The LBJ Ranch

The day after Thanksgiving, we went and did the LBJ Ranch tour with our buddy Rory. It was a lovely day out, which was good because it involved a lot of walking around outside. The tour includes a small museum, the home where LBJ was born, the home where he grew up, the "Texas White House," as well as the original settlement in Johnson City. Let's do a photo-dump:

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There was a small museum in the visitor's center.

 LBJ gave some speeches from the porch of his boyhood home as president.

 There was a radio in the first house that Brandon was fascinated with. 

 At the schoolhouse, you couldn't go in, but you could look through the windows. This was encouraged at many stops on the tour.

Brandon caught the light just right coming through the trees at LBJ's burial place.

I was asked to pose behind this placard.

While there, I got a feel for how big Texas is, and how beautiful it can be.

Seriously, cows have gigantic heads.

Apparently LBJ was really into gadgets.

This car has a gun rack and a wet bar in the back seat. I'm not even kidding.

The plane used to get from DC to the Texas White House was tiny, so they jokingly called it "Air Force 1/2."

The original settlement site was pretty sweet, too.

Also there was this awesome old tree. 

Here we learn that Texas Longhorns are HUGE. In the background I'm telling a story about horseback riding. I didn't know Brandon was recording. 

After the LBJ Ranch, we drove over to Austin for dinner. We found a gourmet burger and beer place called HopDoddy. It was delicious. 

 

 
The wine was good. Despite being a microbrew, we weren't fond of the beer. We're going to give them another chance, though.

I got an ahi tuna burger, which had wasabi mayonnaise, sprouts, and pickled ginger. 

My burger was amazing. I don't know how to explain this, but it hit the perfect balance between the light, clean flavor of sushi and the heavy, filling flavor of a burger. You just have to experience it to understand. But suffice to say, it was executed perfectly. Brandon got a plain old burger-burger, which he tells me was equally as delicious.

I don't know why my camera kept focusing on the french fries.

That was our day-after-Thanksgiving adventure. We hope you all enjoyed your Black Friday shopping!

Channukah!

Happy Channukah everyone!

Even though I've been swamped with studying, we've found time to light the menorah every night, play a little bit of dreidel, and yesterday we even had potato latkes for dinner. Here are some holiday photos to brighten your week.

The menorah, all set up and ready to go.

Brandon made the potato latkes on night four.

My friend Leslie sent our gifts so they would arrive during Channukah. They were so cute!

 Sizzling away.

 Nom nom.

Christine was very excited for latkes.

We've learned that studying goes better when there's food.

 The end of a lovely evening with friends. 

Happy Holidays everyone. We look forward to seeing you soon.

Cafe Green Tea

A few weeks back, my buddies and I went to Cafe Green Tea and did some studying for an exam. Apparently French-Japanese fusion is a thing in San Antonio, because this is the second restaurant we've found in this theme. I'm certainly not complaining.

It's right next door to the Japanese grocery.

I loved the little cafe aesthetic they had going. I'm a big fan of tiny, local shops and restaurants, and this definitely fit that vibe very well. 

They had plastic models to show off their selection of crepes.

My matcha latte is in the foreground, and then there's my friend Rory's lunch; a dessert crepe and some miso soup.

I had some tuna and avocado sushi and salted salmon onigiri.

 My friend Christine, on the end, had a panini and some sushi. 

It may sound like these two styles of cooking would clash, but surprisingly they work well together. After some discussion with my friends about it, we decided that it strikes an interesting balance between the clean simplicity of Japanese ingredients, and the richness of French sauces and garnishes. I'm absolutely in love with this concept. I'll definitely be going back to Cafe Green Tea soon (and often, I hope!) and seeking out more restaurants that utilize this theme.

Thanksgiving

Happy Turkey Day everyone! Here are some photos of our little Thanksgiving feast. It was just me, Brandon and my friend Rory from school, so we got a tiny turkey, it was 7lbs. But we ended up with SO MUCH FOOD anyway. Here are the photos!

Making the stuffing!

I wanna tell you a little story about the stuffing, because I was really proud of myself. If you'll remember, I made cookie cutter sandwiches for Halloween. Well, I kept the crusts in the freezer. I cut them into cubes, toasted them and left them out overnight to dry out completely. Then I smushed them with a rolling pin, and combined them with the sauteed vegetables and broth. As it happens, the chicken broth I used was also from scratch. I had some left over in the freezer from last month when I was practicing my broth-making skills. I was so proud of myself for being so thrifty and making this stuffing from scratch that I called my mom to brag. She said she was impressed ^_^

There he is, 7 pounds of delicious dinner waiting to happen!

 Time to stuff the bird!

 Ready to rock!

 Beautiful. 

 My friend Rory brought a few dishes, too, and in the end we had WAY more food than we needed.

 

 Brandon was eager to unveil the pumpkin pie.

A lovely feast!

We hope everyone had a great holiday!

Downtime - Time Travel Post

This is an old post Brandon forgot to put up. I thought I'd share it instead of deleting it. It's only about 2 months old, at most. 

Amanda is still very consumed by studying, but i had a few free moments of downtime last week after concluding a round of jobhunt-phone calls, resume emailing, etc.

Instead of watching a film I settled on picking up Snatcher - A 1988 japanese scifi-thriller game written by Hideo Kojima.

Snatcher is essentially the film Bladerunner, in video game form.
There is nothing wrong with that.

That means the plot revolves around a detective in post-japan New Kobe city, who uncovers cases where murderous robots apparently kidnap & replace individuals in society with cleverly disguised mechanical duplicates.

Rather then watching a two hour film staring Harrison Ford, - you walk the hero, Gillian, through warehouses, crimescenes, dark tunnels, city streets, etc. - by selecting from a short, ever changing list of immediate items to inspect or things to say.

It took me about 10 hours to play.

Which for a game, (think Mario) is fairly fast. Thanks to X display technology (X11 first released in 1987/88), bluetooth, Nintento, and a bunch of other fancy contrivances of this modern world.

Rudy's

Brandon and I finally found time to go check out the original Rudy's Barbecue just north of San Antonio. It's a famous chain around here and Austin, and known for being one of the best barbecue places around. Here are some photos of our adventure:

Rudy's apparently wants you to know that they have the worst barbecue in Texas.

Babyback ribs, brisket, something called "the chopped," potato salad, creamed corn and cole slaw.

"The chopped" is odds and ends of beef and pork, chopped up and thrown in their famous barbecue "sause." You put it on a sandwich like a sloppy joe. Needless to say, everything here was delicious. 

Nom nom.

They also had Mexican Pepsi, which is made with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. I don't normally drink pop, but I was so excited, I had to get a bottle. 

 

 Brandon, looking pensive with his babyback rib. 

The original Rudy's also has a general store, where I found some Moon Pies for sale. I'd never seen them before. As I understand it, they're a southern thing, is that correct? In any case, we didn't buy them. I'm not much for marshmallow fluff. 

  Chocolate Moon Pie. I'm told they're delicious.

That's it for now. Ta!

Sapore's

Brandon and I have been building up a nice list of restaurants that we frequent, but we keep forgetting to review them here on the blog. One of our first goals for this blog was to review restaurants. Perhaps now that we have a better camera, we'll get better at taking pictures when we go out to eat.

Unfortunately, all my photos of Sapore's are from before we got the new camera, so they were taken with my phone. But I'd like to give it a mention anyway. I can post updated photos the next time we go.

Sapore's is a tiny Italian place to the south of us, by the highway. It's a hole-in-the-wall spot. They have 4 tables crammed into the lobby of a takeout-style pizzeria. The pizzas are thin crust and to die for. They're served piping hot, fresh from the oven, absolutely dripping with cheese. They have pasta and other Italian treats - and homemade cannoles and tiramisu for dessert. Yeah. Be jealous. Or, just come to visit us!

The four-cheese pizza, which I'm pretty sure actually had five cheeses. I am NOT complaining.

 And a close-up so you can see all those amazing herbs.

 Amazing homemade cannoles with powdered sugar on top and chocolate chips inside.

We've only been to Sapore's a couple times, but I've found myself specifically craving their pizza and cannoles since then. I also feel I should mention that the cannoles don't have too many chocolate chips. I've had cannoles spoiled by an overdose of chocolate before, but Sapore's knows how to let the creamy filling speak for itself. 

Seriously. Come visit. Let's get some pizza.

Halloween!

So, Brandon and I got a new camera. We've been playing with the settings and trying to learn how to use it. It has been a fun project.

Let me tell you about our Halloween weekend. On Saturday I had a study party, and I made festive snacks:

 

 They were all really quick and super fun to make. 

That's cheesy garlic bread shaped like skeleton bones, apple slices with almonds made to look like vampire teeth, chocolate-dipped pretzels with orange sprinkles, pumpkin seeds with garlic, sugar and cayenne and tea sandwiches made with cookie cutters shaped like bats and pumpkins. And of course a cauldron filled with Halloween candy in the background.

I had WAAAAY too much fun with this project. They were all super fast, easy recipes (they had to be, because I needed to save my time for studying) but they made an impression, and they were gone by the end of the evening. 

Brandon and I carved our pumpkin with Texas on one side and Michigan on the other. I thought it would be very appropriate for the blog:

Brandon carved Texas on the first side.

And I did Michigan on the other side.

Voila!

Since we don't have much time for fun lately, the party was actually just a glorified study session with my friends. But we still had fun munching on Halloween-themed snacks while we studied. By the end of the weekend, we were all pretty exhausted. 

It's a study coma AND a chocolate coma!

And my friend Christine thought my M&M costume was so funny, she put it on and wore it all evening while we studied. It was hilarious. 

Whatever floats your boat, Christine.

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!