Lunch: Tina cooked lu rou (pork braised in soy sauce and spices - in this case pork ribs) and sauteed some spinach for lunch.

Dinner: We had a craving for Indian food, so we decided to try Whip In (1950 S I H 35, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 442-5337) which features a kind of Indian + Western + natural foods menu. It's really more of a natural foods convenience store / beer and wine shop with the restaurant tacked on. The restaurant features live music on weekends in a very intimate setting.

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What I Ate: September 18, 2009 (Whip In)

Lunch: More errands in the morning, so we stopping in at a Serrano's on our way back. I ordered the Tacos Grandes with Spanish rice and charro beans. The tacos were quite large, crispy, and stuffed full of ground beef and fresh vegetables (crisply shredded lettuce and chopped tomatoes). The beef wasn't as flavorful as I would like taco meat to be, but it was fine. The charro beans were decent and the Spanish rice was pretty good as well.

Dinner: After a couple hours of yard work, Tina pan fried the leftover dumplings we had from dinner at her parent's place.

Dinner: For our last Austin Restaurant Week dinner for this week (we haven't planned next week's dinners yet), I selected Hudson's on the Bend (3509 Ranch Road 620 N, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 266-1369‎) which might be Austin's most expensive restaurant. The meal was not as good as we had hoped it to be.

After ordering, our bread arrived in a small cast iron skillet set on a folded cloth towel on a tilted stone slab. It came with two butters - a tomato infused butter and a chive and herb infused butter. The bread was sweet and herbaceous. A combination that did not agree with me or Tina. We're normally bread eaters, but today we had one piece and pushed the bread away. The sweetness of the bread was unappetizing and the flavor of the bread completely overpowered the butters (which, when I tasted by themselves, were quite delicious).

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What I Ate: September 16, 2009 (HEB, Hudson's on the Bend)

Lunch: Tina cooked a soup with udon, poached egg, fresh spinach, mushrooms, and Chinese sausage.

Dinner: Tina and I went over to her parent's place where we had homemade dumplings for dinner.

Dinner: Tina and I headed over to The Driskill Grill (604 Brazos St, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 391-7162) for their Austin Restaurant Week dinner. The dinner was fantastic and at a price of $35 per person, this was a great way to get a sample of what The Driskill Grill does well. Tina and I shared a demi bottle of Vietti Cascinetta Moscato d'Asti 2008 with our meal. Amuse bouches arrived (three of them!): Seared rabbit loin with strawberry-blackberry relish, lemon-basil sorbet, and caramelized onion puff pastry.

Seared rabbit loin with strawberry-blackberry relish - Remarkably tender, but a little disconcertingly so. The rabbit loin almost tasted like ham in both texture and taste. I wonder if it was brined a bit too long resulting in the texture change. Still, it was very good paired with the bright flavors of the strawberry relish.

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What I Ate: September 14, 2009 (Driskill Grill)

Dinner: Our first Austin Restaurant Week dinner was at Jeffrey's Restaurant and Bar (1204 West Lynn Street, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 477-5584‎).

After we ordered our three course meals of a special (reduced) tasting menu, they presented us with an amuse bouche of Champagne & Grapefruit Sorbet. Since it wasn't all that warm today, this mostly just served to make us cold. It was so cold that Tina didn't eat hers until it was half melted. The sorbet was fairly winey, but had good grapefruit flavor.

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What I Ate: September 13, 2009 (Jeffrey's Restaurant and Bar)

Lunch: Tina and I headed up to Manna Korean Restaurant (6808 N Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 323-0635) in the back of the Han Yang Market. Tina ordered bibimbap (rice bowl with various vegetables, pork, and a fried egg).

I had kimchi jjigae (kimchi soup with tofu and rice flour cakes) which was very flavorful, but turned out to be a bit too sour for me. Also, it didn't have any pork in it (as I had expected from the menu posted on the wall). This wasn't completely surprising as the other jjigae they had on the menu had the meat crossed out.

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What I Ate: September 12, 2009 (Manna Korean Restaurant, Domino's Pizza)

Lunch: Tina cooked up some farfalle pasta with the last of my jarred meat sauce. She also cooked collard greens and toasted sliced French bread with olive oil, shaved parmigiano reggiano, and salt.

Dinner: We had tickets to Ballroom With A Twist, so we headed into town and tried to figure out where we could eat relatively quickly. I stopped in at Shogun Sushi (1807 Slaughter Ln W # 225, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 292-1580‎) and let them know we were in a rush to a show and had to leave before 7:30pm. It was 6:55pm and I wasn't so sure they could accommodate, but our server said it wouldn't be a problem. The next time she came back we placed our order: gyoza, crab shumai, sake nigiri, maguro nigiri, hamachi nigiri, unagi nigiri, and an alligator roll (eel with salmon).

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What I Ate: September 11, 2009 (Shogun Sushi)

Lunch: I overcooked (which is what happens when you work and cook at the same time) a piece of sockeye salmon in the oven and served it over troffiette pasta tossed in olive oil, garlic, and ground black pepper. I added a side of snow peas to the dish. The salmon was much better after we broke it up and mixed it with the pasta.

Dinner: Tina and I headed over to our friends' (Erin and Nat's) house for dinner with a group of friends. Kent provided mixed drinks, Nat provided wine, and Erin supplied a large quantity of take out from El Pollo Rico. El Pollo Rico is an Austin-based chain that provides carry-out charbroiled chicken. The chicken was excellent as were the beans and rice. The sausage was also great. This is good fast food / carry out. Real good.

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What I Ate: September 10, 2009 (El Pollo Rico)

Lunch: Sometimes I have breakfast, sometimes I have lunch. Once in a while I have brunch - which involves eating some breakfast and some lunch. Today I made myself something that is both breakfast and lunch in one. I dug around the refrigerator for something I could eat for lunch and ended up making myself an omelet filled with fish sticks and some sharp cheddar cheese (aged 3-years). I cooked the fish sticks first in the convection oven so they'd be crispy in the omelet.

Dinner: Tina and I went to Manna From Heaven in downtown Kyle for dinner. I had three crispy beef tacos and a taco salad. The beef tacos were interesting in that the beef was a ground beef patty cooked and placed at the bottom of the taco shell. It was tasty, but our meal wasn't as good as our previous ones had been. The limeade was excellent as usual.

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What I Ate: September 9, 2009 (Manna From Heaven)