Lunch: Ever since I tasted the smoked pork belly I made a few days ago, I thought it would go great in ramen. The best we had on hand was our Nong Shim Seafood Ramyun which we cooked with Napa cabbage and laid several thin slices of the pork belly on top after it was ready. It tasted great, but it would have been better if the rub had less sugar and it had been roasted and not smoked.

Dinner: A couple days ago we talked about how we thought Domino's Pizza's crust was fine and we didn't know if the change would make it better or not, so we started talking about trying it on Friday night (because we needed a fast dinner since we had our neighbors coming over to visit and we wouldn't have time to make dinner beforehand for ourselves). I mentioned that since Domino's started advertising their new crust, Pizza Hut stepped up an ad campaign promoting any pizza for just $10. I said, they were doing that just to entice people to buy Pizza Hut during this time when Domino's is trying to draw people to their restaurants to taste their new pizza. $10 is a good deal, especially since you can pick all the toppings you want. Somehow, in the end, we decided to take advantage of the $10 for any size, any toppings pizza deal at Pizza Hut and ordered a Super Supreme without olives (Tina doesn't like them). When it arrived, it was the WORST pizza we had ever had. It was undercooked so the crust was bland and mushy and the toppings tasted raw with the cheese barely melted. It tasted worse than your typical frozen pizza.

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What I Ate: January 22, 2010 (Pizza Hut)

Lunch: Tina made a yellow curry and served it over rice.

Dinner: We ate dinner at The Olive Garden after running more errands. I forgot they provide salad and bread with dinner, so it was a pleasant surprise when it came.

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What I Ate: January 21, 2010 (The Olive Garden)

Dinner: I lightly smoked a slab of pork belly for 45 minutes with pecan wood, then slow roasted it in the smoker for another three hours.

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What I Ate: January 20, 2010 (Smoked Pork Belly)

Lunch: I had the Brussels sprouts with a couple of microwaved tamales.

Dinner: While running errands in Far South Austin, we stopped at a Texas Roadhouse for dinner. The lighting was horrible. I ordered their Sirloin Beef Tips (Tender pieces of sirloin with sauteed mushrooms and onions in a made-from-scratch brown gravy, served with seasoned rice and a house salad) which was fairly tender but could have been a tad saltier.

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What I Ate: January 19, 2010 (Texas Roadhouse)

Lunch: We made a simple lunch of fried eggs, beef snack sticks from U.S. Wellness Meats (made from grassfed beef, sea salt, black pepper, red pepper, garlic, and coriander - no gluten so it's great for those needing a gluten-free diet and no nitrates, high fructose corn syrup, or weird binders), and a baba ghanoush I made of roasted eggplant, garlic, cilantro, and olive oil spread on slices of toasted baguette.

Dinner: Tina prepared a Thai green curry and served it over rice.

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What I Ate: January 18, 2010

Dinner: I cooked up a few pounds of Brussels sprouts to go with the leftovers were ate for dinner.

We ate the Trout Almondine and fish and chips leftovers.

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What I Ate: January 17, 2010 (Red Robin)

Dinner: Our friends Braden and Kelly came over, so we headed over to South Congress Cafe (1600 S Congress Ave, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 447-3905‎) for dinner. To start, Braden ordered a Pan-Seared Tuna Salad (marinated ahi seared rare served on a bed of field greens, pear tomatoes and garden fresh veggies. finished with jicama, tortilla confetti, sesame seeds, and spicy avocado vinaigrette, $14) which looked and tasted great. They also ordered the Gumbo with Duck & Oysters which Tina and I had on a previous visit.

We ordered the Calamari (semolina breaded sliced calamari steaks served with an orange ginger red chile sauce, $12) as our appetizer because we found out that Braden had never had soft and tender calamari before. Squid is chewy when raw and chewy when fully cooked - but when cooked just right it's very tender and soft - almost like warm mozzarella cheese but less sticky.

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What I Ate: January 16, 2010 (South Congress Cafe)

Lunch: We went to Musashino (3407 Greystone Drive, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 795-8593‎) for lunch to try their ramen (which is only available on weekdays at lunchtime). We ordered the Musashino Ramen (old fashioned ramen noodle soup, $9.50) which was pretty much just a shoyu ramen with smoked beef brisket instead of a slice of roasted pork loin. The noodles were okay, but didn't have the chewiness of really good freshly made ramen noodles. I've never been a huge fan of the shoyu soup base - it's just a light broth with soy sauce and this was no exception. Also, the smokiness of the beef brisket plus the grilled bean sprouts added a too much smokiness to the soup (which I like best when the flavors are clean and balanced). A Texan twist on ramen isn't what I'm looking for when the menu says "old fashioned ramen noodle soup" as the description.

We also ordered the Hakata Ramen (Egg noodle soup with pork stock, $9.50). The menu didn't say this, but our waitress explained to us and we discovered when we tasted the soup - there soup is made with milk. Hakata ramen (as far as I was aware) is a regional-style of tonkotsu (pork bone) ramen that is known for its richness and milky white broth (which is achieved by simmering bones and fat for many hours to extract gelatin and flavor into the soup). To use milk to get that coloration seems to be weird (and to my taste buds, off putting). Tina didn't mind it as much (which is strange since she usually doesn't like the taste of cooked milk), so she ate most of the Hakata ramen. Oh, it also had a slice of smoked beef brisket.

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What I Ate: January 15, 2010 (Musashino Sushi Dokoro)

Lunch: Nong Shim Seafood Ramyun with fresh Napa Cabbage and a Coyote Creek Pastured Egg poached in the spicy soup.

Dinner: I fired up the Big Green Egg and grilled chicken thighs that I marinated in Greek yogurt seasoned with tandoori spices. I also grilled oyster mushrooms and shiitake mushrooms, and vegetable skewers. I served it all with Persian saffron rice.

Lunch: I ate the leftovers from The Salt Lick.

Dinner: While running errands after work, we stopped at Chuy's for a Tex-Mex dinner. I ordered the Enchilada, Taco & Chalupa Combination Plate (cheese enchilada, crispy beef taco, and chicken chapula). The Tex-Mex at Chuy's is quite a bit better than the food at the Serrano's at 290 and Mo-Pac (although the Serrano's in South Park Meadows has always been quite tasty).