Home > Relish Austin > Archives > 2008 > June
June 2008
Food is for doofs
Are your kids foodies or do you just wish they ate more than pizza and chicken tenders? The people behind Doof, an up-and-coming Internet/TV food show, just want them to know that what they put in their mouths matters. Doof’s name comes from their back-basics teaching philosophy: food backwards. Here’s how they describe it on their glob (blog):
Three years ago, an incredible group of filmmakers, foodies, and health educators joined together to create media that changes the ways kids think about food. We began with children in local schools, bringing food-based video content featuring farmers, market-sellers, restaurateurs, and kids like themselves exploring the wonders of food at its source. Next we created a website, and the prototypes for an exciting new television series.
Slow Food pioneer Alice Waters is on the series’ advisory board, and the Web site says the show is PBS bound. Who knows when or even if it will make it to KLRU, but the videos and podcasts already available online are sure to tickle your kids’ food fancy. Here’s my favorite:
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Yummy local eats for $10 or less
I’ve come across three new delicious eats recently, one of which relies on local ingredients and another two that support local, homegrown businesses:
At the Four Seasons, TRIO serves up all-local breakfast
TRIO, the Four Season’s fabulously non-hotel-esque restaurant, has started offering a Farmer’s Market Breakfast for $10 Monday through Friday. All of the main ingredients are sourced from within 20 miles of Austin.
It’s two eggs, any style (from Alexander Family Farms), smoked sausage (Hudson Sausage Company), heirloom tomatoes and corn griddle cakes (Green Gate Farms) and goat cheese (Pure Luck Farms). That’s a smokin’ deal for $10, especially since it includes valet parking.
Whip-in for some Indian food
Whip In, the longtime beer, wine and specialty food store is branching out by offering house-made Indian dishes. You can buy the vegetarian ($5.99) and non-vegetarian ($7.99) items (herb lamb meatballs, Indian-spiced chili and garbanzo bean stew are a few of the highlights) to-go for now, but the store will soon be offering sit-down service and beer and wine by the glass. They’ve remodeled to make room for several booths and a music stage but are still waiting permits to allow in-store drinking.
I know, it sounds crazy that a beer and wine store can’t serve by the glass, but rules are rules, especially when they are TABC rules.
Very vegan and very good
In pursuit of the best iced coffees in Central Texas, I was at Flipnotics the other day and saw Ronnie’s Vegan Cookies, which are made in Austin. I couldn’t help but try the oatmeal raisin cookie, and it was delicious! (They might not technically be “new,” but they’re new to you if you’ve never tried them.) If you have a choice between Uncle Eddie’s and Ronnie’s cookies, go with Ronnie’s — they are local.
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Homesick Texan: What’s in Your Fridge Friday
Every Friday, we take a look in someone’s fridge and ask three questions about eating and food. This week, we see what’s in the fridge of Lisa Fain, aka the Homesick Texan.
Fain, who was born in Houston but spent a few years in Austin, started blogging as the Homesick Texan as a way to connect with her Southern roots and share with her New York friends the culinary joys of home, which she left for NYC 12 years ago. Her popular food blog features tons of recipes and stories about truly Texas dishes (migas, chicken-fried steak, king ranch chicken, etc.) that are her link home as she lives and works in the Big Apple.
As you can tell by the photos she took of her fridge, she’s quite the photographer, too.
What’s your favorite condiment? Homemade salsa. My current crush is this avocado, cilantro and tomatillo salsa that’s ending up on almost everything I make, though I also adore that old classic — roasted tomato salsa — as well.
What three things do you always have in your fridge? Besides salsa, I’d have to say that cilantro, mayonnaise and a bottle of vintage Champagne are always in my fridge. The first two are key ingredients in so many things that I make (especially in the summer). And the good Champagne is on hand because New York Magazine a few years ago mentioned that fresh flowers and always having a bottle of Champagne in your fridge would vastly improve the quality of your life in this dirty, crowded and difficult city. I have to agree. Whenever there’s a need for a spontaneous celebration, I’ve got the Champagne covered.
What’s your favorite Texas food to serve to guests who’ve never been here? For a main course, I like to serve people chicken-fried steak with cream gravy or cheese enchiladas made with longhorn cheddar in a proper chile gravy. For an appetizer I’ll serve homemade chips and queso and homemade kolaches for dessert.
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Calling all watermelon lovers
If you love watermelons, then this is the weekend you’ve been waiting for all year. Not only are the giant, sweet-water-from-the-gods-filled fruits entering the height of their season, people are getting together to celebrate them en mass.
The Luling Watermelon Thump is in its 55th year and draws tens of thousands of people to this small town southeast of Austin. Watermelon contests galore, as well as tons of live music and a Saturday parade will make it worth your while to make the short drive anytime today through Sunday.
And if you’re a stellar seed spitter, see if you can beat the Guinness World Record of 68 feet, 9 1/8 inches, set by Luling local Lee Wheells in 1989. (If you need seed-spitting tips, check out what eHow suggests.)
If you can’t make it to Luling this weekend, test your seed-spitting abilities Saturday at the downtown farmers’ market’s
Ahhhh, nothing welcomes July like a watermelon juice dripping off your face.
If you go to either of these events, shoot me an e-mail with pictures, details or a great story from your experience. Might do a watermelon follow-up on Monday.
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Reader recipe: Career Girl Cobbler
We’re already getting some great recipes in the Statesman’s recipe database, which you can search or submit recipes of your own to. Reader Kay Marley gave us this recipe for Career Girl Cobbler earlier today. Where does the name come from? Kay tells us…
My grandmother passed down this recipe from the 1920’s, when she first went to work. She called it Career Girl’s Cobbler because even though she worked she was still expected to provide a full meal to the family.
Career Girl Cobbler
Ingredients 1 c. milk 1 stick butter or margarine, melted 1 c. flour 1 1/4 c. sugar, divided 1 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. cinnamon 1 can peaches with juice 1 can drained peaches
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Pour butter into 9x13 pan. Mix together flour, 1 cup of sugar and baking powder. Slowly add milk & mix until smooth. Pour evenly over butter in pan but do NOT mix together. Add fruit & juice to pan but again, do NOT mix. Just try to place the fruit as evenly as possible. Mix together remaining sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over top. Bake for 45 minutes until golden on top.
—Kay Marley
Can’t wait to try this one out! Thanks for the recipe, Kay!
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Adventures in recipe-making and calimochos
Today’s Relish Austin column about making (and sharing) recipes got me thinking about recipes that I should put in the Statesman’s new — and easily searchable — recipe database.
I always use recipes as a base, adding or subtracting ingredients based on personal preference and what’s available in the fridge or pantry, but I don’t think I’ve ever written down one that’s all my own. Most of the time, I just throw ingredients together “by guess and by gosh,” as my grandmother says. But there’s something to be said about granting longevity to your favorite dishes by writing out how you make them and then sharing them with others. Recording when, why and with whom you enjoy the dish enriches the recipe even more.
If you’ve never made a recipe before, I encourage you to try it out. If you do and submit it in our database, send me an e-mail or Twitter @broylesa and tell me about it!
So I’ll start off this recipe-making nice and simple, with instructions for one of my favorite drinks. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t invent the calimocho — in fact, it’s one of Spain’s most popular street drinks — but I have made them enough to share how I prefer them.
Calimochos
1 part red wine 1 part Coca-Cola splash of fresh lemon juice ice
Combine ingredients. Drink on hot summer days. Be pleasantly surprised at the results.
I can hear it now. “What?! Red wine and Coke?” I know; it sounds awful, but the sweetness of the Coke pairs nicely with the oak and vanilla of a Rioja or similar wine. Calimochos are also a great way to finish the previous night’s leftover wine. You can even blend different wines if you have several already-opened bottles. Feel free to adjust the ratio of Coke to wine to your desired sweetness.
The only steadfast rules, in my book, are plenty of ice and an 85+ degree day. Enjoy!
Photo by FunKa-Lerele via Flickr.
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Do you multi-task in the kitchen?
I’ve been burned (well, my food, not my person) one too many times by multi-tasking while cooking, but I’m wondering if it’s inevitable that you do something else while the food you’re making does what it needs to on the stove, in the oven, on the grill, etc.
For example, if the TV is on, you keep one eye on the pot of boiling pasta and the other on “American Idol.” If you have young kids, you tend to their needs in between the needs of the chicken sauteeing in a saucepan. If you work from home…well, if you work from home, you probably never really get too far from working, right?
What about doing dishes? Most chefs are adamant about keeping their mis en place tidy and clean. Doesn’t that mean you have to clean up after yourself as you go? But doing dishes is like giving a mouse a cookie: Once you get started, don’t you have to do them all? My slightly OCD husband won’t even pull out ingredients until the kitchen is spotless, but he still finds himself cleaning as he goes.
It’s inevitable that I rely on my inner egg timer and come back to the kitchen just 2 minutes past when I should have only to find the sausage a little more black than I’d intended.
But so many dishes are hands-off once you get started (rice, beans, pasta, soups, casseroles, steamed vegetables, chicken in sauce, oven-baked anything) and Americans have developed into multi-tasking masters, it seems like I can’t be the only one who’s trying to get more done while she puts dinner together.
Do you check your e-mail, talk on the phone, open the mail, fold laundry, etc. while dinner is on? Is this good time management or do we need to slow down and enjoy the process of cooking for ourselves and our families?
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Sam Gosling: What’s in Your Fridge Friday
Sam Gosling, the UT psychology professor who has written a whole book about learning about people by looking at their stuff, says that he keeps a fridge full of perfectly aligned beverages because it’s a link to his past, when his grandmother kept an icebox that was always full of tonic water or bitter lemon.
He dedicated the last chapter of “Snoop: What your stuff says about you” to figuring out this OCD fridge behavior: “Now as an adult, without quite realizing it, I have re-created my own bottomless mixer wellspring.”
Keeping his fridge the way his grandmother did fills his “deep-rooted need for abundance.”
It’s a pretty cool observation if you’d ask me.
What’s your favorite condiment? Worcestershire sauce (to put on my avocados)
What three things do you always have in your fridge? Tab, prosecco, Newcastle brown ale
Butter or margarine? Um, can you use either of those in a drink?
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Looking for some good iced coffee
We’re working on a story for next month about iced coffees. Anyone have some good recommendations? We’re going to highlight several from all corners of Central Texas, so let me know if there are some delicious drinks being served in your neighborhood!
Just e-mail me or leave a comment.
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Growing fresh food - and giving it away
Last year, John Paquin gave away 70 percent of the fresh produce harvested at his farm. How did he make ends meet as a single dad with three kids at home?
“It doesn’t take much to live on,” he says. Paquin, who formerly owned a construction company and farmed for many years with his family in West Texas, started Walnut Creek Organic Farm outside Rockne, near Lockhart, in 2000.
Since then, he’s built the farm into 48 acres with crops as varied as asparagus and watermelon, which two daughters and a son help cultivate. However, he didn’t want farming to be the only thing his children learned in the fields.
When Paquin was a child, his dad would drive around on Sundays with boxes of vegetables and hand them out to those in need.
“Having children, it just strains my heart” to see people go without, Paquin says.
“One day, me and my daughter were headed to the farmers market, and we saw this guy picking up cans. We took him to his home and started bringing by food on a weekly basis,” he says.
Soon, Paquin and his children, ages 10 to 14, were donating produce to the food bank in Bastrop. Now, the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless and Austin Salvation Army receive fresh fruit and vegetables as well. The Paquins make donations twice a week.
With fuel and commodity prices rising, Paquin says he’ll be able to give away only about 40 percent of his crop this year. The rest will be sold through his Community Supported Agriculture program — which has memberships available for $30 a week in 10-week increments for those looking to sign up — and area farmers markets, including the Sunset Valley and Austin markets.
Fuel prices are also affecting volunteers, usually some of the 85 CSA members, who usually come out to Walnut Creek to help in the fields.
“We don’t have people come out to help like they used to,” Paquin says.
For now, he’ll work the land with his kids and several other workers, bringing fresh, clean and safe food to hundreds of people across Central Texas, no matter if they can afford it or not.
If you want to volunteer with Walnut Creek, go to the farm’s Web site, http://www.walnutcreekorganicfarms.com/.
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Would you swear off salmon?
There’s been all kinds of news lately about how close we are to overfarming the world’s oceans. Author Taras Grescoe argued in a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times suggested we should stop eating salmon until the numbers rise again.
Greenpeace just ranked U.S. grocery chains on their seafood purchasing practices and policies. Not surprising, Whole Foods came in at No. 1, but the Austin-based grocery only received four of ten possible points awarded to stores for how well they responded to the issue of overfishing.
Wal-Mart, of all places, came in at No. 5, far ahead of H-E-B, which was No. 18. Too bad for Trader Joe’s, who many consider Whole Foods’ biggest rival (though there aren’t currently any plans for stores in Central Texas), which came in just two notches ahead of H-E-B, but still in the bottom half of the list.
“Every supermarket we surveyed is contributing to the crisis facing our oceans,” said Greenpeace ocean specialist John Hocevar, who lives in Austin. “The good news is that several large supermarket chains have begun taking steps toward sustainability. A year from now, we expect the retail seafood sector to have made considerable progress from what we see today. Several retailers already decided to drop some Red List species after we contacted them as we prepared this report.”
Red List species include certain kinds of tuna, halibut, red snapper, salmon, swordfish, orange roughy, scallops and - everyone’s favorite - ocean quahog.
Well, what about farm-raised salmon? They’re OK, right? Wrong, says Mark Floegel, a researcher for Greenpeace. He points out that farm-raised salmon are raised in pens in the ocean, where farmers crowd as many salmon in as possible.
With all those salmon crammed together, you create an environment where disease, Floegel says. To combat the disease, farmers feed them antibiotics, which means more chemicals in the fish you eat. Then to feed the carnivorous salmon, they catch all the fish nearby, which messes with the local food chain.
In short, farm-raised salmon doesn’t quality as sustainable.
Growing demand for sushi can’t take all the blame. Looks like Red Lobster mainstays are also on the list, so maybe we should all think twice before ordering or buying fish whose populations are quickly decreasing.
Another thing you can do is talk to the people behind the seafood counter at the grocery store about your fish concerns and ask them to start selling fish that are harvested in a sustainable way, which is what I think I’ll start doing.
I can live without salmon nigiri for now, but not forever.
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You can taste the love in this food
We’re putting the finishing touches on Wednesday’s big package about food safety. Dale Rice took on the commercial/industrial aspect of the issue (i.e. the government’s hands-off approach to farm inspection, how inspectors figure out the cause of salmonella outbreaks, etc.) while I got to tackle the process of how farmers go about making sure they aren’t introducing harmful bacteria or diseases to their produce.
The Sustainable Food Center let me go along on several farm inspections at Walnut Creek Organic Farm and Milagro Farm, which are both near Rockne.
It was so cool to hear Kris and Amy Olsen of Milagro Farm talk about moving from a California farm to Central Texas to basically start over earlier this year. I met them at their 8-acre farm on Thursday, and on Saturday, bought garlic and two kinds of onions from them at the downtown farmers’ market.
Their garlic and sweet and red onions mixed perfectly with some fresh squash on the grill last night. It’s amazing how much better produce tastes the fewer miles it has to travel to get to your plate.
It’s nice to meet such good-hearted, hard-working people who are giving everything they’ve got because they believe in what they are doing. Kris, who is in his 14th year of farming, has tons of heirloom vegetables, whose seeds he harvests for the follow year’s crop, and a comprehensive knowledge of growing food. Amy, who recently stopped teaching to help Kris around the farm, lovingly polishes the tomatoes, peels the onions and braids the garlic, along with the dirty work out in the fields.
There’s no science to back me up here, but I think part of why their produce tastes so good is because they put so much love into the ground. It’s just the two of them, growing fabulous veggies for the families who’ve come to rely on them for delicious, nutritious and safe food.
What an awesome job.
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Hip hop artist, VJ Bavu Blakes: What’s in Your Fridge Friday
Bavu Blakes, the ME Television VJ and incredibly humble and soulful hip hop artist, let
Blakes, who has performed with everyone from Snoop to Erykah Badu, will be moving across Lady Bird Lake to a much bigger stage later this year when he’ll play at ACL with his band, the Extra Plairs, in September. He’s also in the middle of his 08 is So Great mission, in which he’s posting a flow a week on his Web site.
What’s your favorite condiment? Tartar, cocktail sauce and ketchup (dependent on what seafood I’m eating at the time).
What three things are always in the fridge? fruit, vegetables and Mrs. Blakes’ leftovers
It’s 2:30 a.m., you just got home from a killer show. You’re starving. What do you make? I make my way to the living room and try to get tired enough to go to bed, because I’ve already stopped by Waffle House around the corner (290E). I love decompressing at diners, because it’s hard to get sleepy after a great live show experience.
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Have a byte
There are so many good food blogs out there, it would be a shame not to share my favorite posts from time to time. Here are a few recent highlights:
Homesick Texas ponders Dr. Pepper and peanuts.
The Tipsy Texan reports in the most recent issue of Edible Austin about summer drinks.
Ever made homemade ricotta? The Wednesday Weekly chef has.
Of course, there’s lots of buzz about the “Top Chef” finale tonight. (I wrote a related story for today’s paper about local folks who do their own Top Chef at home.) My money was on Antonia, but since she was kicked out last week, I guess I’m pulling for Stephanie, only by default. I’m tired of the men always winning and Lisa’s attitude is getting old. Who are you all rooting for?
I’ll definitely try this: How to take your bagel sandwich to-go using a CD case.
And probably my favorite food post of the week: A puppet to show toddlers with refined palates where sushi comes from.
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Popping corn kernels with your cell phone
Just as laptops heat up to skin-scorching temperatures, cell phones can produce enough heat to supposedly cook an egg and pop popcorn kernels.
There are mixed reports of the cooking of the egg, but you can’t deny this popcorn video.
After finding out what microwave popcorn can do to you, The New York Times’ Mark Bittman contends that the only way to cook popcorn is on a stove or in your own paper bag.
Wonder if he’s tried it with his phone…
Update: How did I not see that Good Morning America tried this out earlier today? (they didn’t have any luck)
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Vegan cookies even nonvegans will love
A month or so ago, I received a sample of Uncle Eddie’s Vegan Trail Mix Cookies and, recalling previous run-ins with vegan baked goods (how could you make a cookie with no dairy, eggs or even honey?), didn’t have much hope that they’d taste like much more than the brown paper bag they were packaged in.
I took a bite and quickly forgot that the word “vegan” ever existed. My taste buds were too busy sending the message of “mmmmm” to my brain. The cookies were nice and soft, appropriately and naturally sweet (My buds are started to be really offended at the artificial sweeteners in some cookies and treats), full of plump raisins and the occasion nut (sunflower and peanut), and the oatmeal added a wonderful texture as well.
Just to make sure I wasn’t crazy, I gave a cookie to a meat-loving co-worker of mine who snubs his nose at anything that seems too granola hippie (which Uncle Eddie surely is; look at that promo picture for God’s sake), and he came back to my desk asking for me. All 250 pounds of him nearly dropped to the floor when I told them they were vegan.
The cookies are California-made (please leave a comment if there are some locally vegan cookies worth trying!) and are available at Whole Foods, Wheatsville Co-op and online.
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Pflugerville pfarmers’ market drawing crowds
Want fresh, local produce in Pflugerville? Check out the farmers’ market on Tuesdays from 3 to 7 p.m., which started about a month ago, and according to volunteer market coordinator Micki Eubanks, it’s going well.
“It’s been really growing,” Eubanks says. “We started with 10 vendors and now we’re up to 32. And despite the heat, there’s been a good crowd every week.”
Musician John P. Funk will be playing tomorrow at the market, and kids can get all hot and sweaty in an inflatable play area while parents shop for locally grown produce, baked goods, honey, eggs, fruit and more.
This farmers market is at 500 E. Pecan St., next to the First United Methodist Church, which isn’t far from the I-45/U.S. 130 interchange, Eubanks says.
For more information, go to the market’s Web site, or call Eubanks at 589-2307.
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What’s in Your Fridge Friday
Today, I’m launching a new feature on Relish Austin called “What’s in Your Fridge Friday.”
Each Friday, I’m going to post a photo of someone’s refrigerator, along with their answers to a few questions. This is open to anyone — chefs, students, home cooks, city officials, local celebrities, fellow food writers — with a fridge.
It can be full of the most lush, organic produce available in Central Texas, or it can be have just two bottles of hot sauce and a jar of mustard, like our neighbor Pat’s fridge does because he lives on sausages and boudin.
You can learn a lot about someone by looking into their refrigerator. And it’s not just personal preferences.
As you’ll see from my fridge above, we happened to have Gatorade the day this photo was taken because I’d had an upset stomach the day before. Half-eaten yogurt containers are a sign of a toddler who can’t sit still long enough to finish all four ounces. Same thing with the half-eaten apples you see in the lower right corner. Julian hasn’t learned to open the fridge yet, but it’s only a matter of days before he can start rifling through there for his favorite snack du jour (It’s peaches right now, but it looks like he’s eying the chocolate syrup in that pic.)
What three things are always in your fridge? Claussen dill pickles (Ian can eat a jar of these a day), a block of colby jack cheese and Fuji apples.
What’s your favorite condiment? It’s a tie between ketchup and Bragg’s.
Butter or margarine? I grew up on squeeze margarine, which I refuse to eat now. We’re a butter-stick-on-the-counter family now.
Now that my fridge is already done, I’ll be hitting up some people around town to let us take a peek in theirs.
But what I really want is for some of you readers to e-mail me photos (it can be any kind of photo, even just one taken with your camera phone) along with the answers to the first to questions and any other tidbit of food info you want to include.
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Watch the James Beard Awards live
Devour TV, a recently launched food video site, is offering live coverage of the annual James Beard Awards on Sunday night.
David Rosengarten, Food Network veteran, journalist, cookbook author and editor-in-chief of the The Rosengarten Report, will interview chefs on the red carpet and will get reactions from the winners as they are announced.
The Kitchen Sisters — Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva — who produce “Hidden Kitchens,” which airs regularly on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” did a special on Texas last year with the help of Willie Nelson, Jimmy Dale Gilmore and Robin Wright Penn.
The show has been nominated for a James Beard Award before, and tonight, it is competing against “Mouthful, the Wine Country’s Most Delicious Hour,” hosted by Michele Anna Jordon and “The Splendid Table,” hosted by Lynne Rossetto Kasper.
Watch and see if this Texas gem wins the Oscar of food awards!
Has anyone heard this Hidden Kitchens special? Should it win?
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Farewell to a towering elm at Z’Tejas
Z’Tejas won’t be the same without the 50-year-old elm tree in front of the West Sixth Street restaurant. Recent storm damage to the tree is forcing the restaurant to remove it on Monday, but arbor-lovers are invited to a celebration Sunday in honor of the tree that will feature live music by Kat’s Meow.
The farewell party will start at 5 p.m. and proceeds from the event will benefit Tree Folks, a local nonprofit dedicated to tree issues in Central Texas.
Oh, and never fear, two Cedar elm trees will be planted after the old one is removed, according to the restaurant.
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Juice cocktails at the Belmont
The man in the know, Matthew Odam, has a post over at the M.O. about the Daily Juice, the Barton Springs juicery, hooking up with the Belmont downtown for Daily Juice After Dark, where you can enjoy alcoholic drinks made with super fresh juice.
Starting tonight, the event will take place Thursdays from 8 p.m. to midnight. Check out the M.O. for more info.
Mmmm, can’t wait to check it out.
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Craving that lavender ice cream?
This is too much…
From the AP:
Police: Funny fudge made with lavender, not pot
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — Indiana University police say brownies a girl gave to dorm workers didn’t contain marijuana at all. The leafy substance mixed in was lavender. IU Police Capt. Jerry Minger said the 13-year-old girl came forward after the case was publicized to let officers know the brownies were safe. The fudge was given to workers at IU’s Eigenmann Hall on May 23 and police were called after one of the employees took a bite and noticed a green, leafy substance inside. The girl gave some of the lavender to police for a field test, and Minger said it registered a “weak reaction” on a test for marijuana. The girl made the fudge for a school project, in which she had to make a Swedish food.
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Gary Vaynerchuk brings the thunder to Austin
Gary Vaynerchuk’s book signing and talk at Grape Vine Market yesterday was a great example of how inspiring and infectious his enthusiasm for both wine and people are. He talked for about an hour and 45 minutes about everything from his new book to how he’s capitalized on social networking tools to become one of the most influential people — not just wine bloggers — on the Web, period.
I’ll be writing a piece about our road trip to Houston for next week’s paper, but if you’ve got some video or a blog post to share about the event, put the link the comments below.
Tim Walker already has a blog post up over at Hoover’s that focuses on Gary’s take on marketing at yesterday’s event.
Digg Nation already has this video shot by Vayniac Dane Hurtubise of his impromptu Thunder Show at the North Austin market up online.
Gary’s going to be back in Houston in the next few days for the Food and Wine Week, where he’ll be mingling with Vayniacs and wine lovers from around the globe. (You should have seem him and winemaker extraordinaire Daniel Schuster last night at an event at America in the Woodlands. Talk about New World meets Old World.)
Fans are planning a Saturday night meetup with Gary at Cork Screw.
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The Wii is really cooking, isn’t it?
CHOW.com is now offering Wii Night recipes — “one-handed, energy-charged bites for a marathon session.” Chile-lime peanuts, chicken skewers, chorizo and olive flatbread, Mongolian beef kebabs, quesadillas, Panache, drunken watermelon pops and spiked frozen coffee shots.
Seems like an awesome idea, but I haven’t caught the Wii bug yet, so I’m out of the loop on Wii and food.
I did find all these crazy cooking games — “Diner Dash,” “Cooking Mama,” “Cake Mania: In The Mix!,” “Major League Eating: The Game” and, yes, even “Iron Chef America” — that I’d love to try out.
So, anybody play Wii cooking games? Better yet, are there any Wii fanatics who are having gaming nights fueled by fun, one-handed grub?
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Any Vayniacs out there?
In case you missed Food Matters a few weeks ago, Gary Vaynerchuk, the charismatic wine video blogger who spoke (and threw an impromptu wine party at the Marriott) at SXSW this year, is going to stop by Grape Vine Market today from 1 to 3 p.m. for a book signing.
He just came out with “101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to your World” in early May and is in Texas this week promoting the book and sharing his enthusiasm for wine.
Check out his crazy popular Wine Library TV, and see what attracts thousands of people to his daily wine tasting videos.
Mr. Vaynerchuk and I are hoofing it to Houston later today for a road trip interview (me) and for Houston’s Wine and Food Week (him). If you can’t make it to the book signing and you’ve got a question for him, leave me a comment or shoot an e-mail to abroyles@statesman.com and I’ll ask him for an upcoming article.
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Michelada, your chelada
Bored with beer? Like Bloody Marys? Enjoy a twist of lime with your Corona? Then you might want to check out micheladas, if you haven’t already.
The Mexican beer cocktail — or beertail, if you prefer — is going mainstream with the help of premade beverages from both Budweiser and Miller, but not even those companies or the numerous restaurants around town that serve the hand-mixed drinks can decide what exactly a michelada makes.
Some argue that any beer-and-tomato-juice mixture is a michelada, while others prefer a dash of clam juice and Worcestershire or soy sauce. Sometimes a splash of hot sauce is added to spice things up. Lime (not lemon) juice, salt, pepper and/or Maggi Seasoning are a must.
If you want to make it at home, you can use Bloody Mary mix in a pinch, but there’s a new, locally made michelada mix called Gitcho that’s for sale ($5.99 for a liter) at Twin Liquors, Reuben’s Wine & Spirits and Centennial that I would recommend.
The tomato-based mix is filled with dozens of spices, clam and lime juices and has a bit of a kick. The Creekside Lounge on Seventh and Red River streets is already using Gitcho, which is made in Austin and was just released last month.
Doc’s Motorworks, El Chile, Polvo’s, Ranch 616, Botanitas and Hotel San Jose are just a few of the other restaurants and bars in Austin that also serve micheladas.
Photo courtesy of texxy on flickr.
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