Austin Bakes for West!

Tags

Austin Bakes, bake sale, fundraiser, Texas, West, WestTX

You like baked goods and good causes, right? Well, if you live in (and/or will be in) the Austin area tomorrow, then let’s make plans for you!

Austin Bakes has organized a city-wide bake sale at eight locations around Austin on Saturday from 10am-2pm. The goal is to raise $15,000 for the town of West, and I think the supportive, food-loving community that is Austin can do it!

Here is the official flyer with location info:

Like Austin Bakes for West on Facebook and follow @AustinBakes on Twitter for updates and to easily spread the word!

If you can’t make it to any of the locations but would like to help, you can make a donation online.

Special shout-out to Austin Bakes’ Co-Founder and AFBA President, Kathryn Hutchison (aka The Austin Gastronomist) for organizing this awesome effort, and of course to the hundreds of participating volunteers and bakers.

There are bound to be kolaches among all of the delicious goodies… :)

2013 Austin City Guide: East Side Restaurants

Tags

atxcityguide, Austin, East Austin, restaurants, reviews

While I don’t usually write review posts, this is my contribution to the 2013 AFBA City Guide. If you are heading to Austin this year or live here and want to find some new places to eat, please check it out!

A year and a half ago, I moved from San Antonio to the east side of Austin. I didn’t know much about this part of town, but it was a successful Craigslist match that led me here. Since then, I’ve grown to love the area. While the USDA labels parts of it as a food desert, there sure are a lot of good restaurants over here, minus the parking meters you find on the other side of the highway.

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The (brick and mortar) restaurants in this guide are east of I-35, between Cesar Chavez and 51st Street. Most are located on 6th, 7th, 11th, and Manor, west of Airport.

Wordless Wednesday: Lunch at Sway

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Austin, Sway, Thai

Yesterday I had lunch at the new fancy Thai place in Austin with Julie and Mary Helen. There were large, communal tables.

pok pok som – tamarind drinking vinegar with sparkling water

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Gevulde Speculaas!

Tags

almond paste, almonds, baking, Dutch, pastry, speculaas, spices

Francijn of Koken in de Brouwerij was our January 2013 Daring Bakers’ Hostess and she challenged us to make the traditional Dutch pastry, Gevulde Speculaas from scratch! That includes making our own spice mix, almond paste and dough! Delicious!

Some people go on yo-yo diets while I seem to partake in yo-yo blogging.

It feels like a lot has happened in the past six weeks, but maybe not. Highlights include playing in a band, fracturing/healing a rib, acquiring a boyfriend, turning 31, and the realization that I have an obsession with donuts. D O N U T S .

In the meantime, I’ve been a bad blog mother, partially due to writer’s block, but mostly because of bad planning/time management/laziness.

It’s also been awhile since I last completed a Daring Bakers’ challenge, so the January challenge seemed like a good task for ending this slump. Let’s pretend that this wasn’t supposed to have been posted 8 days ago, shall we?

Wordless Wednesday: Motivational Sprinkles

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gold stars, sprinkles

NaBloPoMo Musings

Tags

blogging, NaBloPoMo

Oh, hi. Remember me? Sorry I spammed your inbox/RSS/etc. for a month. Maybe we all needed a break after that.

Honestly, I kind of miss NaBloPoMo and the forced purpose it gave me as a blogger. I feel like I had been in a blogging funk for the past year, and needed something to shake me out of it. If you find yourself in a similar place, may I recommend doing your own NaBloPoMo? It’s oddly refreshing and exhausting all at once. You learn a lot from it, too.

One of my first realizations was that blogging daily would force me to get out more. One might assume that the opposite would be true, but there are a lot more things going on outside of my house than in it! Sometimes I’ll be on the fence about doing something/going somewhere, but in November, there was no question: “I can blog about it!” The first example: the JBG farm tour. I found out about it the day before and thought it would be fun, but then almost didn’t go. Thinking of it as a freebie blog post led to a last minute mind change, and I’m glad I went!

Hey, Austin, hey.

Wordless Wednesday: Don’t Blink

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Doctor Who, don't blink, San Antonio Museum of Art, statues, weeping angels

Taken at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Smitten Signing

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Austin, Bookpeople, cookbook, Deb Perelman, signing, Smitten Kitchen

Deb Perelman (aka the blogger behind Smitten Kitchen) came to BookPeople today in Austin! She did a Q&A and then a signing for her new cookbook. So many books…

The event was scheduled for 7:00pm, but I got there around 5:45pm because Julie had heard that it would probably be packed. She actually got there right before me and snagged a front row center seat! Stalker? Of course I sat next to her.

The room began to fill up, and fill up, and fill up some more. I mean, I knew her blog was super popular, but dang! The number of people present seemed like it probably violated some sort of fire code. It was also interesting to see how her audience compared to Joy’s: definitely a much larger age range and a lot more guys.

Movember: Chocolate ‘Stache Cookies!

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baking, cancer, chocolate, cookies, cut-out cookies, moustache, Movember, mustache, NaBloPoMo, soft cookies, stache

I still remember that day.

Five years ago, a friend and I were driving back to D.C. from an audition in Raleigh. Neither of us had advanced. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was shining brightly when I got a call from my mom.

“Honey, I have some bad news.”

Something inside me knew exactly what she was going to say.

“Your dad has cancer. We found out a few days ago, but I didn’t want to upset you before your audition.”

Wordless Wednesday: Warm Hearts

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Austin, cappuccino, cortado, espresso, hearts, latte art, Local Coffee, NaBloPoMo, Once Over Coffee, San Antonio