Lunch: I went to the Natural Epicurean Culinary School's open house event in the late morning and tasted a few of their creations and learned a little more about the school. It's a culinary school for what I would call "alternative culinary arts" which includes raw and living foods, macrobiotics, allergen specific diets (gluten free or sugar free), and the mixing of spirituality and food preparation. In short, not a topic that interests me, but a lot of people are into this type of cooking, so check out Natural Epicurean if you're in Austin and are interested in any of those topics.

Quinoa Salad with Cranberries & Toasted Pecans

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What I Ate: June 26, 2010 (Natural Epicurean, Alamo Drafthouse)

Lunch: Tina made me a sandwich of sauteed zucchini with Aidell's meatballs on a demi-baguette.

Dinner: I had some slices of Domino's Crunchy Thin Deluxe Feast pizza, which turned out to be thin but not at all crunchy (or crispy). The texture was a little like eating a pizza with a bunch of edible papers for a crust.

Lunch: We tried a new (to us) instant noodle from Nong Shim labeled HooRooRook with the subtitle of "Who Looks? Who Looks? So Good, Slurping is Allowed! Premium Korean Noodle Soup". Unfortunately, Tina forgot one of the sauce packets, so we're not sure what the final taste would have been, but we liked the texture of the thin wheat and potato noodles as well as the mild soup. Tina cooked some finely sliced zucchini to go along with the noodle soup.

Dinner: We headed over to Gibson Bar for a tasting of Cousin Leroy's sauces and to celebrate the launch of his product line. At the last time I was at Gibson and The Trailer to taste their food, I had Cousin Leroy's Mustard Mop and thought it was an outstanding spicy and mustardy sauce. Tonight was no exception - it's still a great sauce and probably the best of the entire bunch he has to offer. His other sauces are quite good, including three well balanced tomato sauces - pasta sauce, garlic marinara sauce, and lasagna sauce - which we tasted with meatballs. (The garlic marinara was my favorite.) His barbecue sauces are nice and smokey and Tina appreciated that they weren't very sweet as many BBQ sauces are.

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What I Ate: June 24, 2010 (Cousin Leroy's Sauces)

Dinner: We went to a food blogger event at Maria Maria (415 Colorado Street, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 687-6800‎) and tasted several of their tasty dishes.

Beef and Chicken Nachos. I really liked the combination of pickled onions, marinated jalapenos, zesty salsa, and crunchy tortilla chip in their version of nachos.

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What I Ate: June 23, 2010 (Maria Maria, Chi'Lantro)

Lunch: Tina cooked pasta with collard greens and jalapeno sausage.

Dinner: We tried Madam Mam's (4514 West Gate Boulevard, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 899-8525‎) again and found the food too sweet for our taste (again).

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What I Ate: June 22, 2010 (Madam Mam's)

Lunch: I had the rest of the leftover Rudy's BBQ ribs for lunch. I'm pretty sure I bought too much BBQ last week from Rudy's.

Dinner: I had leftover ravioli, rib eye, and warm German potato salad from Zoot for dinner.

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What I Ate: June 21, 2010

Dinner: No time for lunch today, but we did make time to have a nice dinner at Zoot (11715 Bee Caves Road, Bee Cave, TX‎ - (512) 477-6535‎). I had the Chef's Tasting Menu ($55) while Tina ordered the Farmer's Tasting Menu (vegetarian, also $55). We shared both.

Amuse bouche - orange soup with rosemary and mint. The flavor combination was excellent. I enjoyed it as an amuse, but I thought it would also be awesome on chocolate cake.

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What I Ate: June 20, 2010 (Zoot)

Lunch: While running errands, we ate lunch at Costco. I realized (too late) that I didn't have any of my cameras with me to take the picture of my slice of Combination Pizza and my Polish Sausage.

Dinner: I ate some leftover smoked chicken and barbecue pork ribs along with cole slaw from Rudy's BBQ for dinner.

Lunch: I had a slice of white bread loaded with moist BBQ brisket for a quick lunch.

Dinner: We went to Romano's Macaroni Grill before going to see Get Him To The Greek (which was hilarious). Macaroni Grill was suckier than the last time we were there. I started with the Romano's Sampler (Tomato Bruschetta, Fresh Mozzarella Fritta, and Calamari Fritti served with arrabbiata sauce). The bruschetta was weird in that you had to assemble it yourself. Unfortunately, the bread wasn't as toasted as I generally like it and the flavors just weren't all that strong or good. The fried mozzarella was heavy and chewy (we left that on the plate), but the calamari was passable.

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What I Ate: June 18, 2010 (Romano's Macaroni Grill)

Lunch: I picked up lunch from Rudy's Country Store and BBQ (2451 South Capital of Texas Highway, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 329-5554‎). I got enough food to last several meals - 1 pound of moist brisket, 2 pounds of pork ribs, 1 jalapeno sausage, 1/2 chicken, potato salad, and cole slaw.

Dinner: Tina heated the leftover mushroom chicken and tomato cauliflower. She sauteed spinach with garlic to go with it.