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by Emily

100 Ways to Use an Avocado

It’s no big secret that we like avocados here. Okay, we don’t like them, we’re obsessed with them. So you can imagine my shock and outrage when I realized we had never compiled a 100 Ways for avocado. I had to remedy this immediately. So here it is: 100 ways to cook one of the greatest gifts nature has bestowed upon the human race. There’s so much more to this majestic fruit than just guacamole (although we have some uniquely great guac recipes in this roundup, too). And just in time for Cinco De Mayo! You’re welcome.

Click on the photos for full recipes.

All 100 Ways — 1,500 recipes and counting! — found here.

by Emily

Coachella, More Like Co-cheese-lla!

Everyone knows you go to state fairs for the food, and you go to music festivals for the music. These days, though, it seems that music festivals are jumping on the culinary bandwagon as well. I just returned from Weekend 1 of Coachella, and while I primarily attended for the jams, of course there was something else on my mind. A blog aptly entitled Food is the New Rock released a Coachella line-up poster with food trucks and menu items instead of musicians. FOOD! It is everywhere and everything. Would I do my best to abstain so I could perfect my desert hipster waif look at the festival? Or would I go for it and commit to total gluttony?

Obviously I opted for the latter! The most inappropriate thing I ate was this triple-grilled cheese sandwich from Mangler’s Meltdown, an LA-based food truck I have never before heard of and mysteriously has no website I can find. This freak of sandwich nature was a thick, buttery grilled cheese filled with more cheese, which enclosed the greatest gift of all: three perfectly-fried mozzarella sticks. Upon biting into this glory, one of my drunken festival friends exclaimed indignantly, “I mean it’s already a grilled cheese, WHY did they need to put MORE cheese inside?!” …uh, why not, am I right?

Besides this treasure chest of dairy, what else did I consume?

in Cheese / Food Travel / Sandwich 4 comments

by Emily

Brussels Sprouts. Bacon. Pizza. Yes.

I’m going to make a confession: pizza is not really my thing. Most of the time it’s just kind of… boring. Bread with sauce and cheese, big deal. You need to do something pretty cool with pizza to get my attention.

Here is an instance of one such attention-grabbing pizza. My friend Sarah is pretty obsessed with Martha Stewart (I mean, I’m a pretty big fan, too — holler, Martha!) Sarah saved a recipe for Brussels sprout & lemon pizza from the March issue of her magazine, and being a Brussels sprout lover, I was into it. It’s also cooked on the stovetop in a skillet, which intrigued me. So we went ahead and made our version.

in Bacon / Cheese / Endless Bacon / Pig / Recipe 0 comments

by Emily

A Very Southern Potato Salad

Down here in Texas it’s already feeling like summertime. Days have been in the 80s-90s, which means long afternoons of day drinking and barbecuing. The other weekend I decided to make a potato salad for a backyard barbecue party, but I wanted to do something a little more exciting than your average white potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and celery. (You will never find celery in my picnic foods, actually! It’s the bane of my existence.) I was inspired when I found some beautiful Texan collard greens at the store.

One thing (out of the katrillion things) I love about Austin, that you might not expect if you’ve never been here, is how strongly this community promotes buying and eating locally. I decided to take these greens and incorporate them into a potato salad celebrating all my favorite aspects of southern sides… namely, sweet potatoes, collards, and pork fat.

Sweet Potato Salad with Collard Greens, Caramelized Onions, and Bacon

in Bacon / Endless Bacon / Pig / Recipe 0 comments

by Emily

Eat It, Don’t Tweet It

The blessing and curse of being a food blogger is that you feel obligated to record every bite you put into your mouth, because you never know what might become good post material.

Consequently, you end up being this guy a lot of the time.

in Personal / Restaurants 0 comments

by Emily

Mojo Cubano: The Most Garlic You’ve Ever Eaten

When you love something, really love something, you can never have enough. I feel this way about a lot of things — primarily food and alcohol-related, of course — and I definitely feel this way about garlic. So I was obviously thrilled when my friend, Vanessa, who was giving me a Cuban cooking lesson (! best night ever, and there are more recipes where that came from) mentioned, “You like garlic, right? I bought plantain chips and I really wanted to make this dipping sauce for them…it’s basically just pure garlic and it’s one of my favorites.”

Turns out this is one of the easiest recipes ever, and yeah, it does pack a punch. If you’re one of those people who is averse to “smelling like garlic” (personally, I never understood those people) this is probably not the snack for you. I’ve been cruising the Cuban recipe sites (normal) and it looks like many of them use a version of this as a marinade or sauce for all kinds of dishes. Whatever, we like this as a straight-up dip for our fried plantains. Hardcore eaters.

Mojo Cubano Dip

in Featured / Recipe 5 comments

by Emily

Culture Shock: The Salad That Wasn’t

This is a “salad,” according to Texas.

Yep. Spicy chicken on a thick bed of refried beans and deep-fried tortillas, smothered in cheese and pecans (yes, pecans).

To be fair:

(a) When I mentioned I was trying to eat healthy and would therefore be ordering a salad, I was warned that “the fajita salad isn’t really a salad-salad.”
(b) It does have some sliced vegetables on the side, plus a small scattering of shredded iceberg lettuce.
(c) Probably the most delicious and filling “salad” I’ve ever eaten. I’m into it. Props, Tex-Mex. Thank you for continually improving my life… and challenging my preconceived notions of what I can classify as a healthy dining option.

in Restaurants 2 comments