The thermometer here in Austin has stuck firmly in its rut at the 90-degree mark. After this entry I’ll go back to blogging separately the "stuff that is cold."
An icecream truck passed by the softball game I was watching, so I bought this icecream-ized Spongebob Squarepants.
Each part of Spongebob’s anatomy had a distinct taste. From the watermelon grin to the cotton-candy eyeballs and the lemon face. And let us not under-sell the shear bliss of chewing Spongebob’s frozen gumball pupils.
A visit to Sandy’s hamburgers down by the lake prompted me to buy this hand-dipped cone.
The chocolate dip was not as good as I anticipated. It tasted more like wax than chocolate, and the soft serve melted and pooled beneath the chocolate where my tongue could not lick it before it leaked. The next time I eat one I will have to completely revamp my ice cream cone licking strategies.
Who am I fooling? I enjoyed the heck out of it.
Also, my friend insisted that I take a picture of her perfectly ordinary cheeseburger.
That’s not food-frakking at all!
When you read the words "purple glutinous rice pastries" what comes into your mind?
Once heated, they become exciting spheres of goo. I liked biting into them, the rice dough sticking against my teeth. When the purple glutinous rice pastries popped, they spilled warm sesame paste over my tongue.
Top Notch up on Burnet is a quite traditional burger and chicken place. You can tell because they fry their pies.
Is there no baked good that cannot be improved by deep-frying?
As a Midwesterner, there will always be something exotic about Waffle House. The chili omelet benefited from their proprietary milkshake mixer egg foaming, which made the omelet light, fluffy and just greasy enough.
I bought this stick of tamarind paste at the cash register of a Tex-Mex restaurant. It was a last minute sort of thing.
You know how dried tamarind has all these inedible hulls and seeds? This stick was exactly like that, but with a lot of goo. I don’t think I was able to swallow even a tenth of a teaspoon. Are these things really edible? Seriously?
From one of the zillion Tex-Mex patio places on South First, a plate of tilapia ceviche.
I’ve never had this before to my recollection. It’s raw fish that’s been cooked in lime juice. Sort of a Mexican version of sushi. Although I honestly couldn’t taste the fish. The lime juice and cilantro drowned out any other tastes there might have been. Although you can barely taste tilapia at the best of times. It’s the fish version of white bread.
Julia, my food-frakking deputy, and I stopped at a marisco place down on Cesar Chavez and Pleasant Valley called Catedral del Marisco. Julia started out with a Coctel de Camaron. I ate a little of the cocktail sauce that didn’t actually have large shrimp parts in it, and it was quite good. Gotta love the saltines, the only way to eat sea food in dime-sized chunks.
Then Julia got the tostada del pulpo. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted octopus that has been seasoned and cooked so well.
Myself, I ordered the biggest thing on the menu, the whole-fried catfish.
I particularly liked the bits of belly that were fried to crispy, thin flaps like catfish potato chips.
My, Mr. Catfish, what tiny bristly teeth you have.
