bluegrass to lonestar

Lauren has been craving sushi for like 3 months, so we biked downtown on Congress last night to try the happy hour at Kyoto.  When we got there, a line was already stretched out the door.  The happy hour is not really an hour but 45 minutes from 6 to 6:45.  It was 6:20 when we finally got upstairs and there weren’t any tables left so we were seated at the bar.  We got some edamame, a spider roll, eel, and one of their specialty rolls called godzilla (salmon, avocado and cucumber drizzled with spicy teriyaki sauce, covered with tempura flakes ).  The people next to us ordered what could only have been the “longhorn” roll as it was completely covered in UT orange sauce.

The rolls arrived faster than the edamame.  I wish they had forgotten to bring the edamame altogether.  It was terrible.  It was so overcooked that the pods disintegrated when you tried to get the beans out and they didn’t bother to season it at all.  The sushi made up for it though.  I had never tried a Spider Roll but my friend Alex swears by it.  It was good but I prefer my sushi raw.  I’ll probably skip it in the future.  The unagi and the godzilla were great, the tempura flakes on the outside of the godzilla were a nice contrast.  It all tasted fresh and it was cheap.  A winning combo.

Due in large part to my friend’s exploits, I have developed an interest in fermentation. My first batch of kombucha, while a bit too sour, worked out well enough and I now have a second mother in case of emergencies.

I decided to try my hand at making ginger beer.  I am a big fan.  Not the bland mass market swill in green cans, that stuff reminds me of being ill.  I like it with a healthy kick of ginger in it.  Plus, it goes really well with Bourbon, the best spirit on earth.  Ginger beer starts with making a ginger bug, which seems simple enough.  It’s just water with sugar and ginger in a jar.  You let it sit and add more sugar and ginger every day until it bubbles then you make beer with it.  I started mine yesterday.

I ran the Austin marathon yesterday morning.  18 weeks of training for a few hours of racing.  It’s completely absurd if you actually think about it, but I love it.  I ran the Louisville marathon in 2006 and hurt my knee during it.  It was a pretty miserable experience, but after a year the itch came back.  The little voice in my head telling me that I could do better, and so I signed up once we moved here.

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Jonny brought a kombucha mother back from Portland.  As kombucha mothers do, it made some more mothers.  They gave me one of these.  I am now attempting to use my mother to make some tea.  We shall see how that goes.

We were running some errands in South Austin on Saturday and we stopped at this bright red trailer to grab lunch.  Austin has a large trailer-food scene. Apparently it’s crazy expensive to lease an actual building here.  I think it’s pretty cool that you can get pretty much anything you want to eat from a trailer on the side of the road.  Cupcakes, crepes, tacos, bahn mi, bbq.  You name it.

We got 2 Chicago dogs and a side of fries to share.  I’ve been craving a chicago dog ever since we visited Chicago for new years.  We didn’t get one while were there because our favorite place was closed.  This doesn’t come close to the Hot Doug amazingness but it was a good dog.