Sunday on the porch

We had beautiful weather this past Sunday.  Spring has been sticking around Austin a little longer than normal this year and I love it.  I do enjoy summer but I know how brutal triple digit temps with high humidity can be. And that weather will be around a lot longer than this beautiful spring weather. 

To enjoy this weather we made some Blackberry Mojitos. I'm convinced you can add any fruit in a Mojitos and it will be delicious.  We use the recipe below to make our Mojitos at the house. The recipe is very loose.... Meaning you can make adjustments based on how you like your drinks.  Want your drink stronger? Use more rum.  Want it less sweet? Use less simple syrup. 

1.5 oz white rum

1.25 oz simple syrup

2-3 lime wedges 

4-5 good sized mint leaves

Club soda

1oz sweet and sour

Squeeze your lime wedges in a glass(throw them in the glass once squeezing if you want) , add in the mint and the simple syrup and muddle. Add the rum and sweet and sour then pour into a shaker tin. Shake it a few times and our back into glass. Add some ice then top it off with the club soda. Stir and enjoy!!   If you want to add fruit, add it in when you muddle. 

As you can see in the picture below our patio table is now covered in plants. I decided to see if I could keep alive some veggies and herbs. I have beef steak tomatoes, jalapeños, another type of pepper that is mild(can't remember the name... Starts with a C), cilantro and mint. When I selected everything I didn't realize that I was practically growing a salsa garden :) Just need some onions.  I have kept everything alive for about a month now. I hope I can keep it alive to get at least a few batches of salsa to go with our Mojitos :)

Blackberry Mojito

Jimmy hiding in the potted plants

Have Bike... will Pub Crawl

About a month ago, Jim and I headed out on our bikes to explore downtown on our bikes. The weather was still pretty nice so it wasn't terrible to peddle around downtown.  We didn't have a solid plan, just some ideas on where we wanted to go.   We did try to hit places that we haven't been to before to see if we could find some cool places.  

Our first stop was a bar that bases the prices of the beer on supply and demand.  Meaning... the more people order a certain beer, it will go up in price.  It allows some of the lesser known beers the option to get ordered for cheaper.  They have around 72 beers on taps (always rotating).  They have booths inside that have their own TV, so you can pick and choose what you want to watch (good for sporting events).   We had one beer, enjoyed the patio then hopped back on the bikes to our next destination.

We tried to go to Peche but they weren't open yet, so we headed over to Cantina Laredo for a couple of margaritas.  This wasn't a new place to us, but it was on the way to our next destination so we stopped in for a couple of drinks.  I got the raspberry margarita... love those! :)

Our next stop was for some grub, and I couldn't wait to get back to this place. We went to Second Bar and Grill to get some burgers. I have heard excellent things about their burgers and knew this would be a perfect time to get one. We started off with their buffalo fried pickles.... YUM. I am a HUGE fan of fried pickles and these did not disappoint. The buffalo sauce was good but it seemed like it was brushed on to the pickles because it was uneven on the pickles. But that didn't stop us from eating all of them :)

                                  

This burger was GREAT and the fries were so crispy.   It was hard to get back on the bike to continue our journey with a belly full of delish food (and more beer). 

After eating, we headed over to Rainey Street to check out the new bars over there.  Our first stop was Blackheart Bar.  It has an awesome feel... laid back and comfortable.  They have seating in the front of the building as well as in the back with one bar in the house.  We were one of the few patrons in there, but I'm sure they got busy when night came.

After Blackheart Bar we headed over to Javelina.  Javelina was smaller than Blackheart Bar but had just as much character.  The bartender was pretty cool so we chatted with him for a bit while watching UT baseball on their TV. 

Javelina Bar

After we were done on Rainey Street we decided to ride up to the pedestrian bridge over Town Lake to watch the Sunset.

It was a beautiful way to end a very fun day!!

Brunch!!

I love brunch but I love brunch with the ladies even more!! Our good friend Rachel recently moved back from Hawaii and most of the ladies met up for brunch last weekend. It had been far to long since our last brunch, so we spent about 4 hours catching up :) Now, I will say that it took 1.5 hours to get our table because Tacos N' Tequila is a hopping place on Sundays. It was damn near crazy how busy it was. They have an excellent brunch buffet for $16.95 that includes mimosa's. With the unlimited mimosa's and buffet, people would camp out at a table (much like we did :)) We were lucky and got to sit at the bar while we were waiting for a table, so the wait wasn't to bad (except for the fact that I didn't eat so I was STARVING while waiting).

Ashley, Michelle, Courtney, Kelly and Rachel


Nicole, Me, Krista and Michelle

Ashley, Courtney, Rachel and Kelly

I loved the tiles in the ladies rest room... so we took some photos in there :)

My camera was resting on top of the toliet

So this might seem random.... but since we are a bunch of catty women, we made fun of these tights. Our whole table zeroed in on these tights when she walked by the restaurant (our table was near a window). They just aren't.... brunch tights.... more like.... stipper's day off tights :)

Nicole and I

A few of us went to Kung Fu Saloon after brunch, and Rachel got a bloody mary. It was kind of cool because they had their own "bloody mary" bar were you could mix and match flavors.

Rachel, me, Michelle and Nicole

The ladies!

A very fun and much needed girl time brunch!! Next time I won't wait as long to throw it together!

Simplicity Wine and Eats

Last weekend Jim and I finally tried Simplicity Wine and Eats. I'm not sure why it took us so long to try them out but I'm glad that I did. Their wine prices were pretty reasonable, we shared a bottle of Riesling for $19. Simplicity serves tapas, small plates that is meant for the table to share. We decided that we would each pick 2 items and share. We ordered the Buffalo Calamari, Satay Pork w/peanut sauce, Bacon and sauteed pepper bruschetta, and Cajun shrimp and grits. I tried getting on Simplicity's website to get more accurate food descriptions but it seems to be down right now.

Jim and I (if you look to the left of Jim's face in the picture, you'll see me in the mirror)

at the restaurant

The bacon and pepper brushetta was the clear stand out. Of course anything with bacon on it is going to be good, but overall it was some of the best brushetta that I have had. Another stand out was the buffalo calamari, it had great flavor and the strips of calamari were very tender. The Cajun shrimp and grits was just okay due to the lack of flavor. The shrimp had seasoning, but the incredibly bland grits ruined the dish for me. It was disappointing to me because I have been on a grits kick. The pork satay was dry but the peanut sauce really helped it out.

They had plenty of items on the menu, so I anticipate that we'll be back to give them another try.

Neat shot I got of the sunlight coming in at the restaurant

Tigress Pub

After dinner we headed over to the Tigress Pub. I didn't know much about this bar, just that it opened and it was near the house. When we walked in we were a little surprised at how small it was but we immediately felt comfortable. We found a place to sit, checked out a menu and ordered a couple of drinks. I tried out a French's 75, which had champagne, gin, and I think lemon juice. It was quite tasty but DAMN it was strong. Jim ordered a martini and he said it was the most well made martini that he has tasted. Pam, the owner and bartender, came around and greeted us and asked us how we were doing and if we liked our drinks. We only stayed for one drink, but we enjoyed the pub while we were there.

Refreshing, creamy, and perfect for a hot and humid Austin afternoon

I bought a seedless watermelon from the store last Sunday. I had no idea what I was going to use it for, but it looked good at the grocery store so I bought it :) I came across a recipe for a fruit smoothly using watermelon in a magazine, so I now had a use for the watermelon!! This would be a great drink for kids... minus the booze part! :) Plus for kids that have a dairy allergy (Gilat- thinking of Kai) this would be a great summer treat!

This is so damn easy. The hardest part was cutting up the watermelon and freezing the chunks. As you can see in this picture, I played with my frozen watermelon chunks :)

We didn't really follow the recipe in the magazine that I had. We filled the blender about 2/3 up the blender, added lemon aid (probably between a cup and cup and half), couple squirts of simple syrup, and 3 oz of Bacardi.

We started with the watermelon in the blender and kept adding the lemon juice until we reached the consistency that we wanted. Once we reached the consistency (which was like a smoothie) we added the simple syrup and the Bacardi Rum. Since the watermelon was frozen the drink was really creamy.

Abby was enjoying her toys in the kitchen while we were making our drinks. Chewie was snoozing on our couches :)
The final result!! This was so good, we'll be making this all summer. We'll probably try adding some frozen mango or strawberries along with the watermelon to see what works best, but this simple recipe is totally worth trying!!