Weird Food of the Day

I always find the weirdest food at grocery stores. This time, I was at MT Supermarket in Chinatown Austin and found this:

This candy powder looked like dirt to me, especially with the lovely green grass printed on the bottom of the picture. According to the ingredients though, it was just sucrose and water. I have no idea what this is suppose to be used for.

Anyone know?

Can I have a bowl of rice with that?

Rice Bowl Cafe opened after I moved from Austin, but I heard many great things about this place from friends that I knew I had to try it when I was in town. The noodles for their noodle soups are made fresh, so they have a distinct chewy texture that's delicious and filling.

Szechuan Beef Noodle Soup

The portions are also very large. I can usually get two meals out of an entree. I ordered the Pork on Rice which has this really flavorful sauce that's perfect with the crispy pork, and comes with one of my favorite Asian veggies, bok choy. And yes, it came with two huge pork fillets!

Pork Chop on Rice

My friend ordered a tofu dish. I believe it was the Bean Curd Homestyle, but I'm not positive. Tofu can be really good if you know how to make it correctly, and Rice Bowl knows exactly how. This dish has a good balance of flavor and spiciness, but it's also light because of the great mix of vegetables. I had to help myself to some of my friend's food. That's what friends are for, right?

Bean Curd Homestyle

There are so many other dishes I want to try in the future. Hopefully I'll have a chance to go back soon.

I Heart Queso

I've been insanely busy with traveling to Austin (for a bachelorette party) and preparing for a major presentation. Thankfully the presentation is done and over with! Sadly, I wish I was still in Austin. I lived in Austin for many years and a part of my heart will always be there. *sniffle* Okay, enough with the sappy stuff and onto the mouth-watering food!

The bride-to-be and I went to one of our favorite places to eat, Kerbey Lane Cafe. It has some of the best queso in town, awesome breakfast that is served all day/night, and many other great entrees ranging from Bacon Wrapped Pesto Chicken to Bison Picadillo Enchiladas to seasonal favorites like Pork Milanese and the Pesto di Pistachio Pasta.

Menu

I like Kerbey Lane because they always serve great tasting food anytime you're hungry (they're open 24 hours). Plus, I'm in love with their queso.

Cowboy Queso

The Cowboy Queso consists of black beans and guacamole drowned in white queso and topped with pico de gallo. I'm usually not a big fan of black beans, but this appetizer is surprisingly really good with the black beans.

I was having such a hard time deciding on what I wanted to eat that day because Kerbey Lane has such a variety in their menu. I ended up going with breakfast, which you can never go wrong with! I ordered the Breakfast Platter with chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, and fried eggs over medium.

Breakfast Platter

We were both so full that we could hardly move, but it was worth it!

An Excuse to Drink Wine at Dinner?

I wanted to try my hand at a pasta salad. This was the first time I've ever made a pasta salad, so I kept everything fairly simple. I combined 5 cheese ravioli, diced green bell pepper and Roma tomato, sauteed zucchini, Parmesan cheese, pesto, and sun-dried tomato dressing.

Served with some slices of french baguette with brie cheese and a glass of red wine (Llano Estacado Sangiovese).

Soup and Salad To Go

On days when I leave work really late, I like to stop by Market Street and help myself to their amazing salad bar and soups. My favorite soup from them is the loaded baked potato soup. It's soooo good!

Market Street's salad bar has a great selection of whatever you can think of to put on a salad with a variety of different types of lettuce, cold pasta salads, unique items like tabbouleh and hummus, and mixed fruit! One of my favorites is the mixed tortellini and chicken pasta salad (shown below).

Mixed fruit, tortellini and chicken pasta salad, and spring mix salad.

And if you're wondering why there's only one pickled okra all by it's lonesome, it's because I was curious about what it tasted like. I've never had okra in pickled form. The verdict: yum!

Homemade Pizza

Pizza is probably one of the easiest things to make. I usually like to keep a frozen one from the store in my freezer at all times just for the occasions when I don't want to cook or prepare anything. Some of my favorites are California Pizza Kitchen's BBQ Chicken Pizza and Freschetta's Simply Inspired Farmers Market Veggie.

When I don't have a prepared one from the stores and I'm trying to find an efficient way to use up some of the veggies left in my frig that are about to spoil soon, I make my own. I use Mama Mary's Thin and Crispy Crust from Walmart as the base. Then I spread a thin layer of pesto onto the crust before tomato sauce. I really like the mix of pesto and tomato sauce, it adds additional flavor to everything. Then you're set to layer the pizza with whatever you want! I used fresh mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, pepperoni, green bell pepper, Roma tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, green olives with pimentos. I also really love pizza because it makes for good leftovers!

Leftover white rice?

I tend to always make extra steamed white rice just to have leftover white rice the next day to make fried rice. Fried rice is one of the easiest and quickest things to make. You are not limited to what you want to put in the fried rice. In this case, I chose to include eggs, Chinese sausage, zucchini, and baby bella mushrooms.

One of the most important tips in making fried rice is that you want to have "old" cold white rice for it. Using freshly steamed rice will cause the dish to be soggy because of the extra moisture in the warm rice. It must be cold to prevent extra stickiness and sogginess. Also, most people think the reason why fried rice is brown is because it's "fried." Well it's technically stir-fried and not fried in the same terms like fried chicken or french fries, and the nice brown color in fried rice is from adding soy sauce as your cooking it.

In this dish, first I scrambled some eggs using butter (I know butter is unhealthy, but I like how it makes the eggs fluffy) and salt to taste, cooking until it's a bit underdone since it'll be added back into the rice. I remove the eggs and then saute the zucchini and mushrooms with some salt and pepper until they're tender. Next I crisp up the Chinese sausage a bit so I can use some of the grease that melts off to stir-fry the rice. I remove the sausage and add the rice. Add a couple of teaspoons of soy sauce at a time until you reach the flavor you want. Sometimes I add a bit of pepper and salt if I don't want too much of a soy sauce flavor. This step really depends on what you prefer. After the rice is stir-fried, add everything back in and combine. That's it! Quick and easy...and you don't have to spend money on take-out anymore!