Happy Easter! For the Easter weekend, my husband and I took a trip down to visit my parents in Texas. The Texas Bluebonnet and other wildflowers are in full bloom! We were able to enjoy our time splitting it between having fun, steaming ourselves at King's Sauna in Dallas and of course....good eats!
Texas has plenty of land and is liberally spread out in the form of rolling hills, wide open spaces and rivers. You'll find a fair share of young and old residents with the University of Texas planted in the middle and added year round will be a fair amount of visitors for the SXSW concerts, bikers ralleys and top notch sports teams at UT, one of the universities who's culmination of sports teams ranks one of the highest in the nation! Hook em' horns! In short, the people are down-to-earth yet eclectic crowd with a fierce dedication to their state. Slogans include:
"Keep Austin Weird"
"Everything is Bigger in Texas"
"Don't mess with Texas"
and of course, you probably know it ... Texans are also big eaters!
We hit up the big things: Tex Mex, Crawfish and of course BBQ.
Tex Mex
We went to visit my childhood friends (the paks) new Optometry office and during lunch break we went to Chuy's, the good ole Tex Mex place. The restaurant is colorful, lots of seating and good food. They always start with tortilla chips that are really thin, light and crispy and dip it into fresh homemade salsa. We ordered some queso on the side too! For the main course, Kee ordered a mixed plate of tacos and chalupas and Linda and I shared beef fajitas for two. The fajitas for two comes with a sizzling skillet of beef, tortillas and a mix of veggies, gucamole, sour cream and cheese in a stone bowl. Wrap them all up and stuff yer face!
Thank you Linda! :)
CRAWFISH
and next of course. Crawfish! My friend Johne was able to cue me in on a place to get crawfish. A lot of places run out fast or don't have them now so the inside scoop was the saving grace to our crawfish dreams. We wanted to get the 30lb bag, but we ended up getting 8lbs because we were eating some things my mom cooked that night too and 30 lbs is enough to feed an entire kingdom of kings and knights!
So first we washed these bad boys. They're really nice because they're "self washing" food. Fill up the sink with water, toss the crawfish in and watch them swim!
Swim = cleaning themselves
And of course, you have to encourage the swimming a little by taking a ladel and making big circle motions to rile them up. One has to be careful when doing this because they swim by flicking their tail like a lobster and if theyr'e upside down, they'll flick the water at you! Splashzone! After washing and riling them up, they're not too happy. They'll try to get you.
If you put them down, they'll put their body in a position that makes them look really threatening, but since everyone has some good in them, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they're just trying to be holy.
So now they're clean and repented of their sins, it's time to go into the boiling pot. In go the spices , corn, sausage, potatoes and in go the crawfish! (just the crawfish in the picture though)
10 mintues later, out comes deliciousness!
Theyr'e relatively easy to open and you can do it without a cracker. Crack peel and eat the morsels of meat until you can't eat anymore! Watch as your mountain of crawfish starts to shrink and the mountain of shells grow! The larger your pile of shells gets, the more Texan you are.
TEXAS BBQ!
and finally, what is Texas without the good ole BBQ? We headed out to Saltlick. This place was featured on Man vs Food just last week for having some of the best BBQ. So to get this place, you have to drive down a long road that's surrounded by large plots of land, trees, horses, cows and down to earth Texasness. When we got there, there was quite a wait which isn't uncommon, but neither the drive nor the wait keeps people from coming. They have live music to keep you entertained and a fresh lemonade stand to keep you quenched. The day that we went here, someone flew in by a helicopter.
The restaurant is pretty busy and as you walk in, there are picnic tables spanned over a huge dining area that can be made to be outdoors or indoors at the opening of some screens. It is hard not to be hungry on the way in because they're cooking and cutting the meat in front of you!
We went with my cousins Dohee and Dohyun and my aunt and uncle and were all hungry. There was a ltitle wait where we had to sit with our empty plates thinknig of what was coming our way. It's much more fun coming with more people because of course, the company and they pile so much more onto each plate.
We all ordered the buffet for only $15 per person. If you want more of something, you ask the waiter and the waiter will bring out a fresh plate of it for you. We had sides of potatoes, cole slaw, chilled giant jalepenos and main course of sausage, pork ribs and brisket with a side of habenero BBQ sauce! Yum! and finally .... our food came out!
and to add a Korean touch to a BYOB place...my aunt brought sangchoo and samjang! That's my pretty mom holding the sangchoo though. :)
So if you ever take a trip out to Texas, the eats are enough to make it a great trip! Even though we have all this delicious food in Texas, the best food in the whole world would still have to be mom's good home cooking.
To leave with a final thought, there was this bbq cooker sitting in the cooking hall. It wasn't on, but think of how much bbq you can cook in that bad boy! EVERYTHING'S BIGGER IN TEXAS!
Bon Appetite!
y
