I can smell the crazy: July 2011

See it on TV one day,,, eat there the next day

We caught Eden Eats on the cooking channel last Sunday and lucky for us she was in Austin going "around the world in 24 hours in Austin". She visited various ethnic cuisine like a Middle Eastern food cart, a Lebanese bakery, a European Bistro and the Cuban Cafe. there were a couple of other places as well, but I forgot ;)

The cafe was a part of town in Austin that I haven't really explored so I was pretty thankful for GPS on my cell phone. The cafe was in a small strip center in the middle of a few neighborhoods.

They had a lot of great sounding items on their menu but I had to go with the sandwich that I saw on the show, the Cuban Sandwich.

What I first noticed was the bread and the density (which is a good thing) along with the crunch on the top.... delicious. I can't really say that I have experienced that type of bread before. The sandwich had a layer of roasted pork, many layers of ham, Swiss cheese, mayo, mustard and pickles. This sandwich was awesome! I could only eat about half of the sandwich, it was huge! I can't remember the price of the sandwich but I paid $7 for the sandwich, bag of chips and a coke.

I was extremely thankful for catching the TV show that featured Cuba Sandwich because the sandwich was totally awesome.

4th July Weekend Fun

We had a very good 3 day weekend over the 4th of July holiday. We had fun on 2 days and one day was more of a "fix the house" type of a day. On Friday night we decided to head out to dinner at Zocalo Cafe which is a more modern than tex mex type of a restaurant. We had our trusty Groupon... yay for discounts!!! We started off with the Guacamole, which was nice and creamy. It came deconstructed which means they had the tomatoes, onions, cilantro and lime wedges on the side versus being all mixed together. We ended up just mixing it all together and enjoyed it.

I ordered the Empanada plate with one pork, chicken and veggie empanada (pictured below). I enjoyed the pork empanada it was filled with juicy pork. The chicken empanada was good but lacked flavor... it was pretty simple. Thankfully the salsa gave it a nice kick. And I wasn't really thinking when I ordered the veggie empanada,,,, it was filled with black beans (not a fan). So I can't really comment on that one. Jim ordered the shrimp tacos, which were 3 flour tortillas filled with shrimp. He was a fan of the dish but he wished the slaw that came with it had more kick, he thought it was bland.

As we were eating dinner, Jim noticed that people kept walking by with collapsible chairs. At first we thought maybe a park was having fire works, but then we remembered that fire works were banned this year due to the drought. After dinner we decided to check it out and followed a couple of people. We came across the sign and though... very cool! We have taken a broken TV to Bonds in the past so we are familiar with the company.

They were giving away free popcorn, hot dogs and watermelon along with the movie. We didn't have any plans so we decided to hang around and watch the movie, which was Unstoppable with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. Apparantly they do these movies in the summer on the first Friday of each month. I forgot to check out what they are playing in August but if we are free then I'd like to go again.

The sound was really good and the picture was clear. It was neat sitting in a parking lot to watch the movie. Plus you can bring your own cooler full of adult beverages, treats, pups or kids!

On Saturday night we headed over to Dawn and Matt's for a 4th of July BBQ. We had a great time relaxing and catching up with friends. Matt smoked a brisket and cooked up some hot dogs and guests brought tasty side dishes!!

Rachel, Dawn, me, Jennifer, and Sarah

Jim and Jake

Dawn had a beautiful little girl 2 months ago, Vivienne. Since she was sleeping so well I asked if I could hold her ;) No crying babies for me! She slept the entire time on my lady bumps.

Dawn and baby Vivienne

On the morning of the 4th, Abbey and I walked down the street to watch the neighborhood 4th of July parade. There isn't much to the parade.... some people with drums dressed in period costumes, some classic cars that threw candy to the kids, and then it is followed up with parents and their kids all dressed in red, white and blue. It takes about 10 minutes to roll by but I still enjoy going.

Abbey was very well behaved. She met some other dogs, had a little girl constantly hug her (we ended up moving down the street because I was getting annoyed with how much she was all over Abbey).