Austin City Unlimited, Part II - Live Music City's other not-so-weird offerings

As I noted in a previous post, I visited Austin recently.  It is a food city with lots of barbecue, lots of Mexican food, and lots of Tex-Mex food.  But please don't assume that's all there is.  Oh no, there is so much more wonderful food.

I've visited a few Whole Foodses before: DC's very large one near Dupont Circle, the West Hollywood one near Fairfax, and both of Baltimore's, plus random ones in Philly and Manhattan.  I did not know this until just before I visited this proudly weird city, but Whole Foods began in Austin.  

As such, its biggest Whole Foods on North Lamar is so massive and so very comprehensive that it puts any other I have ever visited to shame (especially both of Baltimore's, which are peensy boutique markets by comparison).  

Electronic, updatable labels?  What kind of carbon footprint does that make?

This place has a few massive buffets, a barbecue station (natch), a gelato station, a taco station, walls of coffee, chocolates, tea - yes, tea - a large bakery, massive wine section, a walk-in beer freezer, bulk goods (five types of bulk quinoa alone), even a section where they sell environmentally friendly locally sourced clothing.

Just one section of The Wall Of Bulk Foods

I visited twice, once for a large Texas-shaped candy bar that I brought home as a gift for the family, and once for breakfast.

Their breakfast buffet had delicious and hearty offerings and I just took a smattering: everything from cheese grits to bacon to vegan migas and so much more.  And yes, there are recycling stations everywhere.

The same family friend who recommended Ruby's also highly recommended Trudy's, also on the north end of UT Austin, on a very residential street off Guadalupe. I was hoping for lunch, but they didn't open until 2 at all.  I hoofed it the 20 minutes onto campus to see the Texas Natural Science Museum - notable for its paleontology exhibit and native Texas animal dioramas - and came back around 2:30.  I then found out that, though open, they don't serve anything other than appetizers until 4.  Not willing to wait any longer, I hobbled together a meal from a few appetizers - the small bowl of chile con queso with chunks of chicken was doable, and came with plenty of house nachos and crackers.  The tortilla soup I ordered, also a small bowl, was clear and the restaurant kept the tortilla shreds and cheese separate so I could add them myself.  I ordered a margarita on the rocks, though in retrospect I wish I had gotten the frozen one, not because it was hot out (which it was), but because I think I would have liked it better.  It had a mild kick, and was not particularly strong.  The beer I had along with it had the kick, and with the small amount of food I started to feel it.  Not full or terribly satisfied (again, no full menu), I finally got full with a basic (large) burger at the local Whataburger down the street.

A San Antonio based burger chain, by the way, with locations throughout the Southwest.

The Austin and Houston areas have fairly sizable Vietnamese-American population, and phở is easy to find near the UT campus.  I had a good bowl of phở with thinly shaved beef, with a manageable plate of bean sprouts, Thai basil and jalapeño slices, at the Hai Ky Cafe on the 2000 block of Guadalupe street (locally known as the Drag), near the southern end of campus.  

This is a cozy, centrally located restaurant that offers many options for phở fans as well as those seeking noodles and other vegetarian and non-soup options.  The best part: the phở is not pricey at all - all bowls are under $7.  I got spring rolls for just a few dollars more.

I came to Austin for a convention, and had the chance to eat a fancy and above all free meal.  But I didn't know any of these people and didn't feel like forcing myself to make conversation with them, so I headed off on my own for lunch.  

I wound up at Frank, a "hot dogs cold beer" place that serves hot dogs, artisan sausages and so much more.  They have several types of hot dogs overloaded (sometimes to their detriment) with lots of toppings.  

They have so much more, too, including - yes, this is Austin - many vegetarian options.  They have many cocktails, many nods to sauces and even barbecues from other parts of the country (this surprised me a great deal), such as their Texalina, one of many artisan sausages they sell with Western, Southern, Southwestern, Mexican and other stylings (alas, no Old Bay there - hey, you can't have everything - but in retrospect I wouldn't have been surprised to see it).  I ordered the Sonoran dog, topped with so much stuff that I had to eat it with a fork.  A tasty dog, though the toppings almost drowned it out, and weren't as spicy as I might have expected it to be.  Along with it I got waffle fries with Buffalo blue cheese dip (though I think I would've liked the Carolina Dip better)

So satisfying, however, was the Frankencookie dessert concoction.  Get this: two small scoops of coffee ice cream, with a massive and moist chocolate chip-bacon cookie (why is that no longer surprising to see these days?), served warm, and with juicy crumbles of bacon and two pieces of bacon on a stick next to it.

Yes, there really is such a thing as too much bacon.  Seriously I could not finish it.  Anyway, if in Austin go there and order that if that alone.  I must make this some time.

I ended my trip the way any tourist to Austin would: by watching soccer (yes that's snark).  When I found out the US Men's National Team was playing football powerhouse Brazil in my own backyard I was excited!  Then I found out that would be my last night in Austin (that figures), so I sought out a place to watch it.  Fadó is (I now know) a chain of Irish pubs - there are locations in Annapolis and Washington - and one is right in downtown Austin.  

With an adequate order of boxty pancakes topped with sweet Guinness sauce and Tex-Mex ingredients (they also have a boxty quesadilla.  Could this be Celt-Mex?) and a pint of Guinness I got to watch the US team's weak first half and plucky (though still not-enough) second half loss to Brazil 4 to 1 amid other cheering, exasperated fans.  I topped that off with their brown bread ice cream, which really was not all that great: grainy crumbs of brown bread intermixed with an above-average tasting, slightly brown vanilla ice cream.  If going to a Fadó near you for Euro 2012, order something else.

Of course, I capped off dinner at Fadó across the street, at two of the city's downtown gay bars.  Oilcan Harry's is big and flashy, Rain on 4th is cozier (relatively speaking).  Neither was too full - this was midweek after all.  In this quite LGBT-friendly city in Texas, both are worth a look.  The beer is cheaper than at Baltimore's gay bars, even factoring in the increased alcohol tax.  In fact, Austin's sales tax tops ours, at 8.5%, and all the Shiner Bocks I drank (hell, I wasn't driving after all) still came out to less than they would have been here.  Also note: for those visiting my home town from Austin: you can find Shiner Bock on tap at the Hippo.

Snacking State-by-State: Oklahoma I - Oh, I'm just WILD about onions! (or "Two Cherokee eggs and pin a rose on 'em!")

Our next stop on the state food tour is the Sooner State, part South, part West, part Southwest, and a smidgen of Midwest.  But alas, no weird dream sequences or no surries with fringes on top here.  This is all edible.  OK?

Official Name: State of Oklahoma
State Nicknames: The Sooner State
Admission to the US: November 16, 1907 (#46)
Capital: Oklahoma City (largest)
Other Important Cities: Tulsa (2nd largest), Norman (3rd largest), Broken Arrow (4th largest)
Region: Southwest, South, West; West South Central (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Corn Bread & BBQ; Bison
Bordered by: Kansas (north), Missouri (northeast), Arkansas (east), Texas & the Red River (south), New Mexico (west), Colorado (northwest)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: buffalo (animal), milk (beverage), white bass (fish), raccoon (furbearer animal), strawberry (fruit), white-tail deer (game animal), wild turkey (game bird), honeybee (insect - for the honey), watermelon (vegetable); "Fried okra, squash, cornbread, barbecue pork, biscuits, sausage and gravy, grits, corn, strawberries, chicken fried steak, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas" (meal - quoted from Netstate.com)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: Southern foods (qv, Official State Meal), sometimes with a Western or Southwestern flavor; Native American (specifically Cherokee) foods

Like many Western states, Oklahoma's cuisine has a frontier history.  But this is just part of the story.  As Hilde Gabriel-Lee (quoted on the Food Timeline website) notes in Taste of the States: A Food History of America (note to self: smack yourself for not tracking this down before you started this project), before the 1900's Oklahoma cuisine was more or less Great Plains cuisine: the foods of the five largest tribes in Indian Territory, "the Creek, Choctaw, Chicksaw, Cherokee, and Seminole" [Lee 1992, in FoodTimeline.org].  These cultures (particularly the Cherokee) were refugees from Back East, having been forced to march to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears along which thousands of persons lost their lives.  Their homelands were cleared for white settlement, and the Native peoples were sent to less familiar, less hospitable areas along the border with Mexico, what would later become Texas (note: check out the Cherokee Nation website for more history of the Trail of Tears).  After relocation, the Cherokee and other forcibly relocated peoples made Oklahoma their home long past the early 20th century, when Oklahoma too was opened to white settlement.

According to the Indian Pioneer Papers, a volume of thousands of interviews published in 1936, Cherokee grew what they could, but did hunt for everything from squirrel to deer to the very occasional buffalo, as one Jennie Hines noted in an interview [Cherokee Nation, 2011]:

Bean bread could be found at almost every table. Hominy, dried corn, dried fruits, and wild meats were their chief food. They did not can much food. There were no fruit jars in this country yet. They usually dried their fruits and meats. [Hines, in Cherokee Nation, date unknown]

The Cherokee, and for that matter many Native peoples in eastern Oklahoma, gathered wild onions as a social activity [Cherokee Nation, 2011].  One popular but easy recipe on the Cherokee Nation website involves a few wild onions, a few eggs, some bacon grease and some water.

The Recipe: Cherokee Wild Onions and Scrambled Eggs

To make this dish, you will need:

* wild onions (yes, I know there are wild onions in this area, as Chef Jerry Pellegrino reminded up on a recent installment of WYPR's Radio Kitchen.  But I haven't had any chance to go rooting around for them.  I did, however, have some green onions that I grew in my garden.  Not wild onions, but at least I actually yanked them out of the ground instead of buying them)
* eggs - for every half cup of wild onions you need about six or seven eggs.  I had a quarter cup of onions, so I grabbed three eggs)
* bacon grease (had just enough)

First, chop or cut up your wild or green onions.

Melt the bacon grease in a pan.  I used my cast iron skillet.

Add the onions to the pan.

Also add a small amount of water (I just eyeballed it), and fry up the onions in the pan until the water is gone and the onions are soft.

Add the eggs...

... and scramble until cooked through.

This is quite a simple and lovely dish.  I can't say I have ever really scrambled eggs with green onions in them but it is a technique I will try again in the future.  Not much more to say about this.


Cherokee Nation.  "More About Cherokee Cooking".  The Official Site of the Cherokee Nation, 2011.  Copyright 2011 the Cherokee Nation, All Rights Reserved.

Cherokee Nation.  "Wild Onions and Scrambled Eggs".   The Official Site of the Cherokee Nation, 2011.  Copyright 2011 the Cherokee Nation, All Rights Reserved.

Drummond, Ree.  The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl.  Willliam Morrow: New York, 2009.

Lee, Hilde Gabriel.  Taste of the States: A Food History of America.  Howell Press: Charlottesville, VA, 1992.  Quoted on the Food Timeline State Foods website.

Netstate.com.  "Oklahoma State Symbols, Songs and Emblems".  Copyright 2012 Netstate.com, All Rights Reserved.


Yearwood, Trisha, with Gwen Yearwood and Beth Yearwood Bernard. Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen: Recipes from My Family to Yours. Clarkson Potter: New York, 2008.


Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Oklahoma" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "Oklahoma".

Snacking State-by-State: Colorado I - A Big Ol' Omelette

Colorado is a tough state for me to pin down, but it shouldn't be. I just don't have much experience with it. Probably outside of the state it is best known for two things: the famous Denver omelet, and Coors. It should be known for much more than that, and for this next post, I set out to find out what else there is about the foods of Colorado.

Snacking State-by-State: Colorado

Official Name: State of Colorado
State Nickname: The Centennial State
Admission to the US: August 1, 1876 (#38)
Capital: Denver (largest city)
Other Important Cities: Colorado Springs (2nd largest), Aurora (3rd largest), Lakewood (4th largest); Fort Collins (5th largest)
Region: West, Southwest, Rocky Mountains; Mountain (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Bison, Pinyon Nut
Bordered by: Wyoming (north); Nebraska (northeast); Kansas (east); Oklahoma (southeast); New Mexico (south); Arizona (southwest - one of the Four Corners states); Utah (west)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: nothing, but note: Greenback Cutthroat Trout (fish - but, it is endangered so you better not eat it!!!)
Some Famous & Typical Foods: Southwestern (New Mexican) cuisine, beef, bison & buffalo, Denver/Western omelet and sandwich

Technically, you can call Colorado "Southwestern" - at least to some extent. The southern part of the state, at least, has geology and archaeology that parallels what you find in Arizona and New Mexico. But that ignores large swathes of the Rocky Mountains that could hardly be considered "Southwest". But is the food “Southwestern”? It’s certainly “New Mexican”, also found in Utah and (duh) New Mexico (see a more thorough description of New Mexican cuisine at NewMexico.org).

But I figured there was more to Colorado than Southwesternness, and sought more info. To help me get a better grasp on what the food of Colorado is like, I looked to the writers at Colorado.com. They conducted an interview with Boulder-based chef Mark Monette, executive chef at the Flagstaff House Restaurant. I had hoped he would clarify just what is "Colorado cuisine". Instead, I read this:

It’s not really something that you can define anymore. We have well-trained chefs in Colorado now—people who are highly trained in food and wine and who are excited about it and they’re coming up with new ideas all of the time. They try to search for the local farmers and producers. It’s not just a grilled ribeye and baked potato anymore. [Monette, date unknown]

So Monette doesn't clear things up the way I had hoped. He does, however, note that Colorado is loving the locavore movement we see in California (qv last week). He also notes in the interview
that his restaurant utilizes plenty of locally grown and raised vegetables, fruits and animals (lamb, rabbit and - yes, bison). If ever I make it out to Boulder I must save the money for a visit.

Perhaps the most famous dish, one that needs little mention, is the Denver omelet (or Western omelet, to Coloradans). Kyle Wagner at the Denver Westword gives a very simple description of it: "ham, peppers, onion and cheese" in an omelet (Wagner 2001), as served at the Perfect Landing restaurant in Denver. The omelet has been around since the early 20th century at the latest, and then it was primarily in sandwich form. Wagner notes that the Denver sandwich was a meal of convenience - the ingredients could be traded by cattlemen and eaten without a plate. Just imagine Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist sharing a Western sandwich in that cold tent (Yes, I know that was Wyoming. When will I next get a chance to make a Brokeback comment?) The famous sandwich became a famous omelet in an equally practical way: when the bread wasn't necessary anymore, people stopped using it (Wagner 2001). I didn't use any bread either for my Denver omelet, which follows.

The recipe: Western (Denver) Omelet

Since there are a thousand variations on the Denver omelet, I went with the simplest one I could find. I stopped looking with James A. Beard's American Cookery version from 1972, which is incredibly simple: simply combine chopped onion, green pepper and ham (or bacon), season it in butter til limp, and then add beaten eggs, browning on each side. Season with salt, pepper and hot sauce, and serve on a bun. Beard's recipe allows for a lot of leeway: he regularly added tomato and bacon. I prefer red bell pepper (never a fan of the green ones here). It goes without saying that you do not need a bun for this.


Most ingredients were inexpensive or already on hand:

* eggs (I ended up using four)
* ham steak (about $3.50 for one - I needed only about a quarter of it, and froze the rest for another day)
* onion, green and red bell pepper
* cheese (my choice: Wisconsin cheddar)
* butter, for sauteing the veggies.

The Denver omelet, as Beard notes, is quite simple to put together:

Chop your veggies and shred your cheese - I used a half an onion, half a green bell pepper, and half a red bell pepper. I eyeballed the cheese until I had as much as I wanted. Cube your ham steak while you're at it. Set it all aside.

Get out a big old cast-iron skillet, and melt some butter in it. Then do the following:


Add the veggies and ham to the pan.


Lightly scramble the eggs and add them and the cheese to the pan.


Continue to fry until browned on one side, and flip over. Try not to break it all apart like I could not help doing. When both sides are browned, it's done. Put it on a plate and eat it!


This was an omelet that I had to eat in two sittings. It was what one might call a most hearty omelet: cheese, ham, egg, with whatever vegetables you care to add. Taste-wise, it turned out nicely for me. Visually, it was a mess. I think I am incapable of turning an omelet without tearing it to pieces, especially if it has lots of stuff in it. It didn't matter to me: Beard's recipe assumes you're going to put it in a roll anyway, so nobody's going to see it all torn apart.

Sources:

Beard, James A. James Beard's American Cookery. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company 1972. Parts also available on Google Books.

Bishop, Josh. “Rocky Mountain Oysters: Try Them If You Dare”. GoColorado.com (Life, Leisure & Travel in the Centennial State), date unknown. Copyright GoWorld Publishing, 2003-2011.

Colorado Beef Council. “The Legacy of Cattle in Colorado”. Colorado Beef Council, date unknown. Copyright Colorado Beef Council, 2011.

Monette, Mark (interview). “Let’s Talk Colorado Cuisine: Mark Monette”. Colorado.com, date unknown. Copyright Colorado Tourism Office, 2011.

New Mexico Tourism Department. “New Mexico Cuisine (Culinary Enchantment)”. NewMexico.org, date unknown. Copyright New Mexico Tourism Department, 2010.

Raabe, Steve. “Bison becoming the other red meat”. Denver Post, published April 22, 2010.

Wagner, Kyle. “The Bite: The yolk's on us”. Denver Westword, published Thursday, Mar 15 2001.

Waldo, Forrest. “Best Bison Burger”. High Plains Bison, date unknown. Copyright High Plains Bison (a Trade Name of Golden Bison Company), 2010.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "Colorado" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods webpage link to "Colorado”.

In like a lion...

The good news: I get to stay home today on account of the snow, which has blanketed everything from Biloxi to Bangor.

The bad news: A meeting I needed to go to, and have carefully carved into my schedule for the semester, is now rescheduled for next week, when I have no time to do it. But since I have to do it anyway... well, y'all get the picture.

So I spent last night making Irish soda bread! In my bread maker! From scratch!


As I awoke to this blindingly white scene outside my kitchen window...


...I decided to forgo the customary bowl of cereal or dehydrated kimchee-flavored noodles andhad a slice with a French omelette, Julia-style.


The stuff next to it is habanero salsa. Now let's hope this snow doesn't mess up the rest of my schedule for the week.

Why Doesn't Cathy Eat Her Breakfast?

Mystery Science Theater 3000 lives!

Here is one of those educational films from the 70's that I might've watched on a movie projector in elementary school in the 80's. We know the heroine - let's just call her "Cathy" - is supposed to eat her breakfast, but the narrator just can't get it out of her why she won't!

Fast forward about thirty-odd years to the former hosts of MST3K:, the Best Brains - Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Mary Jo Pehl, Bill Corbett, just a few of the men and women involved in that great series who are now (in various separate projects) putting computers and downloaded movies together to riff once more.* One visit to Archive.org and the aforementioned public domain gem is an MST3K-style "short"! I can't show the whole thing but the folks involved in Rifftrax (see below for information) have a snippet of their take on it on their site.

Last night my sister - a Cathy who eats her breakfast - and I found this same movie in full on YouTube. Thinking it had been illegally uploaded, as some of Rifftrax's efforts have been, we sat and watched, only realizing halfway that it was, in fact, a perfectly legal amateur effort from "The VHS-Hole" project, and quite a funny one to boot (warning: some potty humor):




If you want to see the much-less exciting original film, go here.

While we're on the subject of "msting" public domain food-related movies from the 50's, 60's and 70's, I have to mention the YouTube-based efforts of Matthew Sanderson and the folks at Deep Ape. Sanderson's "Interweb 5000" videos, which are funnier riffs than most I have seen on YouTube. Too bad he only did six of them and his last one was done over a year ago. This one shows young girls in the 50's how to make a tasty rarebit for the boys - yum!



Fun!

* If you want to see brand new "msting" (intentionally spelled like that) from the original masters of the art, go to both of the following, each run by former Best Brainers:

• Rifftrax, which is run by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, with some commentaries by fellow Brainers Bridget Nelson and Mary Jo Pehl, and guest stars like Neil Patrick Harris, among others. The riffs are all downloadable (99¢ to $3.99 a pop) and are mostly on classic films (Night of the Living Dead, Alien, Terminator) and recent blockbusters (Cloverfield, Matrix). You usually have to rent or own the DVD yourself ($9.99 for the rare movie you can download), and play the smart-ass commentary along with it. Can't sync the two up? Mostly no problem - they have a special "Rifftrax" player and bundled MP3 files that work specifically with the player. Open the DVD in the special player, then open the bundled MP3 commentary and voila! It's auto-sync'd. There are still some movies that are not automatically sync'd but they're working on those. A few public domain movies, like the short above, can be purchased with commentary already added.
• Also cruise over to Cinematic Titanic, run by other former Brainers like Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu and - again - MJ Pehl. These are movies with commentary and silhouettes overlain. You pay $10 for the download, which you can keep on your computer or (I think) burn onto a DVD. So far they've only done two movies, Brain of Blood/The Oozing Skull, and The Doomsday Machine. Love those titles!

Bring me my breakfast! (Or Ghosts from My Childhood)

Rita Moreno could live to be 100. She just will never get old. (This is from The Electric Company in the early 1970's. It takes me back, old school!) Judy Graubart is Cinderella.



And of course, I show you this on the heals of this strange news. Y'all know it's going to suck. But if it still helps children to read, the suckiness will be at least tolerable. Oh, and can you believe there is a new Fraggle Rock live-action movie in the works? No, I can't either! Again, it will suck. But at least they're going to use actual muppets and not CGI or anything useless like that. I hope they stick with the puppets when they finally decide to turn Tony Award winner Avenue Q into a movie.

But will Sandra Lee make a tablescape to go with it?

I'm kind of speechless, except that it looks neat.



Apparently it was a video response to this video, which has appeared on morning shows in the UK, Australia and the US. I seemed to have missed it.



At least the song's catchy, although eating pancakes will seem a little weird.

Creamed Chipped Beef and Grits

I don't know why more people haven't done this, but creamed chipped beef and grits has to be my fave breakfast.

I have eaten creamed chipped beef my whole life. I just thought it was big everywhere, but no, outside of the military. And I've never been in the military so I don't know (they wouldn't want me anyway). Apart from the Stouffer's frozen creamed chipped beef (which tastes pretty good), I rarely have seen it outside of Bawlmer. In fact, I don't think I've seen it outside of Bawlmer. They certainly hadn't heard of it in California when I lived there. Whenever I asked if they'd heard of it, most people were like "What the hell is that?" Maybe if I called it "shit on a shingle" people would know what I was talking about.

My mother makes it with the local brand, Esskay.* She cooks it in butter, or a reasonable facsimile, adding milk and flour, until the edges curl. Other than salt, that's it. The recipe behind this link at About.com's Southern food website calls for onions, mushrooms, Cheddar cheese and sour cream, but I prefer mine much less fancy. Again, that's the only way I know it. Not that I wouldn't try it with the other stuff at some point.

Said recipe also calls for toast or rice. I have always eaten it on bread or toast if anything; my father prefers it on mashed potatoes. But only recently, thanks to my slightly unhealthy obsession with Paula's Home Cookin', have I thought to put it over grits. I love grits, but I admit I hadn't eaten much of them, er, it - I'm surprised I haven't seen it much around here, or maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. That is, I hadn't eaten much until I visited my cousin and his wife in Augusta a few years ago. She made cheese and grits for the girls and I had some. Yum! So I love the stuff. But I have little patience to do anything in the morning, so the quick grits is the only type you'll find in my kitchen cabinet. And it's so easy to make in the microwave! Merely put 3 T of quick grits to 3/4 cup of water or milk (I prefer milk - hey I wonder how cream woul make it taste?), stir and microwave for 4 minutes. Yes, I then mix in butter or a reasonable facsimile. And I do like mine thicker than not.

So there you have it: my favorite morning meal. I can't get enough of this stuff.

* Tried to put a link but their page is down right now. See if it's up yet at http://www.esskaymeat.com.