Hill Country/Venue Search Weekend

My parents and I took a short trip to the hill country to visit my great aunt and uncle and look for wedding venues. My relatives live in a great house in Spicewood. Beautiful and relaxing! See pictures below of them with my parents and their hilarious Portuguese water dog, Amy.




After visiting two venues in Spicewood, we were starving. We went to eat at Backstage Steakhouse and Garden Bar. Highlight was the jalapeno corn cake with crawfish. For those who will be at the Stanley's on Saturday, I am attempting to recreate this for the bar-b-que!


Monday we were in downtown Austin. After visiting two more places and walking all over downtown, we stopped at Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill for lunch. My dad had a yummy looking burger but refused to let me take a picture! My mom and I got spicy chicken tortilla soup and "corn dog" shrimp with mustard and blueberry sauce. Great food again!




I'll post about the venue once Mike and I have made the final decision and put down the deposit!

Fall!

We are having our first taste of fall! The weather over the past few days has been such a nice break from the summer heat. We have been enjoying it by taking walks around the lake. This morning the temperature in my car read 58 degrees!

And, this weekend I made my first "fall" dish, southwestern chicken chili. No photos to post but it was really tasty! Somewhat healthy for chili... chicken, chicken broth, dark and light red beans, onions/garlic and spices (chili, cumin, fennel seeds) cooked until thick served with cornbread and green salad. Next time I will definately add some sort of pepper for heat. Stay tuned over the coming weeks/months for stories of other cool-weather dishes including gumbo (a favorite) and soups (a challenge I hope to overcome this season!).

Spaghetti & Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs

Last week I took these ingredients...


combined them and rolled them into meatballs stuffed with a little ball of mozzarella...


and ended up with this!


This quickly got a thumbs up from Mike. I don't know if I am a huge fan of the mozzarella in the center but they tasted good anyway! I also made the marinara sauce at home (very simple recipe of crushed tomatoes, onions, garlic and spices).