Home Slice Pizza

After our hike in the dry riverbed, we were STARVING. We went to South Congress Avenue in Austin and decided to finally, finally try Home Slice Pizza.

Every time we go to Austin, Home Slice Pizza has at LEAST an hour wait. This time, we decided it was worth it. We put our names in, then sat on their back patio and had a drink. 45 minutes later, we had our table.

 

Those are some hungry people.

Appetizers!

For our appetizers, we had their garlic knots, which come with house-made tomato sauce for dipping, and a walnut, pear, and gorgonzola salad with a very subtle vinaigrette; I'm forgetting what it had in it. Sorry guys. 

Then there was the pizza. We got a margherita pizza, which was phenomenal. They DID NOT skimp on the garlic. This pizza was drenched in garlic. The basil and tomatoes were fresh and bright, the cheese was melted to perfection.

I haven't had pizza this good in a very long time.

Brandon got a calzone. It had spinach and ricotta cheese inside, and more marinara sauce for dipping. Normally, ricotta is an expensive cheese and restaurants use it sparingly. This calzone was stuffed to capacity with perfectly melted ricotta.

They clearly made their dough in-house. It was fresh, warm, doughy... And the marinara sauce was clearly just roma tomatoes blended to oblivion, with a lovely blend of herbs thrown in. Again, fresh, bright flavor.

The crowd at Home Slice is definitely very hipster. People hang out on the back patio drinking beer and playing ping-pong. Most of the staff are covered in tattoos. But a lot of these hipsters are parents now, so there were a lot of kids there. We noticed that at tables that had children, the waiter brought some pizza dough for the child to play with. I felt it was somewhat of a waste of food, but every child there was thrilled (and well-behaved), so I suppose it was worth it.

If you're ever in Austin, just know that Home Slice is worth the wait.

Adventures with Melissa!

Brandon's parents left, but now we have Brandon's sister! She is crashing on our couch, and we are having a great many adventures.

Over the weekend, we went to Austin and did some hiking. First hiking trail was short, and the only major focal point was a tiny cave, surrounded by a rock wall to keep people from falling in. So naturally, we hopped the wall to check out the cave.

Siblings on the rock wall.

It was less of a cave and more of a tiny hole in the ground.

Up-close pictures made it look more cave-like.

Oh yeah, I was there too!

It was so hot out. So, for our second hike we decided on a trail that supposedly lead to a lovely little swimming hole under a tiny waterfall. We soon found out that "the dry season" means just that. 

This is the riverbed. We are standing in it.

So we walked along the riverbed for a while!

...Until we came to the famed waterfall and swimming hole.

We sat in the shade for a bit,

Melissa saw her first Texas lizard!

And then, naturally, we decided to climb the waterfall.

And chill out on the rocks.

After regaining my energy, I got in on the action too!

Upstream, Brandon found a plaque in what would be the middle of the river.

The rock formations were really pretty. Everything was very smooth.

We climbed around for a bit,

Cooled off,

And hung out. 

 After a while, we had our fill, and went back to Austin for a bite to eat...

TO BE CONTINUED!

Family!

Apparently I give just enough hints on my Facebook as to what I'm doing to be annoying, but not enough details to satiate my mother's appetite for information. She insists - no, DEMANDS! - more photos of Brandon's family. And here they are.

We went to the Alamo!

And hung out in the courtyard!

We went to a flea market!

There were silly hats!

And action figures!

... One of which, Brandon bought!

We went to Rudy's BBQ!

Brandon's sister arrived!
Then we went to Mi Tierra's downtown!

Reading the menu!

Dos-rita!

Mariachi bros!

Attempts at getting photos of the whole table!

Crazy decorations!

The whole gang!

Next week, on Texas blog: More Texas!

Parents!

Guess who drove the full 1,354 Miles to see us? Brandon's parents! (And yes, I *am* very excited about being able to use that line.)

They got in town late last night, so we went to Lulu's for their famous 3-Pound cinnamon roll. We've been to Lulu's before, but we didn't blog about it because we wanted to keep at least one thing a surprise for people who come to visit us. And a surprise it was!

Kathleen cracks me up.

Ta daaaa!

Brandon's mom, Kathleen, is pretty much my #1 commenter here on the blog. So it's sort of hilarious (and fitting) that now she's finally on it herself!

Brandon's parents will be staying a full week, and his sister arrives on Tuesday. She'll be staying about a week and a half. So we'll be balancing work and sightseeing and family time over the next couple weeks. I'm pretty excited. ^_^

Yaaaay family!

Chili Sauce

Chili sauce is a Canadian food; it's a tangy, sweet sauce that is used in place of ketchup. Honestly, it's basically ketchup before ketchup gets pureed. It evolved as a way to use up the tomatoes at the end of the harvest, so they wouldn't go bad. It also happens to be a major family tradition to get together in August and make a big batch of chili sauce to last the whole year. Unfortunately, we haven't done it the last few years, and I've had to make my own batches.

Since it's hot in Texas year-round, we figured we could do our chili sauce weekend pretty much any time during the summer. We did some searching and tried a couple farmer's markets. We've had issues with the farmer's markets in San Antonio in the past, and this was no exception.

We tried the Pearl Brewery district Farmer's Market. It was more of a hang-out spot than a place to get serious produce. Which is fine, but I needed a bushel of tomatoes, soooo... We moved on.

Pearl Brewery Farmer's Market. 

We ended up getting the produce we needed at Sun Harvest, which is like a bulk food store/produce market. I didn't get photos. We got the canning gear and the rest of the ingredients at HEB. For some reason, I remembered to get a photo:

Everything else.

We've made chili sauce before, but I borrowed my mom's canning gear. So this time I had to buy my own kit. Now that I have it, my mom informs me that I need to learn to make jelly and jam. It would last forever, as I detest it, and Brandon only uses it once in a blue moon. 

Anywho, Chili sauce is one of those "throw everything in a pot and boil the ever-loving hell out of it!" recipes. So, photo dump!

So many onions. So many tomatoes.

Oh, did I mention that Rory helped?

Brandon got artsy with the photos.

Tomato dis-assembly line.

Work-in-progress.

Jars awaiting their contents.

Canning setup.

Getting redder.

Canning time.

Yay!

And now we have chili sauce to last us all year. So, we discovered that I need to alter my recipe a bit. The card my mom gave me calls for 30 tomatoes and 10 onions. But I think our tomatoes are small and our onions are big. This is the second year that I've made chili sauce myself, and the second time that it has been overly oniony. So I need to watch out for that next time. 

But other than that, it was a major success! Chili sauce is a big comfort food for me. I kept a jar in the fridge in my dorm in college. I'd put it on my eggs in the morning - yes, I'd bring it down to the cafeteria with me at breakfast. It helped with homesickness. 

And anyway, now we can stop buying ketchup. ^_^