So the next recipe that I decided to try on my great journey was Jambalaya.  I actually thought that it was always spelled Jumbalaya.... luckily lots of other people seemed to as well, since the search auto corrected.

 This is the recipe that I went with: Link
 This was a fairly simple recipe with a lot of stuff.  I made a few changes based again on recommendations from other users, and overall I think the end result was really good.

The first change was that instead of Peanut Oil I simply used olive oil, this was simpler and I already had it, and a lot of people recommended this change.

The next change was in the type of sausage that I used.  I didn't really have access to Andouille sausage so I substituted spicy Italian sausage instead.  It seemed to work fairly well.  There were a lot of recommendations for Kielbasa, so I suppose that would work as well.The recipe called for slices of sausage, which based on what I used was not a simple thing as the sausage was a little mushy.  I ended up cutting them and them pushing them down a bit, the end result is below.


After seasoning them with Cajun Seasoning (which amazingly seems to be sold at any local supermarket), I put them in the pot with 1 tbsp of olive oil and cooked them up.  To season I simply poured the Cajun seasoning on the slices, then flipped them over and did the same for the other side.


The chicken was similar.  I think that I cut the pieces a little too large, at least some of them.  There are some recipes were you cook the sausage and the chicken together, but I actually thought that cooking them separately was good... though I am not sure why. It just seemed right.


To help break up the monotony of hearing about cooking, here is my assistant chef "helping" me by sitting in front of the recipe.


After the meat cooked, I set that aside and sauteed the veggies and spices. Then added the meat back in.  The resulting picture is below.  It kind of looks a little bit weird.... Since I was planning on adding shrimp at the end and added a little more meat than the recipe called with I went with a much bigger can of crushed tomatoes. 28 oz instead of 16 oz.  A few people made this recommendation because of the rice, however, I am glad that I did it, because without it, this would have been even more meaty than it turned out.


My assistant relocated to the top of the cabinets where I couldn't shoe her away and she could make sure I did everything correctly. 

The next change that I made, again based on recommendations was how I handled the rice.  The recipe calls for chicken stock and uncooked rice.  But this seemed a little wonky to me.  A few of the recommendations said they cooked the rice first and left out the stock. So this is what I did. 

After adding the rice, the jambalaya looked like this.

I let it simmer for a total of 20 minutes. With 7 minutes left I added some shrimp, just to add a little flair.  The white/pinkness of the shrimp stood out against the rest of the dish. Of course that was soon remedied by stirring it together.

Finally the dish was done!  I wasn't sure what to have as a side dish... so I just had the Jambalaya.  Considering how meaty it was this was fine and one bowl was enough to satisfy me.  It was also pretty good, so I was pleased with the result.


The only change that I would make is I think it is very important to cut everything up before hand.  I tried cutting things one at a time and them adding them, but the meat cooked much too fast for me to finish the veggies before I actually needed all of them.  A few minutes more prep time would have made the process much simpler and easier. 

 So one of the things that I have decided to try this year is to cook something new every week.  This was designed to accomplish an increase in my cooking abilities and also to have new food all the time.

I don't think that what I normally make is bad, but I really wanted to try new recipies.  The first two recipies went well enough, and then I decided to make sure that I actually remember what I am doing and chronicle the journey.

 So the third recipe was this week and I decided to try something that I have always wanted to make, Baby Back Ribs!

I went with the most highly rated recipe from Allrecipes.com, and it was also really simple so that helped a lot.  Here is the recipe, and a link:
 I think that it might have been supposed to be for a bigger rack of ribs, but I just used this on one rack.
   Here is a picture of the rack with the dry rub, about to go in the oven.


 After cooking the ribs for 2.5 hours I took it out.  Then I rubbed some BBQ sauce on the top of it and put it under the broiler.  I probably broiled it for about 10 minutes.  Here is a picture of the ribs after being cooked.

Finally, a picture of the ribs ready to eat.Overall, I was pretty impressed with the result.  It was really simple and it turned out really great.  If anyone want's to make Baby Back Ribs I would certainly reccommend this recipe.

The view, albeit blurred by the sun, from the outfield seats.  The sun was pretty strong for the first couple of innings.  The majority of the people sat on the third base side, which was in the shade.

However, I was able to get awesome seats by sitting on the first base side.  2 rows behind the dugout!!  I think those are about the best seats that I have ever had at a baseball game.  The Express were playing the New Orleans Zephyrs, the farm team for the Florida Marlins, so I was right behind the New Orleans dugout.  I thought this was pretty fitting considering that I was planning on going to New Orleans with Katie and Will after my internship.

 The game was pretty much a blowout.  The Zephyrs scored 6 runs in the first 2 innings and pretty much ran away with the thing, but all in all it was a fun game to go to.  Particularly after the sun went done and I didn't have to worry about getting sunburned.

One thing that I noted was that the Express had a lot of players who had been in the majors with one team or another, but weren't good enough to stick.  So the proverbial AAAA player.  I was able to see Chris Coghlin and Logan Morrison for the Zephyrs.  I guess they were rehabbing injuries.  However, Eric and I made a bet regarding Coghlin, so seeing him basically assured me of winning $5!

We got to the pool and it was not very full... or at least it didn't seem that full.  The only sad thing was that there was no waterfall.  Normally a waterfall would be streaming down from the rock shelf.




 In the picture below you can almost see the waterfall... which is the drip that is coming down in basically the middle of the screen.... it was really small, and I think that the pool would have been much more impressive with the full waterfall, but it was still a pretty amazing pool.

I really wanted to walk to the river which was .6 miles away.  It took awhile, but I finally convinced the guys to come along.  Jacob was really skeptical... but since everyone else was going he begrudgingly came along. I made the mistake of not changing my shoes and so I ended up walking in my flip flops... which was not all that great of an idea... but I made it.... so that was good, just with some slightly dusty feet.

On the way we saw some awesome local wildlife!  Well.. we say some vultures.  I didn't see any dead animals... but it was pretty hot so they may have been following us expecting that we would fall over.

We eventually made it to the river, which was totally deserted and also totally warm! The water had to have been at least like.... 80 degrees or so.  Or at least 78.  It was also really low as the drought had clearly had an effect on the water levels.

Jacob was clearly happy that we came all this way for a low, hot river.

I really liked the river, it was secluded and actually had some really nice scenery.  According to Todd the area was actually used in the movie "Predators", which is pretty cool, and I could definitely see why as it was kind of an exotic type place.

We managed to find the only shady area and parked there for awhile and enjoyed the area and the water... well I did anyway.

Jacob particularly enjoyed the view from his rock down the river and so he borrowed my camera and took a ton of pictures.  The one below is the artsiest of the bunch.  Mainly since it is Sepia toned...

So one day we got home from work, and there, chilling out on our deck was this squirrel. It was kind of a tiny little squirrel, and it was sprawled out on our deck, for some reason directly under the metal bar of the railing. It's little heart was just beating as hard as could be, and it just seemed the the heat had sort of had an effect.

We sat and watched him for awhile and he soon ran away. Since we are in a pretty horrible drought in the state of Texas, we figured that we wanted to try and help him. So we put a bowl of water out on our deck. We didn't really notice any difference in the behavior around our deck, but one day, after a long arduous day of work... ok it was normal :P, we got home and there was the squirrel, drinking out of the bowl!!
I asked Jacob what we should name it, and he came up with Skippy. I thought this was a little bit silly, but since I asked him, well.... I had to stick with the name. Also there is actually a Skippy the squirrel from animaniacs, and as I am writing this Jacob claims that he knew that... although at the time there was certainly no mention of that. Anyway, we stuck with the name Skippy and now it is always a happy occasion when Skippy visits us. He still sprawls out under the railing... but at least now he is hydrated better!

I am not entirely sure that every squirrel we see is Skippy.... but it is funner assuming that it is. We have at times put some nuts next to the water and they always disappear, but we aren't positive what is actually eating them. It could be ants, or maybe skippy is actually enjoying them.

After a while, we started to see more wildlife, so Skippy must have told his friends that our deck was safe (at least it is funner to think of it this way). Our first other visitor was a rabbit. I had the honor of naming it this time and went with Clover. I am not sure why.... it seems rabbity. Clover occasionally comes by with another rabbit, which is cool I suppose. They have never gotten to the bowl as far as I have seen, but maybe when we aren't around.

We have also seen more birds around our deck. Below there is a picture of a cardinal, and recently there have been these tiny little birds that have been bathing themselves in the water. I feel kind of bad for Skippy since his water bowl might get dirty because of that.... but he seems to not really care.

Jacob and I were the ones who started the whole thing, but even Andy got into it and when his mom was here she asked why we had a bowl on the deck and he was worried she had moved it and that Skippy wouldn't have it anymore. Also the last words he said to me before he left were "Take care of Skippy for us!"

Update: This morning I put out some nuts for Skippy. Soon he hopped up and grabbed them and then took them and buried them, then came back for more. Here is video of one of is trips. After he was all done he had a nice long drink, then rolled around with a stick.

So I am sure that all of you have been eagerly awaiting the post about the food in Austin. Well... perhaps not, but since there are so many amazing restaurants in Austin I figured I would delve into. Also the weekend of July 30 we went to Guerro's, which is Bill Clinton's favorite restaurant in Austin, and supposedly he always goes there when he comes to Austin, as well as Franklin BBQ, which is one of the best, if not the best BBQ places in all of Austin. Since it was pretty much a weekend of food I figured I would just go into all of the food places in Austin that I have been to. This means that there are going to be lots of pictures in this article. I contemplated breaking it up into different posts, but figured it would be better to just consolidate them into one.

Guerros
On Friday we decided that we would go see the bat bridge and so we could eat somewhere close to there. I had been wanting to go to Guerros for a long time, and since it was close I recommended it to people. For some reason, probably because no one else really has an opinion, we went there.

It was ok... certainly not amazing, and I think the only reason that Bill Clinton likes it so much is because he doesn't have to wait in line. We got there in separate groups, which to them meant that we weren't ready. I tried to put our name in early so that we could get a table... but.... they wouldn't let us until we were all there. I thought this was amazingly ridiculous and it pissed me off quite a bit. We ended up having to wait about 30 minutes until our group all arrived, and then... then they said the wait would be another 40 minutes!!! I mean... geez... so I asked if we could sit outside and the wait was less for that... So we got seated about an hour after we got there.... which meant that we would have to be quick to get to the bats.

Sadly, at Guerro's, quick does not exist. They were slooooooow.... and we finished dinner about 15 minutes before the bats were supposed to launch. Jesse and Trish headed off to try and see them, and they sort of made it. The rest of us had to wait for the slow process of paying the check to be completed. Also.. they don't split checks... so that was fun! :P

Anyway, the food was pretty decent, it wasn't great, and it certainly wasn't worth the trouble. Shown below is what I ordered, which is supposedly what Bill Clinton gets when he goes there. The tamale was ok, and so was the enchilada. I liked the taco pretty well, but the beans weren't really all that good.


Franklin BBQ
On Saturday no one wanted to get up early with me to go to Franklin Barbecue, so basically Saturday was just sort of a lazy day. I ended up reading and just resting up, which was nice. But Sunday, I convinced Aaron and Daniel to get up early with me and go. Franklin's is a pretty small place and they are only open from 11 - 1, well... at least officially. In reality they are open from 11 until they run out of food. So you have to get there early or you will miss it entirely.

Of course, you can also get there slightly too early. So we arrived at about 11:45 and we were the 15th, 16th, and 17th person in line. We were also almost the only peoeple standing in the sun. There were two people in front of us and one person behind us who were also in the sun. So had we gotten there a little bit later.... lol


Anyway, we had to wile away the time as we stood in line so we basically just talked about random topics and we played some triva and soon... although not soon enough given that we were standing in the sun, the doors opened. The picture below was taken slightly before that and you can see the line stretching past the building. It actually wrapped around the building... so there were a lot of people. At it was 11 AM on a Sunday!!
Anyway, we got inside and soon we were at the counter, Franklin, the owner, is actually a cool guy and ... given the quality of his food, very skinny. He is the guy in the blue shirt on the right side of the picture below. He also did all of the serving, which was cool and he clearly has a lot of pride in his food.


Soon we ordered and got our food. I wanted to try as much as possible, so I ordered..... every kind of meat. I figured that I could use it as leftovers. We were also pretty lucky since we got a table. It was pretty annoying, people would sneak inside and steal tables when they weren't even close to being able to eat. Franklin said that he would find us a table if there wasn't one, which was really cool. Below is my very very full tray of stuff. You can easily see the sausage, but I also got... pulled pork and brisket and ribs... lol.. and coleslaw, and bourbon banana pie.... so... it was a lot of food.

Since they deserve there own close ups, I have included pictures of the individual meats. The first one were the ribs... and ... they were amazing!! Easily the best ribs that I have every had, just so tender and fall off the bone and succulent and wonderful.



The finally two items are the sausage and the bourbon banana pie. The sausage was pretty good, again overshadowed by the ribs and brisket, but the Pie was really really good. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect since it was mostly a BBQ/meat place, and the sides were pretty lackluster. But it was very good. I was pretty full at the time, so I shared it with Aaron and Daniel



Chuy's
One of my roommates favorite... By far my roommate Andy's favorite restaurant in the entire world, Chuy's is located in Austin, and he managed to convince us to go 3 times before I got tired of it.

The food there is ok, nothing special and I don't really understand why he loves it so much. They serve a texmex style of food as the two pictures below show. One of the cool things about the second Chuy's that we went to was that it was the place where Jenna Bush got arrested for a DUI! So that was interesting... I tried to tell myself that I was sitting in the booth were it happened, especially since Andy was talking about underage drinking... but it just wasn't happening


Overall, the food is decent, but nothing special, and I don't really recommend this place if you are only in Austin for a few days... or really... I don't recommend it at all.


Mangia's
Mangia's is a local pizza place that comes highly recommended by locals. And the pizza is ok, Jacob and Kyle didn't really like it so I ended up getting to eat most of it. It was chicago style deep dish with the sauce on top... which I haven't had much, but I enjoyed it. I thought it was better as cold pizza though. :) (I am sure that those sentiments are not shared by many people).



Taco More
The only other place that I have extensive pictures of is Taco More, which is a very, very authentic mexican place. When Daniel and I went there, we were the only non-hispanic people there. And when we went a second time with people from work so that Guillermo could go, we were again the only non-hispanic people there. It was a little bit intimidating at first, particularly since in the evening there was only one guy who spole english. But we managed. I ordered two tacos as well as a Gringa de Pastor, which is basically a little quesadilla with martinated pork.


They also had an amazing salsa bar, so it was fun trying all the different types. There was one that was super hot. The second time we went, guillermo, who loves spicy food tried it and at first he just poured in on his taco and was like, oh yeah, this is probably a 7 or something. As time went by he kept revising his estimate, all the way up to 9, and soon was just barely dripping it on his tacos.

The second time I went I got a cubano sandwhich.. there was another name, but I can't recall it, and a breakfast taco. The sandwhich was excellent and very filling, and the breakfast taco was also good.
Jesse got crunchy quessidillas which are much bigger than the actual quesidillas for the same price, they looked pretty good.

Finally, for some reason, maybe because we had 8 people, they gave us dessert... on the house! That was amazing. They had some tres leches cake, which is cake soaked or made with 3 kinds of milk and then some jello stuff and some candy bars. Jacob got a candy bar...... I went with the cake. It was really really good. So I think I made the right choice. I can get a snickers any time :p.


Other Restaurants of note

Fabi and Rosi, which is a really fancy European styled place. I went there for a group intern dinner and it was great. The food was amazing and the dessert was excellent. It is a little expensive, but really really good and worth a visit.

Torchy's Tacos A local taco place, that has really good cheap tacos, not as authentic as Taco More, but still very good. I like the Fried avocado one and the Democrat. Todd says there are two camps, Taco Deli and Torchy's. After being to both places, I am very solidly in the Torchy's camp.


Freebird Burritos This is a local burrito place that is pretty good. I didn't think they were incredible, but the food was good. However, of note is the fact that they make a super monsterburrito... which is really huge. We went there for Nico's last lunch. He got one... he is pictured with it below..... He said that was a small one. There is no way that I could eat that, but he finished it with ease.




Rudy's Rudy's is probably the second best BBQ place that I have been too. But I didn't make it to salt lick, so I am pretty sure those places were better. Kyle went to both places and enjoyed Salt Lick more, so I trust him.


Lick it, Bite it, or Both This is a local cupcake place that I went to. They make really good cupcakes. They are flat tops, which means the frosting is sometimes a little over the top, but they were really good. I particularly liked the Peanut butter ones (3 at the bottom).

The Monument Cafe I already talked about this place, but this is best southern food in the area. It is a little far away, about a 25 minute drive, but the food was sooo good, and they have fried pie!



I am sure that I am leaving a place or two out.... and I certainly haven't been to all of the places that I want to go too here, but this is a pretty good primer.