When A Haunch Is Just Too Much: Tomato Mozzarella Salad October 2004

This salad has no detectable flaw. Essentially the same dish as below, with lettuce instead of penne.

Penne with Olive Oil, Fresh Mozzarella, Olives, and Purple Tomato October 2004

I was about to go out for a taco when I realized I had all the stuff for this dish lying around. I love a taco, but heck.

Garlic Chicken, October 2004

Little Green Beans with Toasted Almonds, Broiled Tomato

This was another of those nice little golden-flavored dinners I eat from square plates while watching television. On this occasion I watched E!, the channel that shows nonstop celebrity infomercials. Tonight's infomercial was about Drew Barrymore. If I hadn't watched this, I never would have been apprised of quite a few important facts about Drew, such as, even though her relationships don't work out, she just can't be cynical!

Pot de Creme, Central Market, October 2004

Chocolate.

Chicken Taco Taco Shack, North Lamar, Austin September 2004

These tacos were gross, like something you'd expect to eat in St. Louis at a joint called ¡Viva El Taco Loco! . See, you can always predict the quality of a taco stand by the cheese. Finely grated orange cheese, especially on a chicken taco, spells RUN SCREAMING. After a cheese indiscretion, I'm numb, so I can barely feel the pain of soggy iceberg lettuce, yesterday's chopped tomato, and mealy dark meat chicken, but still. Gimme Taco Cabana.

Fish Taco Tacodeli September 2004

This hippie-dippie taco stand south of Zilker Park sits at the mouth of the Greenbelt. If you eat outside you can watch actual live hippies emerge from the underbrush, wearing backpacks and woolen Peruvian beanies.

Tacodeli makes a fearsome fried cheese taco, and the one they call Frontera Fundido is pot roast on a tortilla--brilliant! But the fish taco, with a red cabbage pico and NO CHEESE, stands alone, particularly when you consider that they make it with catfish, the nastiest fish ever.