My Favorite Blogs

Whenever I need a brain break I browse these sites:

Stuff on My Cat
Where else can you see people dressing up or putting things on their cats? Not to be missed.

Hiss and Tell
This funny lady from down under writes a wicked funny blog. And I mean wicked, i.e. some adult content.

Homestarrunner Wiki
Okay, it's not a blog, it's a wiki. Here I can find out at a glance if my favorite cartoon site has updated any time in the last 30 seconds.

Nancy's Notes
Yes, my mom is a blogger. She just started it to chronicle her recent trip to Japan. Check it.

Cute Overload
Cute pictures of cute animals being incredibly cute.

Austin Food Bytes
Harmony is Restored

Now that we’ve spent some time contemplating differences in culinary style between genders, let’s bring it all back together and feature some restaurants and activities that can be enjoyed by both.

Moonshine Patio Bar and Grill
Moonshine is truly the best of both worlds. The décor is a cross between a southwestern ski lodge and a fancy restaurant. The bar is built in an old carriage house, and has some excellent drinks. Moonshine specializes in kicked-up versions of down-home classics. Macaroni and Cheese becomes Green Chile Macaroni, with grilled chicken, corn relish and green chile cream. Apple pie is cooked in a skillet and served with maple ice cream. Entrée prices range from $10-$20.

Central Market Cooking School
When you think of cooking classes, you might remember your home economics teacher – mine taught us how to make pizzas using biscuit dough. Not very exciting. Or you might think of Julia Childs – elaborate continental recipes using all sorts of techniques and tools with names you can’t pronounce. Or maybe Emeril Lagasse – a loud, charismatic chef who yells “Bam!” way too much and seems to have twelve arms and can somehow execute five dishes in 40 minutes.

At Central Market, cooking school has been packaged to fit anyone and everyone’s cooking style and level. If you’d like to impress your date with something different, take a wine tasting class. You will sample six wines with accompanying cheeses, and they also provide you with a light dinner. Or, you can take any number of hands-on classes, where you can learn anything from how to prepare sushi to how to care for and use your cooking knives. The bulk of the classes are taught in classroom style, the cook talks and prepares food, and the class gets to sample medium size portions of each dish at the end. Wine is always served with dinner, and a variety of other beverages. Two caveats: always bring a sweater - they keep the room pretty cold, and make reservations far in advance – classes fill up quickly.

Stay tuned – I’ll be featuring Central Market Cooking School more in future articles.

Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill
303 Red River
236-9599

Central Market Cooking School
North Lamar at 40th St.
512-458-3068

lots of ranting, very little raving

I have a big problem with Austin's city college. To take a class, I had to bring in my college diplomas to be xeroxed to prove I didn't need to take an English and Math entrance exam. This was maybe three years ago. I was eventually allowed to register for the dance class I was taking for self-improvement. The next semester they wouldn't let me register again because they claimed I had to take the entrance exams. They had lost my records. Lovely. Eventually, after many, many calls to the registration office, I convinced someone to take the hold off my registration.

I 've been attempting to sign up for the same class again this week. First they said my address info was incomplete. So I filled out a form and faxed it with a copy of my driver's license. They took that hold off, and put another one on for an address change form, since I just moved. So I filled that out and faxed it.

An actual person called me to inform me that a driver's license was not a valid form of identification. Of course. Maybe a chewing gum wrapper with my name scribbled on it would work? Perhaps if my address was inscribed on dried yak hide that had been cured in the fireplace of a Tibetan monk under a vow of silence? No, I have to submit a copy of a lease, utility bill or property tax statement with my name on it to prove I live at the new address. But since my new address is my boyfriend's house, I don't have any of those things. So she tells me that it's fine, all I have to do is come in to the office, get another form, have my boyfriend fill it out and HAVE IT NOTARIZED, and return it to the office. This so I can take a freaking dance class for $50.

At this point I pretty much hung up on her, having decided that my brain was going to explode and start leaking out my ears if the conversation did not end quickly.

Anyone who's read Good Omens by Neil Gaiman would immediately recognize this as the work of Satan.

How does this school stay afloat? I've heard from teachers there that they routinely lose paychecks. One time I registered for my dance class, and got placed in Fencing. The teacher insisted that I had been in his class.

In stark contrast, the grad school I'm going to be attending has been helpful, friendly and incredibly easy to deal with. Maybe they offer a belly dance class. Or maybe I will.

*Update* - it seems there was an additional step I missed.
from ACC:

Heather, I believe you spoke to a staff member at our Northridge campus. Because you have an address hold on your record, we need to have documentation as to your current address. I'm sure it was explained to you that if you do not have a bill in your name at your current address, you could provide an Affidavit of Residential address which includes the form filled out and notarized by the owner of the property plus the property tax statement provided by the owner. The original form and property tax statement needs to be turned into any campus Admissions. We do not take faxes.

Admissions

ACC

Austin Food Bytes - Ladies who Lunch

Austin Food Bytes
Ladies who Lunch
By Michelann Oster

Last week the boys got their say, this week it’s all about the ladies. Lunching or brunching with a girlfriend or girlfriends has been an important ritual for me since college. When I was in school in San Francisco, there were a number of genteel little cafes and restaurants, perfect for a leisurely lunch, extended brunch or afternoon tea. I’ve searched long and hard to find similar places here in Austin.

A Ladies’ Lunch spot has to meet several criteria:

• The food must be excellent
• The atmosphere must be pleasant and not rushed
• It must be the kind of place that would make your husband or boyfriend feel significantly out of his element

34th Street Café
This unassuming little restaurant hides some of the better food in town. Beautiful salads, gourmet sandwiches and lovely pastries abound. The décor is eclectic, but bright, fresh and clean. It gets a little crowded at lunch, so go early or late if you don’t want to feel too packed in.

Hyde Park Grill
If you’re more in the mood for some comfort food, then Hyde Park Grill is the place. The décor is comfortable, lighting is sedated. Many of the tables are tucked away in various corners, making it easy to sit back, relax, and enjoy a long conversation over a great meal and maybe a glass of wine. My favorite dishes include the french fries with cheddar cheese sauce (they’re famous for these), the Asian Chicken Salad, and for dessert, Won Kim’s Peach Pudding. A steamed sweet cake with peaches, soaked in cream, this dessert is worth every single calorie.

Cafe Bistro at Nordstrom
This week I’m breaking one of my cardinal restaurant review rules. I’m including a national chain - but only because it’s so damn good. The café at Nordstrom is on the second floor. You often have to stand in line for a short time, then you order at the counter and are seated and waited on hand and foot. The décor is pleasant but bland, and sometimes the music is a bit too soft jazz for me, but otherwise it’s a great choice. The service is good, the food is invariably wonderful. I especially like the pizzas and the white chocolate bread pudding. They have an excellent selection of salads as well. The two most bonding activities women can share are eating and shopping, and you can do both at the Cafe Bistro.

34th Street Café
1005 West 34th Street
512.371.3400
Lunch Hours:
M-F 11 AM
Sat 11 AM - 4 PM

Hyde Park Bar & Grill
4206 Duval St
(512) 458-3168
Daily 11am-12am

Nordstrom Café Bistro
(512) 691-3500
2901 Capital of Texas Hwy South
M-Sat 10:00 - 9:00 Sun 12:00 - 6:00

Further Condensing

I condensed almost all of my pictures into one album, and almost all of my opera career into one scrapbook*. I've been pretty brutal about getting rid of stuff. I have one box of keepsakes left, everything opera has been relegated to a keepsake, and decor that doesn't fit me anymore but I have some sentimental attachment to. I put all the sheet music on the bottom shelf of one of the two bookcases I can squeeze in my office. This is pretty major.

Moving in went without a hitch. Couches were moved, bedroom furniture installed. David's place looks much homier now, and it seems as if I could have crammed all my junk into one of the FOUR walk in closets, if I'd wanted to. Maybe with a little overflow into the additional two closets and fourteen hundred cabinets and drawers. Of course now I'm in nesting mode and seem to be finding myself at Target every evening perusing closet organizers and drawer lining. I'll let you know when I perfect my system.


*It was bad enough that someone could have seen me in the scrapbook aisle at Target, I despise the so called art of scrapbook. But the actual process is completely insane. You have this leatherette bound book with twenty layers of binding crap, and weird little screws and nuts and washers and extensions that you have to fit together to bind your pages in. Has anyone ever heard of the THREE RING BINDER? Totally humiliating. Plus I had extra pieces of binding and screw thingies left over, so that can't be good. I, who am totally handy with the screws and the cordless drill and even a little jigsaw, and I'm defeated by a freaking scrapbook. The rise in popularity of scrapbooking is one of the signs of the apocalypse.

Holiday Moviegoing

David and I went to see a matinee of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe yesterday. It's gotten pretty decent reviews, so I figured it would be at least entertaining. I read the books a few months back and was fairly unimpressed. They're blatant morality tales, almost completely lacking in humor, and fairly medieval in their take on race, gender and other religions. Still, sometimes simpler stories translate better to the screen as much less editing is needed.

The visuals of the movie were overdone. WETA (the production company that worked big screen magic for the Lord of the Rings trilogy) was up to it's usual tricks, but to much less effect. All the cgi animals were highly cartoonish, except that in cartoons, the movement of the animals is generally portrayed accurately. These creatures had none of the fluidity of the animals they represented - the movement was spasmodic and unnatural.

The White Witch had some interesting costumes, the main one looked like a wedding gown that had been created entirely of dryer lint and shoulder pads. She herself was good and scary, but as her dialogue sucked, so she wasn't as creepy as she should have been.

The children were not great actors, and terribly overshot. There were far to many lingering moments of looks of fear or sadness or strained delight that broke the pace of the movie, and highlighted that the kids were not the most seasoned or talented actors.

The most annoying aspect of the movie was the music. It was a constant barrage. From the minute Lucy first steps into Narnia to the end, your ears are bombarded with sappy, sweeping, or soporific, and incredibly loud music. My voice teacher in college taught me to work with the whole range of my voice. If you sing at the top of your lungs all the time, you have no where to go when you reach a climactic moment in the piece. The director obviously missed the memo on that point.

To sum up, watching this movie was like being rythmically beaten over the head with a sugar-coated baseball bat for two hours and fifteen minutes.

Austin Food Bytes - Texas Cuisine

Austin Food Bytes
Texas Cuisine

When my family comes to visit, I like to take them to at least one very down-home restaurant. You just can’t get good chicken fried steak or fried green tomatoes in California. In fact, you pretty much can’t get anything good fried in California. If you like smoothies, sushi and seafood, California is great. But when the family is in town, I try to take them out for some food they can’t get at home.

Hoover’s
I’ve only been to Hoover’s a couple times, so I’m not an expert, but everything I’ve had there has been excellent. I love fried chicken, and they do a fried chicken breast with gravy that is to die for. They have a plethora of great sides, some regular, some special. The mashed potatoes are excellent, as are the mustard greens. Hoover’s is always packed, so schedule some extra time to wait to be seated.

Threadgills
Threadgills has been around in one form or another for almost three-quarters of a century. An Austin original, it’s been a major hangout for some notable musicians over the years, whose pictures and artifacts you can see all over the walls. It’s kind of an authentic Texas version of the Hard Rock Café. With much better food. Threadgills is a great place to take out-of-towners for that “Austin” experience. My favorite dishes include the blackened catfish and the fried green tomatoes. The sides are really good too, especially the spinach casserole and the garlic cheese grits.

Top Notch
Top notch is a little burger joint on Burnet Road, just below Anderson. It’s a favorite place for my team to grab a quick but satisfying lunch when we’re in the mood for comfort food. The décor is straight out of the 60’s, and it’s always packed. You can also drive up and order food to-go outside. Top Notch grills their burgers with charcoal, so the flavor can’t be beat, but my favorite is the fried chicken. You can get a fried chicken sandwich, or a plate, which includes a fried chicken breast, salad, Texas toast and fries.

This is not California cuisine, folks. What it is, is satisfying, tasty and very authentic Texas cooking.

Top Notch Restaurant
7525 Burnet Rd., 452-2181
Monday-Saturday, 11am-8pm

THREADGILL'S OLD NO. 1
6416 N. Lamar, 451-5440
Monday-Saturday, 11am-10pm; Sunday,11am-9pm

Threadgill's World HQ
301 W. Riverside, 472-9304
Mon-Thu, 11am-10pm; Fri-Sat, 11am-10:30pm; Sun, 10am-9pm

HOOVER'S COOKING
2002 Manor Rd., 479-5006
Monday-Friday, 11am-10pm; Saturday-Sunday, 9am-10pm

packing up an era

I spent the better part of Saturday packing up my apartment. I got rid of more stuff than I packed. It's way easier to get rid of stuff when you haven't used or even looked at it in a year and a half. But it's also really strange. The strangest part was going through my sheet music and realizing that I was never, ever going to use most of it again. I kept everything I had a real emotional attachment to, anything I might get hired to sing at some point, but I got rid of pretty much everything else. My entire operatic career has been condensed into two boxes. Psychedelic.

Austin Food Bytes
NI Cooking School, Indian Food 101

While I love to eat out, I actually enjoy eating in much more. My whole family cooks, my brother and mother professionally, so I guess it’s in the genes. I have a tendency to fixate on a certain type of cuisine for a while, trying recipes and adapting them until I’m comfortable with the style. For the better part or this year I’ve been learning to cook Indian food from a really excellent cookbook called Madhur Jaffrey's Quick and Easy Indian Cooking.

Madhur Jaffrey is a celebrity in Britain and India, she’s acted in several films and hosts a cooking show on the BBC. Her cookbooks are always very well written, nicely illustrated, and quite detailed. This is often necessary when westerners are trying a foreign cuisine as ingredients can be hard to find or replicate and cooking techniques can differ. The great thing about this particular cookbook is that it’s adapted for a western kitchen, but still creates very authentic tasting results. There are no required ingredients that I couldn’t find at the grocery store. A couple of optional ingredients necessitate a trip to a local Indian market, but you could do all your shopping at HEB or Whole Foods and get almost equal results. Here is a list of the most common ingredients you’ll need to cook a tasty and authentic Indian meal:

Spices Ground cumin Cumin seed Tumeric Cardamom pods Whole cloves Cinnamon stick Ground coriander Coriander seed Garam masala (this is a pre-made spice mix) Mustard seeds Cayenne pepper Black peppercorns Asafetida (optional)

Other ingredients Half and half or heavy cream Coconut milk or light coconut milk Cilantro Garlic Onion Ginger (you can buy this pre-peeled and crushed in a jar) Basmati Rice Tomato paste Jalepenos Curry leaves (optional)

The hook for this cookbook is the speed at which these dishes can be prepared. With a little advanced planning, I can execute a three course meal in under an hour. All the seafood, chicken and vegetarian recipes have a maximum 40 min cooking time, most are under half an hour. Jaffrey recommends a pressure cooker to speed time for lamb and beef dishes. Prep is usually chopping a few items like chilies, onions or garlic and measuring out some spices. I’ve made most of the seafood recipes in the book, several of the chicken, and several vegetable and other side dishes. Here are a few of my favorites:

Stir-Fried Green Cabbage with Fennel Seeds – this is fast, easy and healthy. The caramelized onions add a mild sweetness to the dish, and the cabbage doesn’t get soft enough to lose it’s texture.

Chicken Breasts Baked with Green Chilies and Onions – I made this recipe for the first time this weekend, and it came out delicious. The curry sauce is highly flavorful, and the chicken came out tender and perfect. In general, I try and reduce the fat content in recipes where I can, so I used half and half instead of heavy cream, and reduced the oil by a tablespoon.

Turmeric Rice – This rice is really simple to make, looks beautiful and smells amazing. I make it almost every time I cook Indian food.

Stir-Fried Shrimp in an Aromatic Tomato-Cream Sauce – This recipe is delicious, and it’s worth the extra trip to get the two optional ingredients – curry leaves, and asafetida. There’s a store called Gandhi Bazaar on Parmer near NI that stocks them, and also MGM Grocery on Burnet. This dish is great with the Turmeric Rice and any vegetable you wish. The curry leaves add an intense fragrance and extra kick that the dish lacks without. The creamy sauce and the mustard seeds enhance the shrimp uniquely. I cheat, and get pre-peeled shrimp at Central Market.

As a special treat, I’ve included an Indian recipe by NI-er Tasneem Abbas, who also sells her delicious creations.

Aloo Pakoras (potato gram fritters)

2 potatos*
1 cup gram flour
2-3 tsp red chili powder (vary to taste)
1 tsp lightly crushed cumin seeds (optional)
salt to taste
water
oil for frying

Boil the potatoes till almost cooked (if they are too soft, they can break before they get in to the frying pan).
Peel and let cool before slicing in to 1/4" circles.
Mix the flour and spices with enough water to make a thick smooth paste (shouldn't drip easily from your fingers).
Coat the potato slices with the gram flour paste and fry, turning once, in medium-hot oil.
Remove on absorbent paper when golden and serve hot with tamarind chutney or ketchup.

Tip: to test the heat of the oil, drop a little pinch of the gram flour paste. It should sink a little before rising up to the surface. If it turns color within 5 seconds, your oil is too hot.

*Potatoes can be substituted with other vegetables like cauliflower, peppers or onions.

I. Am. A. Wimp.

I officially hate winter. All that wanking about the heat, all the time I spent as a child, whining about the blistering 85 degrees it occasionally hit in California, and now I'm cold all the time. 90 degrees is balmy and pleasant. But this week it's positively Baltimore-ish in Austin, and I'm not liking it one little bit. Plus I don't want to drive my new baby in anything resembling inclement weather. It's supposed to get back up into the 60s this weekend, I can hardly wait.

Food Articles

I've been writing a column for work called "Austin Food Bytes". I'm going to start posting it here. You can read all the old ones here.
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Austin Food Bytes
Give yourself a holiday present – breakfast out!

Austin is overrun with excellent places for an early breakfast or a leisurely brunch. From breakfast tacos at Tamale House to brunch at Fonda San Miguel, you can have just about anything you can think of for breakfast, and in any price range. This week I’m going to feature some lovely places to have a moderately priced, but fancier brunch – perfect when you have visiting family and don’t feel like cooking breakfast for eight.

East Side Café
I love East Side Café for dinner. This well-known restaurant features locally grown and organic ingredients, the regular menu items are always good, and the specials and freshly made soups are usually wonderful. But not everyone knows that East Side is a great place for brunch.

They have a special menu comprised of half lunch and half breakfast plates, all of which are tasty, filling and reasonably priced. My favorites are the Apple Almond Waffle ($8.95); a Belgian waffle topped with whipped cream and toasted almonds, served with sautéed apples and three pieces of crisp bacon or garlic cheese grits, and the Smoked Salmon Benedict($7.75); two poached eggs and smoked salmon on an English muffin, topped with hollandaise sauce, served with homefries and a blueberry bran muffin. The menu also features blintzes, migas, and lunch favorites like burgers and sesame-fried catfish.

1886 Café & Bakery at The Driskill
The 1886 Café is much more casual that the Driskill Grill, but features some comparably tasty food. The atmosphere is light and airy, décor is comfortable and old-fashioned. Since it’s downtown, you’re walking distance from some excellent museums, galleries and shops.

The Café serves excellent coffee and espresso, and has an innovative but hearty menu. My favorite item is the Cast Iron Skillet Texas Two Step ($10);
eggs and cheddar cheese with grits, corn biscuit and chorizo gravy. That’s right, biscuits and chorizo gravy – it’s heavenly. Forget everything I said last week about healthy eating if you go here, it’s worth it.

Fonda San Miguel
Fonda San Miguel is world renowned for it’s Interior Mexican food. It’s one of my favorite places for happy hour and dinner, but I’ve actually never had their famous brunch. So, guest writer Melissa Maldonado has provided us with her own recommendations:

Brunch at Fonda San Miguel offers old-world, interior Mexican favorites that are as rich as the chocolate in the Pollo en Mole -- grilled chicken breast with a berry-enhanced chili, chocolate, and nut sauce. The elegant, villa-like setting instantly transports you to an easier pace of life that prepares you for an amazing cultural dining experience. My favorites include a salad with slivers of nopales (cactus pads) in a tangy vinaigrette, but you'll also find the sweet corn pudding is something to dream about until your next visit. !Buen provecho! $20-$40 (very well worth it!)

This holiday season, treat your relatives to something special from Austin, and treat yourself to a morning off!

okay, we're in business

As my knowledge of the web is antiquated at best, it took me a while to get this whole "publish to my own site" thing. But I persevered, and here it is.

So here's the latest, for anyone who cares:

• I just bought a fab new car
  
• This is because I crashed my old car last Saturday.
  
• I'm moving in with David, officially, in early January.
  
• I'm starting school in late January.

I think that's enough new stuff for now. I'm also growing my hair out. Happy Holidays!

starting a blog for news and stuff

I'm starting a blog, which I'm going to attempt to feed into my home page, where I can post updates on my favorite subject, me! Or on stuff I'm thinking about, or stuff I'm doing. Won't that be fun?