FoodFash

Adventure Begins in the Kitchen

A Proper Goodbye

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Welcome to Austin, a place where only mild convincing is needed to get a slew of your best guy friends to eat a Sunday feast at a completely vegan restaurant!  After our last Barton Springs trip of the season, we headed to Casa de Luz for $12 all you can eat vegan goodness.

Picnic tables, a setting sun, and a fast approaching cold front set the scene for our cozy, comfort meal.

We started with carrot ginger soup and salad, which was most everyone’s favorite (perhaps because it was the most familiar of flavors).

Soup and salad were followed by greens, mixed veggies, seaweed and rice.  My favorite were the greens because they were topped with a nutritional  yeast sauce and, because I’m a freak, I totally dig nutritional yeast.

We all decided that this would be a perfect way to follow up our 2013 Barton Spring Sundays.  Until then, it’s been real Barton Springs 2012!

 

 

Olivia

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Dinner tonight was unusually disorganized, but turned out surprisingly spectacular.  I cancelled our reservation at Swift’s Attic so we could walk over to the newly opened Clark’s Oyster Bar, only to find out that they were completely booked for the night.  No biggs (except for I felt like it was biggs at the moment), we’d just head somewhere else.  After a bit of calling around to see who could fit us in, we landed at Olivia.

Olivia has been on my list for quite some time, so really the only setback was a seven minute drive.  My mom and I both had our stomachs set on oysters, so we ordered a couple and the roasted turnip soup to start while we browsed the menu.

I first ordered the branzino and, thankfully, our waitress warned us that it was a whole fish, head attached, and we’d have to pick around bones.  Ehhh…  No thanks.  So we took a few more minutes and went with the beet salad, beef carpaccio, and mussels.

The beef carpaccio was hands down the best thing of the night.  Flash fried capers, finely sliced shallots, arugula, and parmesan.  Ho-ly cow.   The mussels were also innovative and delish.  I’ve had mussels with chorizo before, but not with Brooklyn lager broth.  The smoky toast and Brooklyn broth were a cozy combination.  The beet salad was adorable and also very tasty, but I wish there would have been more beet balls.  Or more cheese balls.  Either ball, I would have taken more.  The oysters were oysters, I loved them cause they were oysters.  And the roasted turnip soup was a bit salty for my taste, but I totally dug the calamari topper.

And then, because I’m a compulsive checker-in-er, my friend Skylar texted me that she was across the street having a glass of wine and that my mom and I should stop by and say hey, so we did just that.  Somehow my planned night that became unplanned quickly became planned again, and I was oh so thankful for that!

The Slow Down

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I’ve spent most of the past few months on the road and last week was no exception.  My team headed to Dallas for a national meeting at our corporate headquarters.  We toured job sites, discussed strategy, and spent time bonding.  It was busy, busy, but I enjoyed it.

We were able to sneak in some delish food at the hotel restaurant, Media Grill, where I ordered a hefty hunk of swordfish.

And on our way home, we made sure to stop for snacks in the Town of West.  My boss and I are both Czech, so this pit stop gave us the opportunity to talk about random memories from our childhood.  If you live in Austin or Dallas, you’re well aware that this is the place to pit stop when driving between the two.

The kolaches (similar to danishes) were fresh out of the oven, which made them even more irresistible.  My boss stocked up on his favorite, the poppyseed.  I couldn’t help but reach for the pumpkin cream cheese.  Perhaps I just needed a cold front to roll in before committing to the fall pumpkin craze!

And this morning I braved 40 degree weather and walked to Austin City Hall to meet my co-workers for the Austin Heart Walk.  Austin is such a pretty city to walk through, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect morning to welcome me back to town.

Afterward, I walked back home, sneaking an unexpected 5 miles into the morning.  My roommate and I headed to Magnolia for COFFEE and some breakfast.  I sighed.  The last of my back to back obligations were over.  I can rest again, bake again, enjoy Austin again.

Another Move

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It’s hard to believe that the weekend I’ve been dreading for weeks has come and gone.  It almost seems too good to be true that everything went so smoothly that I’m sitting here, early on this Sunday morning, eating my breakfast at a leisurely pace and writing about it.  The movers came on time, the cable guy came on time, nothing was damaged, 95% of our stuff is put away, the animals are not killing each other getting along, the GATORS WON!  All of our big stresses are over.

Even the little stressors are nil.  We both had apartments full of opposite design spectrum furniture prior to moving in together.  I had grays and pinks and she had browns and reds.  Somehow, not only did all of our stuff fit (and nicely), it all came together and immediately felt like a home.  No more fears of living in a temporary bachelorette pad.  Phew!

Kara even gave me the sunshine room, which as you can see from the living room pic has a pretty fantastic view of the Greenbelt.  I’m excited that my room will have enough natural light that I can do my blogging business in here rather than cluttering up our living room.

But now that I’ve unpacked, it’s time to start packing again for a work trip to Tacoma, WA in the morning.  I’ll be there until Wednesday for work, anything in particular I should hit up while I’m there??