Texas BBQ, revisited

I'm not sure how it happened exactly, but a few weeks ago, a bunch of my coworkers decided they had to have some real Texas BBQ. In the end, an order was placed with Salt Lick. D and I had just been to the Round Rock location over Thanksgiving, but I'm not one to pass up meat, so I signed us up anyway.

Last Saturday, the order arrived. I'm not sure exactly what was in it, but there were I think three or four racks of pork ribs, plus plenty of sausage, turkey, beef brisket, bean soup, baked beans, and someone had made fresh cornbread. There were about twelve of us total, and we managed to polish off most of the meat, but couldn't finish the remaining brownies, pies, and cakes that we'd brought for dessert.

It was a good time and the food was yummy enough, but I do think that the reheating process made the ribs a bit tougher than usual (they were shipped fully smoked). The sausage was my favorite; it was delicious. Makes me want to plan another Memphis Minnie's outing.

Texas sized meals

It's been nearly a month since our weeklong trip to Texas, but I wanted to mention some of the restaurants we visited there.

We watched the 49ers lose to the Packers at Pluckers, an Austin-area chain that pretty much just serves wings. I particularly enjoyed the Jamaican jerk and Spicy BBQ flavors. Their onion rings were yummy, too.

The next day we ate lunch at Hoover's, where they served us cheap and generous portions of chicken-fried chicken (good!) and steak (so-so).

Then, we had dinner at El Chile Cafe, where they served their chips with a delicious mole sauce. The margaritas were also excellent.

As if that wasn't enough, on our last day in Austin, we went to Salt Lick, a BBQ place with nice juicy beef ribs.

Sadly, we did not have enough time to check out the Alamo Drafthouse. Apparently it's a combination movie theatre and restaurant which is quite popular. I've seen the concept in Taipei with fast food (beef noodle soup, etc.) but never in the US before. Next time!

Our experience in San Antonio was a bit different; we had dinner at Il Sogno Osteria, which is a high-end Italian place. By Bay Area standards it was still quite inexpensive, and they had a fun antipasti sampler option which we enjoyed very much. The white bean & garlic mousse, roasted red peppers w/ anchovy sauce, and potato & octopus salad were especially memorable.

the weekend, in short

(I spent the weekend visiting family in Houston and Galveston.)

Things that sucked:
- visiting a not-yet-repaired Hurricane Ike-damaged home and discovering a break-in
- encountering a flat tire due to demolition debris
- accidentally breaking IE while installing a Windows Update on someone else's computer
- landing at SFO in rain that was blowing sideways

Things that didn't suck:
- filing a police report for said break-in with a really sympathetic cop
- helping to celebrate a 61st birthday with food, friends, family, and ice cream cake
- hearing about $130,000 worth of poker winnings
- eating surprisingly delicious homemade gua bao
- teaching people to use Firefox and Chrome (albeit out of necessity, due to broken IE)
- catching up with a happily expecting couple over cheap and yummy Tex-Mex

weekend travel notes

Trip of the month: three days in (really hot, really humid) Houston for a 60th birthday party.

For short trips, I've become a regular user of FastTrack's long-term airport parking, since it seems kind of sucky to be asking my friends to drive me to/from the airport all the time. Plus, it gives me more flexibility; last Thursday, I was able to have dinner in Palo Alto with a friend visiting from Seattle, before heading to SFO to catch the red-eye.

I was just mentioning to someone a couple of weeks ago how I hadn't had a problem in several years, while travelling domestically with my small Swiss Army knife. Of course, once I'd said that, I mentally kicked myself, knowing that I'd just jinxed myself. Sure enough, security found the knife this time through, and gave me three options: check a second bag and pay the $25 fee, mail the knife home and pay $10 for shipping, or throw the knife away. I chose option four: hide the knife in the women's bathroom outside of security and hope that it stays there. I'd done something similar once at the SF passport agency, but I'd never tried it overnight before. Amazingly, the knife was still there when I returned, three and a half days later. I'm not sure what that says about airport security, but I'm happy to still have my decrepit old Swiss army knife, that my parents bought me in Switzerland over twelve years ago.

On the return trip, due to poor planning and some traffic (and wanting to stop for a Whataburger breakfast taquito), we arrived at the bag drop counter about 23 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart, and the airline agent refused to let us check in our bags, due to the "30-minute cutoff" rule. She tried to insist that we fly on a later flight (I suspect the flight was overbooked and she wanted to clear up some space), but that was pretty much not an option for us, so we tried a few different approaches.

First we asked if we could check our bags on later flight and pick them up at SFO later. We were told "passengers must fly with their bags". I know for a fact that sometimes passengers don't fly with their bags; when the airline screws up, or when a flight is delayed and the passenger is able to catch his/her connection but the bag doesn't make it. But, I guess it's a good rule from the security perspective.

Next we asked if we could leave a bag at the counter, and have a friend pick it up later, since we didn't really need it. We were told that the airline didn't have the resources and couldn't handle this task.

Finally, we asked, if we packed all our stuff into our (half-empty) carry-on bags, if she would throw the remaining suitcase away for us. At this point she realized that we were not about to give up our seats on the flight, so she suggested that since the suitcase was only a few inches larger than carry-on size, we could try to get it through security and then have it checked doorside.

We ended up going one better; we got through security with no problems, and then, even though the flight was full and carry-on space was tight, one of the flight attendants actually managed to fit our suitcase into an overhead bin, so we never had to check it at all. Ironically, the flight's departure was delayed 15-20 minutes anyway, but I'm not complaining this time.

back (again)

I feel like I'm always getting "back" from something. It's probably related that I'm way behind on blogging. I did manage to upload my Whistler photos last week so those should be up soon, I think.

This time I was in Houston for a family event. Two highlights:
- I finally got to check out the Johnson Space Center (as in "Houston, we have a problem"). At first I balked at the $18 admission price, especially as I'd already been to Kennedy Space Center before, but it turned out to be more interesting than I expected. There was a pretty comprehensive update on the current status of the International Space Station and the Constellation project, plus we heard about NASA's future plans for moon and Mars exploration. We also got to see one of the real Mission Control rooms, a replica of the interior of the astronaut quarters, and some other cool stuff. We ended up spending over four hours there, and were late to dinner.
- One night for dinner, we bought 30 lbs of crawfish and cooked them with corn, potatoes, lemons, onions, and Lousiana Fish Fry's "Crawfish, Crab & Shrimp Boil". So. Good. I think there were maybe 15 people there that night, and we ate at least 20 lbs of the crawfish. This was after we had already had a full meal of Taiwanese lun bianh. Afterwards, we topped off the crawfish with fresh homemade tang yuan, ai yu jelly and fruit cocktail. Yum.