I had to make a couple of signs that were visible from the street the other day. I wasn't sure how big to make the letters, but I did know from past experience that people underestimate how big to make fonts for viewing from afar. Here's what I found as a guide. Hope it helps someone out.

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Font size for large signs

It's no secret that my favorite sandwich place in Austin is The Noble Pig. What I haven't talked about is the incredible once-a-month dinners that The Noble Pig offers. Tina and I went to the March and April dinners (April was vegetarian themed) and found both to be delightful. The meals start at 7pm and run about 2.5 hours for four courses. The cost is $55 per person and you must make reservations ahead of time. I posted an article about the Noble Pig Dinners on Cooking For Engineers with more pictures.

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What I Ate: April 2, 2011 (The Noble Pig)

We went to Haddingtons for a media event where we sampled several items. We started off with a TLT - smoked tomato, brun-ostoo cheese, lettuce & truffle aioli which I didn't photograph because I ate it standing up. It was delicious and Tina's favorite.

Scotch Eggs pickled quail eggs in sausage.

Foie Link house made foie sausage with pear relish. The filling was mushier than a weisswurst. Tina didn't like the texture and I felt that it would have been better if it was firmer since the casing was relatively difficult to chew through. Otherwise, I really liked the sausage and thought it was well paired with the relish.

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What I Ate: February 23, 2011 (Haddingtons)

If we're eating late, Justine's Brasserie (4710 East 5th Street, Austin, TX (512) 385-2900) is where we go. We ate this dinner at around 1am.

Charcuterie Plate house-made and served with cornichons ($14)

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What I Ate: February 21, 2011 (Justine's Brasserie)

I was lucky enough to be invited to a grapefruit themed dinner hosted by TexaSweet Citrus (a non-profit corporation that promotes fresh citrus fruits grown in Texas) at FINO Restaurant. Each of our courses featured Rio Star Grapefruit (which happens to be my favorite - I had two on my kitchen counter before going to the dinner… now I have six). Some had grapefruit as more of a garnish (the lamb) while others were subtle but added a whole new dimension to the dish (hamachi crudo which was cured in a grapefruit juice brine); all were delicious.

Grapefruit Gazpacho

COURSE 1
Beet & Rio Star Grapefruit Salad
mozzarella burrata / arugula / basil

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What I Ate: February 16, 2011 (Rio Star Grapefruit Dinner at FINO)

We had an 8:45pm reservation at Congress and when we arrived our table wasn't ready yet (the previous party had not left). They had a small table in the bar reserved for us to wait at, so we sat down and ordered sparkling water. We had the choice between Topo Chico and Tynant, so we chose Tynant - a sparkling water from Wales with relatively large, crisp bubbles but not overly acidic or metallic (the water worked quite well with our meal and we ordered a second bottle while dining). We were hungry, so we ordered the Burrata - Oxtail Marmalade - Buttered Brioche ($12) from the bar menu (which I think is serviced by the 2nd Bar kitchen because it was brought over from the door leading to 2nd Bar). The creamy mozzarella, sweet oxtail, and drops of fruity olive oil made an excellent appetizer which we lathered over the soft, fluffy bread.

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What I Ate: February 11, 2011 (Congress)

After a couple days of below freezing temperatures, it started to snow tonight. Here's a picture I took threw my office window (through a screen which is why there are grid lines) down my driveway just minutes ago.

And a close up.

Even closer. Here you can see the snow was disturbed by animals. We actually saw the two cats that made these tracks when I first peered out the window to see if it was snowing. I used a flashlight to look at the snow outside of the window and when I panned up, caught a black cat standing on the driveway. The cat walked down the driveway and another, smaller, gray cat followed. The two seemed to be doing just fine in the 20°F conditions.

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Snow

Cooking sous vide at home is something I do about once a week. It's a fun cooking technique that can produce amazing results, especially with proteins. I've tried a lot of different, easy to put together, sous vide cooking setups and personally prefer the large rice cooker with PID controller solution. It's what I use most of the time, and it's given me great results. For people just starting out in sous vide cooking or who want to learn more about how to go about doing it at home, I wrote up a guide to various ways you can do it at home starting with the lowest cost solutions to the expensive immersion circulators.

Sous vide at home guide

Austin Land and Cattle Company (1205 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, TX (512) 472-1813) which is also known as ALC Steaks has been in business for eighteen years and, according to Scott Mescall, the general manager and executive chef, the only remaining family owned steakhouse in Austin.

We started by asking what sparkling waters they had and were given the options of Topo Chico, San Pellegrino, and Evian. Unaware that Evian had a line of sparkling water (and not being fans of Topo Chico or San Pellegrino), we ordered the Evian… which of course came as still water. That one little mishap was the only thing that went wrong with our meal.

We started by trying the Buffalo Lamb Chops Lollipop Lamb Chops Deep Fried and Tossed in Franks Red Hot Sauce with Jalapeno Blue Cheese ($14). These four chops were excellent due to their novelty of flavor (the ever so slight gamey quality of the lamb was just the extra kick of flavor that buffalo wings has been missing all these years), the crispy sliver of fat that was left on the "handle", and the full flavored blue cheese dipping sauce (that had just enough blue cheese and an almost undetectable amount of heat, especially when compared to the Louisiana hot sauce). The only thing missing was some (more) apple cider vinegar in the Frank's Red Hot sauce. Scott told us that he had been injured skiing and while prescribed Vicodin for the pain had some strange dreams and this recipe came from one of those. What a productive crazy dream!

We had the 30 oz. Porterhouse steak ($46) cooked medium-rare. It came out beautiful and glistening along with all the sides we ordered at the same time.

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What I Ate: January 12, 2011 (Austin Land & Cattle Company or ALC Steaks)

One of my New Year's resolutions is to cook more, and so I've been doing some pantry organization lately. I decided to put a lot of the foods (e.g. flour, sugar, pasta, rice, beans, etc.) into containers rather than leaving them in their bags. I looked at a variety of food storage containers of different materials (e.g. glass, plastic, stainless steel, ceramic, etc.) and of various shapes and sizes. In the end I settled on a combination of these three types of plastic food containers:

Rubbermaid Modular Canisters

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Things We Like: Rubbermaid Food Storage Containers