Day 6 - Feast Day #1

First, the food, then some commentary:

Bacon & Egg Taco
Potato, Egg & Cheese Taco
Bean & Cheese Taco
Coke
Krispy Kreme Glazed Donut
Krispy Kreme Strawberry Iced with Creme Filling
Iced Mocha
Slice of Homeslice Pepperoni
Garlic Knot
House Salad
*2 pieces of each:
  Cherry Sour
  Hot Tamale
  Sour Cherry Strips
  Haribo Bears
  Small Pez Pack
*Back to full food:
P Terry's Cheeseburger
Fries
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie
*Wedding reception dinner:
  Beef Tenderloin Slider
  Pecan Crusted Chicken
  Mac N Cheese
  Grilled Veggies
  Chocolate Cake
  White Cake
  Bourbon
  Lone Star

That is how you do a Feast Day. Granted, I went little overboard with sweets and junk, but I'm told this is the case with your first cheat day. According to the My Plate Livestrong app I used to count calories (based on approximations) I topped 6,000 calories.

Today, it's back to the diet, but I'm moving a little slower ;) so we'll see how it goes. I will get plenty of water today, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter @LonghornLukeTX to see pictures of some of my food as it happens and also to see my temptations.

Day 5

Today was tough. I had a wedding rehearsal this afternoon, followed by a rehearsal dinner. This was all preceded by attending a volunteer event for Summer's work. Here are today's foods coupled with today's challenges:

Breakfast 1 (no problem here):
3 whites + 2 yolks
Leftover fajita beef, beans, and onions
Pico

Breakfast 2 (at the volunteer event):
Eggs, bacon, pico
These were actually the insides of two breakfast tacos. I sadly discarded the tortillas they came in :(


Lunch-ish (still at the event):
A whole bag of beef jerky (totalling 45g protein)
I know jerky has some sugar in it, but I passed on pizza, popcorn, doritos, and sno cones to get here, so BACK OFF I'M STARVING!

Dinner (rehearsal dinner):
At this juncture, I'm starving. They served barbecue:
Sausage
Brisket
Chicken
Beans
I passed on potato salad, bread, cole slaw and sauce (there was minimal sauce served on the meat plates)


I did have two gin and sodas at the after party which I don't think is TOO far off the diet. Tomorrow is FEAST DAY, as it shall henceforth be known. I plan to hit up some serious Austin institutions (Torchy's, Homeslice, P Terrys) in addition to attending a wedding. The bride herself has requested that I aid in ridding them of extra cake. Yes please! Tomorrow's blog my not hit news stands until Sunday morning. It just depends on how many times they play "SHOUT!" at the reception. Stay tuned!

EDIT:
On a more gastronomical note, as an usher at said wedding, I received a gift from the groom:

Yup. That's what you think it is. THE MODERNIST CUISINE full set. It is the ultimate collection of culinary knowledge to date. It's like owning an entire set of Encyclopedia Britannicas, but all about food. Everything from the history of food, to ingredients, to equipment, to technique, to recipes. Y'all better watch out, cause I'm about to be a bad mamma jamma!! (well, even moreso than I already am)

Day 4

No pics here, more of the same.

Breakfast 1:
2 over easy eggs
Refried black beans
Pico

Lunch 1:
1/2 chicken breast
Spring mix and arugula salad
Lemon juice

Work snack:
Coliman put together a little salad for us with bibb lettuce, avocado, shallots, and some other tasty stuff

Dinner:
*WAIT* here is where I explain to you the nightmare that is going to a Mexican food joint on this diet. We were out registering for baby stuff and decided to grab dinner out. Serrano's was right there and I figured, "Why not? I can sub-out the illegal stuff!" Oh the humanity! I ended up with chicken and beef combo fajitas - NO rice, NO torts, NO cheese, NO chips. Only meat, beans, guac, pico, and some grilled onions. Oh the humanity! <-- I know that's a repeat, but wow. I can't tell you what torture this was. Thanks to encouragement from Elliott, and a subtle reminder that in less than 36 hours, I can have anything. The tension mounts.

Late Snack:
All natural peanut butter
Celery

Tomorrow will be interesting I've got rehearsal dinner at a barbecue joint. Challenge accepted.

Day 2

Still going strong on day two.....it's an accomplishment for me so shut it!

Breakfast (repeat of yesterday):
3 whites and 2 yolks
Handful of spinach
Refried black beans
Pico
Coffee

Lunch 1 (cut short w busy lunch):
Tuna w 1t Dijon, pickle, 1/2t mayo
Broccoli slaw w vinaigrette

Lunch 2:
Salmon (leftover from last night)
Pinto beans
Brussels sprouts - about 1 cup shaved, sauteed in a touch of bacon fat and clarified butter
PS. It turns out that consuming a large amount of cruciferous vegetables right before serving food to people is not a swell idea, FYI.

Work snack:
Handful of raw almonds

Late dinner:

2 eggs over easy
Half of a chicken breast
Half of a Roma tomato
Sriracha

In addition to all of this delicious food, I consumed well over a gallon of water today. This is definitely difficult, but not impossible. I do miss grabbing cookies here and there and bread. Sweet, sweet bread. Saturday can't come quick enough. I just may embarrass myself. Stay tuned!

Day 1

So it begins.

Breakfast 1:
3 egg whites + 2 yolks
Handful of spinach
1/2 cup refried black beans
Pico
Giant glass of water
Coffee

Breakfast 2:
Lentils (cooked with andouille and chicken stock) + 2 eggs
Broccoli slaw with arugula and vinaigrette

Carrots and celery until...

Lunch:
Same lentils but no eggs
Same broccoli slaw but no arugula

Dinner:
Salmon with Dijon and dill
Pinto beans (mashed to basically refried beans)
Big ol spring mix salad w brocolli slaw, celery leaves, cilantro, tomato vinaigrette
Unsweetened decaf iced tea

Gonna try to make tomorrow more interesting, but my Breakfast 2 and Lunch are consumed at the restaurant, so they need to be quick.

4 Hour Body? We'll see.

So this blog is about to get weird. *Flashback to July 4th* We head over to Melody and Saul's for a little get-together with them and Natalie and Elliott and their respective offspring, Jonas and Olivia. As per "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" protocol, the fellas meandered out by the grill. Elliott starts talking about this book he's been reading (The 4-Hour Body) and the accompanying diet he and Natalie had just begun, the Slow-Carb Diet.

He regales the tale of the author, whose done some pretty incredible stuff, and I'm intrigued and ask him to send me a copy of the book. He does and I start reading. I smell the Kool-Aid. I sip the Kool-Aid. I'm now covered in Kool-Aid.

So for the next 30 days, I will be on this Slow-Carb Diet and will share it in it's gory detail with you, here. "What is this "Slow-Carb Diet", Luke?". Well, it's not exactly a NO carb diet, but it's pretty low. The meals are comprised largely of Greens, Beans, and Lean Proteins - it helps that it rhymes. I'll basically eat every 4 hours meals that include proteins: meat, eggs, fish; legumes: lentils or beans; and vegetables: duh. The basic 5 rules of the diet:

1) Avoid "white" carbs (all grains, pastas, sugar, etc)
2) Eat the same meals over and over again - repetition prevents stray
3) Don't drink calories - no milk, cokes, or fruit juice
4) No fruit - fruit = fructose = sugar
5) Take one day off per week and go nuts.

Yup. You read rule 5 correctly, and this was the one that really intrigued me to this program. Once a week, LITERALLY eat WHATEVER YOU WANT. This dude in the book says he'll consume as much as 5000 calories on his off day. Sometimes he'll almost make himself sick. This gross display of binging A) makes the thought of junk food sickening for the next 6 days and B) aids in fat loss. Wait....WHAT?! From the book: "Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat-loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function and conversion of T4 to T3, etc) doesn't downshift from the extended caloric restriction."

I'm gonna give it 30 days. I've never gone hardcore into any sort of diet really and this does not seem to be some cockamamie gimmick diet. It's eating well. 4 healthy meals a day. Okay, maybe it is, but I've got to try something! I've got a kiddo en route this November and I'm most certainly in the worst shape of my life. I need to be lean and mean in order to chase this rugrat around.

Hopefully I can make this foray into the healthy delicious and entertaining to read about. If not, My Sunday through Friday blogs will suck, but you're definitely gonna want to the Saturday blogs. If I've been given a license to eat ridiculously on Saturdays, I WON'T disappoint. Stay tuned!

Lucy's Fried Chicken

So the way I understand it, Lucy's Fried Chicken was opened by James Holmes on the coattails of his famous fried chicken that is served at the Olivia brunch (where he is the executive chef). It does not disappoint. I checked the place out with the wife (ol preggers) and mother-in-law (Terri) last night. We wanted some good food, but it was Friday night and we didn't want to drop serious coin, or wait forever. 7pm. Friday night. Sat right down. That's what I'm talkin' about!

After perusing the menu, and figuring that ol preggers and Terri probably wouldn't go for calf fries, chicken gizzards, chicken boudin, or the sausage basket (all of which I plan to return for), we opted for a bucket of chicken, black eyed peas, and crab-boil potato salad. We did not fail in our selections. The chicken was excellent! Moist. Crispy. Flavorful. The peas were perfectly cooked and had a some bonus pork in them. The tater salad was spicy as all get out and delicious! The basket says it "feeds 4", but we barely made a dent. As is made clear in the following photo:

Yea. We needed two to-go bags. "Well" we figured, "if we're taking home chicken, we might as well take home pie!" They have a great selection of pies that are most certainly being made by someone's grandma chained up in the back. Lime, Apple, and Shoofly. Yup. Shoofly pie is an ACTUAL thing! It's a molasses base with a butter oat streusel and a gingersnap crust. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

All-in-all, a great experience and we can't wait to have chicken for dinner, and check out Lucy's again!

Yellow Jacket Social Club

What's up bros?! If you've wandered over to my ol facebook page you may have seen this. That's right. I'm gonna be a dad! That really has nothing to do with this post, but I'm bragging about it anyway. 

On to the post! We met up with Natalie, Elliott, baby Olivia, and Beka for Nat's bday brunch at Yellow Jacket Social Club. We'd never been there so it seemed perfect, since we've been to just about every brunch spot in town. Overall, it was a great experience. You order at the bar and they bring the food out. It did take about 40 minutes to get our food, so order as soon as you get there. 

Let's get down to it:

 

PORK BELLY

This was definitely the winner of the day (surprise!). A nicely cooked slab of pork belly atop a -perhaps slightly over cooked- hashbrown cake, topped with a fried egg.

   

SHRIMP N GRITS 

This came in a very close second. It was the leader in the clubhouse until the belly came out. Buttery grits, bacon, sauteed onions, and well-cooked shrimp.

 

CONCHINITA PIBIL

The off the menu special was a welcome surprise! Unfortunately, you can't really see the star here - the pork. Traditionally the pork is marinated in citrus and slow cooked in a banana leaf. I can't say that this was necessarily the way this pork was prepared, but it was super tender and delicious. Accompanied by frijoles, a real nice verde salsa - that had some kick, a fried egg and cotija. Tasty!

"THE MISTER"

A smoked ham and gruyere panini. Topped with a fried egg. Topped with béchamel. Forget about it. Ridic.

 

FRITTATA 

This was pretty much the only choice for the pregger (my wife, Summer). It was good, not great. It had organic Brussels sprouts and roasted tomatoes. Cooking them in, what I can only assume was, muffin tins was a nice touch though.

Overall, we definitely enjoyed our experience at the Yellow Jacket Social Club. The food was great. There's TONS of out-door seating. And they have a great beer selection. Other than the wait - it should be mentioned that it looked like a super tiny kitchen with like 2 or 3 cooks - it was an excellent time.

Poussin Control

Once again, I make a valiant return after a lengthy departure from regaling y'all of culinary wonderment. What's my excuse this time? Nothing. I have started a new job since last we adventured into the world of tasty foods! I am the Chef de Partie (lead lunch line cook) at Swift's Attic downtown on Congress between 3rd & 4th St. It's a Modern American Small Plates concept. Modern American in that we are constrained to no one central culinary genre and small plates meaning everything is shareable, not family style, more like tapas. It is great!

Our executive chef Mat Clouser - @SwiftsBlade on twitter - has come up with some really ridiculous food. Oxtail, ham hocks, squid AND octopus, pork cheeks, I could go on, but you'll just need to come check the place out. We are open for lunch 11-2 M-F; dinner 5-10 M-W and the kitchen rocks to midnight Th-Sa. We are closed on Sundays.

Now that we're all caught up, the wife and I had some friends in last night for dinner. I finally have weekends off so I took this as an opportunity to hit up the downtown Austin farmer's market to get as much of the mise as I could. They did not disappoint. 

The beginning:

 

We started the night with some tasty appeteasers. I made a pork rillette (basically braise pork until spoon-tender, then mix in the KitchenAid with a paddle attachment until it shreds, adding the reserved braising liquid until it's a spread) with which I served an apple bourbon mustard, cornichons, and crostini. Killer. 

For a lighter fare, I served farmer's market fresh strawberries - sidebar: we picked up a pack of these when we walked by the booth and Summer said, "We have to get those strawberries, I can smell them from here". There were that fragrant - with basil from our "killer basil plant", reduced balsamic vinegar, and house made ricotta. Yes. I made ricotta cheese. Yes. It was delicious. RECIPE:

2 cups milk (whole preferred)

1 cup heavy cream

.5 t salt

1.5 T white wine vinegar

Bring milk, cream, and salt to a boil over medium heat. Remove from heat. Add vinegar. Sit 1 minute until curdling begins. Pour into double cheesecloth that has been dampened with warm water and is sitting in a strainer over a large bowl. Allow to sit at room temp for 20ish minutes. Longer for thicker, shorter for thinner. So good. So easy.

Next, we had a very simple salad of herbed spring mix, orange supremes and a bacon sherry vinaigrette. I phoned in the salad, cause this was dinner:

 

Here's where the farmer's market really shined. Let's start with the brussels and work our way around. Baby brussels sprouts that were blanched and shocked earlier, got tossed in a hot pan with bacon fat, olive oil, salt, and red pearl onions. The fresh sprouts had a peppery quality to them that was both surprising and yummy.

Next is what I called "Spring-stuffed Squash Blossoms". I made a filling of brunoise (very small diced) carrot, celery, garlic scape and artichoke hearts with lemon zest and parmesan. That got carefully piped into amazing little squash blossoms (that were surprisingly being sold for $1/5 - they go for like $48/case from a produce purveyor). I just popped em in a super hot oven for like 10 minutes and they were ridic.

The star of the show. Poussin. These were picked up from a guy named Sebastian, whom runs Countryside Family Farm in Bastrop, TX. They are quite young, thus incredibly tender and juicy. I stuffed them with a half lemon, garlic scapes, celery, onion, carrot, thyme, and parsley stems. After rubbing the skin with olive oil and S&P, I placed them in a 450º oven on top of more garlic scapes, for about 20-30 minutes. They rested for another 15-20 minutes after coming out of the oven and were spectacular! I deglazed the pan with white wine, added stock, mounted with butter, and seasoned appropriately to create a nice little pan sauce to have with the chicken.

All-in-all, the meal was really great, but the best part was hanging out with some really great friends and having an awesome time. My blogging may remain somewhat infrequent in the coming months, but I promise to try to get on it whenever possible - as long as y'all promise to come eat at Swift's as soon as you can!

The BIG Easy

Hold on to your butts, this is gonna be a big one. Me and some fellas took our annual trip to New Orleans this past weekend so I hit up a couple friends for some cuisine recommendations - special thanks to Will Semons and Kristi Willis for the suggestions! In additions Harrah's (to lose money) and Bourbon St (for other stuff), we hit up some great restaurants for some killer grub. And this is that tale.

Both lists included this place:













And both lists recommended this dish:













And this is what that dish looks like:













I wish I had a picture to describe HOW DELICIOUS THESE WERE!! Wow. They actually grill these oysters over an open flame, then brush them with a garlic and herb butter, and dust them with Parmesan and Romano cheeses. They're served with French bread to sop up all that glorious butter. With a nice Abita Turbodog to wash em down, these were a great way to start of the trip.

After donating some cash to the Harrah's Kid's College Fund, it was time for some more grub:













Yes, of the Archie-Eli-Peyton Mannings. None of us were starving, plus we wanted to get a nice sampling of the menu. So we just hit up some apps. SWEET POTATO SKINS with goat cheese, bacon marmalade and green onions - good, but way to sweet. GRIS GRIS DUCK WINGS flash fried with pepper jelly - easily the best thing we had. COCHON DE LAIT "POUTINE" hand-cut fries, pulled pork, pepper jelly gravy and cheese curds - even though the duck wings were best, this was my favorite. CAJUN SLIDERS alligator sausage, caramelized peppers, onions, and Crystal hot sauce aïoli. Overall, the grub was good, but nothing was mind-blowing.













Now let me tell you what WAS mind-blowing, the complimentary continental breakfast at our hotel, The Queen & Crescent.













That's it. No comment.

The one place that we all knew we were going to, was Butcher. We hit this place up last year, and it was so good, we HAD to go back.













Of course, I won the war of the order. I got the Pork Belly with cumber and mint on white bread. Simply delicious.













In another concerned effort to experience as much as of the menu as possible, we tried to make sure everyone ordered something different. So we also got to experience the BBQ Pork "Carolina Style" with slaw - honestly, the pork was a little dry and not very smoky, but the potato salad that it came with was real nice. We also had the Cold Roast Beef with horseradish and arugula - this was real tasty with the added bonus of a sinus-clearing punch.













A quick pause in food and debauchery landed us at the aquarium. Check out this little guy:













Yup, that's an otter swimming on his back. Nothing cuter. Seriously. We also saw sharks, rays, snakes, frogs, turtles, jellyfish, and some fish.

After the aquarium, it was nap time. Then we said, "let's get some doggone Cajun food Ayeeeee!!!!!" Okay, there was no actual "Ayeeeee", but you know what I mean. So we hit Coop's Place. This was one of those hole-in-the-wall, line-out-the-door kinda joints.













Again, trying to get a well rounded experience of the menu, we all got the same thing. Huh? Hand on, you'll get it. We started with the Bayou Appetizer - fried crawfish, shrimp, crabfingers, and oysters. This was a nice alternative to getting a fried entree. We also all tried the Abita Restoration Pale Ale - not bad, the hops worked real nice with the spice of the rest of the meal.













We all ordered the Coop's Taste Plate for dinner. It came with a cup of gumbo - a filé-thickened gumbo had an overwhelming vegetale flavor for me. It also had

A piece of Fried Chicken: good ole fried chicken, no complaints!
Shrimp Creole: clearly Creole sauce poured over boiled shrimp, a little disappointing there, but good flavor.
Red Beans and Rice: a little salt really set this off. The pieces of pork in here were a welcome surprise.
Rabbit and Sausage Jambalaya: real tasty.













All in all, nothing here blew our minds, but it was a great sampler of Cajun cuisine.

Again, another fantastic trip to Nawlins. As far as fun and cuisine were concerned, I graded this trip an A+. As far as gambling, a D- and not an F because I didn't go to the ATM for more cash to lose. We sure did laissez les bon temps rouler.