East Side Foodies

There’s a ton of foodie hype that sweeps through Austin – a food trailer featured in this magazine, a restaurant featured on that TV show. Once this happens, the place becomes a foodie mecca, turning to complete and total madness. Lines stretch for miles and miles, wait times span into years… As waiting in line for food is something I can’t bring myself to do – absolutely not worth it – I do my best to avoid these places during the insanity.

With this said, there’s a super popular hole in the wall Mexican restaurant in East Austin called “Juan In A Million“. It’s been featured on Man vs. Food, so as you can imagine, this place is generally a mad house. I had been wanting to try it at some point, but figured I’d wait for the madness to die down.

Welllll…a few weeks back, one thing led to another and I found myself there. Wait time was less than 5 minutes. A Christmas miracle!

Insanely large portions of  delicious, cheap, greasy, authentic Mexican food is what you’ll find at Juan In A Million. I’m fairly confident my arteries began to cry when my plate was set before me, but let’s be real, I didn’t go there for a healthy meal!

Here’s my plate:

I think I was able to consume about 1/16th of what you see in the picture. I also think I might have offended the waiter when I asked for a box after my plate looked like it had barely been touched. “I do like it.” I told him. “I just can’t eat my weight in nachos this morning. The leftovers will make for a great lunch, snack, dinner, 2nd breakfast, 2nd snack, 2nd lunch and 2nd dinner!”

Here’s the famous Don Juan taco:

The horchata is not pictured, but is some of the best I’ve had.

The wait staff also reminded me why I’m not in the food service industry. If I had that many people packed into a small space that I had to serve every day…well, I’m fairly confident it’d be an epic fail for all involved. (: On the contratry, the JIAM staff were great – friendly, attentive, happy, chipper…you know…all the great characteristics of awesome waiters/waitresses.

Rockport

After the Turkey Trot, we headed down to Rockport, a small town on the coast of Texas. While many Texans claim that Texas beaches are unimpressive, I on the other hand, think Texas beaches are pretty great. (When you come from the Pacific NW and must bring a winter coat on every beach trip [including those in the summer], a beach where you can wear a t-shirt & possibly even get a sunburn in November seems pretty darn awesome.) Funny how pretty much everything in life is relative, yeah?

On a vaguely related topic, although I’ve been here a few years, our proximity to Mexico still blows my mind. The thing I find most interesting is that although we’re so close to Mexico, culture/society/life in Austin feels like we’re a world away. I guess you could also say the culture/society/life in Austin feels like we’re a world away from Texas!

With this all said…enjoy the following photos from my Rockport venture:

Riding Bikes To Shiner

The other weekend I volunteered at the Shiner G.A.S.P. – a 100 mile bike from Austin to Shiner.

We arrived around 4:45 AM to begin setting up – the parking lot had only a handful of people when we got there. Within a few hours, it looked like this:

WHOA.

There were about 1,600 riders coming from Austin (riders also started out in other cities – Houston, San Antonio, etc.)

I took video of the start of the race in an attempt to give perspective to the massive amount of cyclers. It took more than five minutes to get everyone through the start!

Once the bikers took off, we hopped in the car and began our journey to Shiner.

We drove along the same path the bikers, in case anyone needed help, a bike pump, etc. along the way. I’ve never driven through this part of Tejas, so it was quite fun to explore new Texas territories! (;

Along the way we got hungry and stopped at possibly one of the most interesting convenience stores I’ve ever stepped foot in:

One stop shopping! Blue Raspberry Mad Dog & Cat Chow! How did they know I had both those items on my list?

Cell phone chargers, cupcake sprinkles and onions!

Fruit atop the trash can? Hmmm.

I’m a sucker for good, clean (neat-looking) design…even if it’s found inside the convenience store meat cooler:

…and there we have it. That concludes the middle of nowhere Texas convenience store tour.

Continuing on…

Here I am:

…and as we can see, this is what results when I #1: Opt for Pringles as a snack, and #2 Am not the one driving and have a camera in hand. (:

We drove a little farther…passed more cyclists…coming across this woman! Did she really cycle with a dog in tow for 100 miles?

#Impressive.

Once we got to Shiner, it was BBQ time! I unfortunately did not photograph the delicious food they served us, but I did take this photo of the GIANT Shiner bottle. Holy cow.

The afternoon was full of good BBQ, music, people watching, brewery tour and another check on the Texas bucket list!

It was fun watching all the bikers ride in – I am blown away by how many hardcore cyclists there are out here. The truth is, I have minimal desire to become a cyclist; however, when thinking of the activities I am passionate about and dedicated to, I can appreciate the passion and dedication these guys have for their respective hobby.

Moving on…

Back to Austin! We look a different route, passing other neat “stereotypical Texas” places. It’s sometimes easy to forget that the rest of Texas is very different from Austin…I love getting out and galavanting through the small Texas towns – so many interesting things/places/people to see! Such as this place!

And this little downtown strip of buildings:

Before I knew it, we were already back in Austin (after a quick stop at Smitty’s in Lockhart for ice cream cones…they are only $1! How can you turn down that deal?? (:)

Some Austin Music

Welp, there sure is a reason why Austin is called the live music capital. Can’t seem to go anywhere without running into some live tunes!

Here are a few videos of some music I came across the first few weeks of December – the first two groups at the Holiday Stroll down Congress street and the third at the Saturday market downtown on 4th. Enjoy:

Quite an eclectic group:

Oh man, this one makes me want to get up and go salsa dance, stat!

Love all the unique instruments & style:

Books, Balloons & Cougars

This past weekend was busy…explored alot of places, saw alot of things. I’ll let the images do most of the talking, but let’s just say I spent as much time outside as possible – beautiful blue skies, upper 70s, no humidity. Amazing.

Check out the art on this food trailer:

Texas Book Festival, held on the Capitol grounds:

Of course there can’t be a festival in Austin without live music. There’s something really special about Austin…I can’t put my finger quite on it, but I would be willing to bet that the amount of live music and the beautiful weather has something to do with the underlying liveliness and energy that seems to permeate throughout the city.

Nothing like a good old-fashioned jam sesh. Love seeing stuff like this – musicians who just genuinely love to jam & people of all ages who enjoy taking it all in:

Exploring Hyde Park:

Thriller dance class – prepping for Thrillerfest, coming up soon! My favorite part about it – and about many events in Austin – there are people there of all ages…middle school to middle-aged. Kids, parents, friends, single people, couples. Everyone just kinda co-exists and does things together. I like it.

Halloween fest. up in Lakeway. Check out these beautiful hot air balloons!

While wandering around checking out the balloons, I heard a band playing on the other side of the park- went to check it out of course. Couldn’t believe the band is made up up middle + high school aged kids – between 7th & 10th grade. These kids were so talented.

It’s one thing to be able to play a few chords on the guitar, but it’s another to be a real musician and these guys are def. on their way – super talented, good intonation, excellent improv. skills and pretty darn good stage presence, which is huge as a peformer!

Two things about the following video.

#1 – check out the piano solo at around :35. Stellar improv, especially for a 15 yr old!!!

#2 – go to 1:59 and listen to the convo in the background. a middle aged man came up to me and asked if one of the band members was my boyfriend. (???). The band members are between 7th & 10th grade.

I was completely taken aback by the question, so all I could spit out was: “I’m 23…that’d be illegal.” The guy was clearly embarrassed and appeared genuinely shocked that I was 23. He managed to get out something like, “Oh! …you just…look so small…uhhh… takeitasacompliment…!!!” …and then he made like a banana and split.

I’m still debating whether he thought I looked young, or thought I was a cougar. I’m going to go with the “looking young” option. SIGH.

Took care of alot of work Sunday am, went to the Texas bookfest in the afternoon – heard Ben Yogoda + Roy Peter Clark’s panel on “The English Language: Under the Hood.” Takeaways:

So interesting! Love stuff like this.

Afterward, I went over to an Oregonian friend’s house for a house-warming / fall get-together. I made pumpkin spice cupcakes (Yes, the purple glittery stuff IS edible!)

And spent about 3 hours carving a pretty bomb.com pumpkin: