. I sooooo wanted to ask: “Is the paper pulp used for your daily reprinted menus locally sourced? How about the printer ink?”

I’ll step out of my bitch pants long enough to admit that I did love the popularity of vegetable gardens – in fact, in Austin it is very common for restaurants to have them out back . I do so enjoy scoping out other people’s gardens, sometimes through holes in fences, if need be. People also seem to really value design there, so it was fun to spy on people’s landscaping and outdoor furniture choices. A big thumbs up in those areas.

We were a bit overwhelmed by all the food options available, and I blame that for an unfortunate experience with tex mex, which I believe is Spanish for “guacamole comes from squeeze tube.”
We wrapped up our trip as I’m sure 99% of Austin tourists do: with a trip to Salt Lick BBQ. Located in the stix outside Austin, on what road, you ask? Farm to table road, OF COURSE. No joke. Google that shit.

Lemonade and homemade potato chips for the pregnant lady.

And if you don’t mind waiting an hour plus, huge plates of delicious bbq.

Note: the hour plus wait would have breezed by much more quickly had we been informed that Salt Lick is BYOB. Consider yourselves warned.

Monday Curio

I forgot my camera today, so I’ll post Austin foodcation reflections tomorrow. In the meantime, this is a photographic rendering of how my sister Jane spent her last weekend in Thailand.