We Have A Chef in the Family!

  My sister in law Lauren graduated form Cooking School a few months ago. Okay, like 6 months ago. Yes, I know. I'm always behind in blogging. Anyways, part of her last semester was holding a restaurant, which meant that she was Executive Chef of the kitchen that day. She worked hard for weeks researching & planning her menu. We were thrilled to be invited & went up to Waco for lunch at her restaurant.

We were, of course, super exited to find out that she choose a Chinese inspired menu. On the menu was ginger soup, pear salad, Sichuan style cold mixed noodles, southern Chinese pepper steak, wanton Napoleon & dim sum, among other things.   We joined Lauren's family & Jacob, my brother, for lunch. Our servers were other culinary students in their 1st year of cooking school. Green Onion Cakes: Unleavened fried scallion bread served with a chili-garlic dipping sauce.   Our appetizer consisted of fried Chinese style bread with a yummy dipping sauce.    While waiting for our food we had to snap some selfies. :) Ginger Soup: Classic chicken consomme with a brunoise of ginger & onions along with lozenge carrots.    Our first course was some delicious soup with a subtle ginger flavor. It was very Chinese in that it had subtle flavors & let the chicken stock do the talking.  Pear Salad: A chilled mix of half-moon cucumbers, medium-diced carrots and a chiffonade of cabbage, tossed in a sesame oil pear dressing. Garnished with toasted black sesame seeds & a scallion blossom.   Second course was a crisp & fresh pear salad with cucumbers, celery, green onion & carrots. Topped with white & black sesame seeds. It was another very Chinese dish with the Asian pears & fresh veggies. 
For the main course, we ordered all three choices because your sister in law only graduates culinary school once & we wanted to try all of her creations!   Southern Chinese Pepper Steak: A spicy pepper steak made with USDA Choice Tenderloin presented over Szechuan green beans, a bed of white rice & braised mushrooms.    First up was delicious a rendition of Chinese pepper steak. It was served with white rice & an ammmazing spicy green beans & mushroom mixture on the side. That side was by far my favorite of the whole menu. I'm a sucker for spicy Chinese green beans & mushrooms. It's always my favorite. Fu Xi's Plate: Traditional steamed pork buns, chicken & chive phoenix eye & Shanghai shrimp served with a spicy sake sauce and rainbow kale slaw.  
Next, up we got Fu Xi's plate, which consisted of various dim soup & a kale side salad. It was pretty tasty. We're suckers for dumplings any time.   Sichuan style cold mixed noodles: Star anise poached chicken breast & julienned red bell peppers fanned over glass noodles with fresh mung bean sprouts, small diced onions & snow peas, tossed with peanut dressing & garnished with bias green onion.     Last, on the main course front, we got the Sichuan style cold noodles & chicken. I really enjoyed this dish. I loved, loved the peanut oil the noodles were tossed in. I also really enjoyed the bean sprout salad side.    WantonNapoleon: Deep fried wantons coated with powdered sugar, layered with vanilla bean pastry cream & fresh berries over a raspberry coulis.  
For dessert, Lauren served a delicate wanton Napoleon. It was light & yummy.    We had a great time & were so happy to be able to be there to support Lauren!  We're so proud of you sister!! 

Visiting with David

 Since coming home we've had the opportunity to catch up with so many people! It's been amazing to hear about our friends and families lives the past 4 1/2 years. 4 1/2 years is way to long! Thankfully we have some amazing friends and family & we're able to skip all the awkwardness of being away so long, and get straight to catching up, right where we left off! It's funny how many of our conversations have started with, "Okay, so 5 years ago you were here (insert place), so where'd you go next?" Then the past 5 years' stories begin! We got to meet with David during one of our first weeks back in Austin. David was Zachary's best friend growing up and his Best Man in our wedding.
 We met at a local favorite, now not so local as this dellllicious burger joint is popping up all over Texas, Hopdoddy. I got a refreshing kale salad and Z got a mushroom-swiss burger.
Look at all those delicious burger choices. Nom nom nommm.
After lunch, we went and picked up David's girl-dog and made our way to Zilker park.
We spent hours in the sun, under the trees just talking, catching up on life. We have such a great time with David! After, hours in the sun, we were parched, so we headed to Radio City Coffee for some ammmmmmazing iced coffee.
Do you see the foam on top of that coffee? Love their cold brew! You don't need to add anything to it.
Austin! After dropping David and his pup-pup off, we grabbed a gyro (from the little gyro food truck in front of Spiderhouse, for the Austin peeps.) Those gyros, which as I found out that day, pronounced gee-row, not jie (long i) -row. Did you know this Readers? I think it's pretty much common knowledge. But knowledge that I never learned.
We had a great day outside, enjoying the Texas weather, Austin food & friends! Love you David!