Ho! Ho! What the..?

Shopping season is in full bloom and I am behind as usual.  I also made a vital discovery this past weekend.  Evidently, the ENTIRE city of Houston and all of the surrounding communities merged onto Westheimer Road where I live.  Starting at 8am on Saturday, the street was backed up and stalled until around 8pm on Sunday.  I can honestly say that I had not seen that kind of traffic in a very long time.

But..(and this is important) I still met some of the nicest shop clerks.  Folks that knew what they had to do and did it with a smile and good disposition.  I hit a number of different retailers and they all made the traffic stress just go away.  Thanks folks.  By the way, there are some absolutely outstanding antique shops and curio shops here.  I had a ball perusing them.  I even walked out with a picture frame the was made from an old cold house (gardening reference).

So have a great holiday folks.  I will be making the 14 hour drive to the plains of Illinois this year and spend Christmas with my two rugrats.  I get to make pralines, snickerdoodles, and flavored chocolates this year.  It is going to be a ball.

Um...yeah... more about food.

A lof of cinnamon bread and a loaf of white sandwich bread.

Okay, if you have been reading these posts you know that I am a bit hung up on food.  I do love to discover new tastes and places.  But there is also another facet of my food fascination ..I also love to make the dishes.  This leads me to another benefit of living in a major metropolitan area.

My apartment is situated on Westheimer street.  A couple of blocks from where I live I have my standard Kroger grocery store, but if I travel one block further down Voss street, I run into Trader Joes and then a block (or two) further down I have a Whole Foods market.  So... on one grocery run, I can hit all three and pick and choose my items.

But the best part is the specialty markets all over the city.  Simply put, darn near every nationality has their own market.  There is the Chinese market, Mexican market, the Bolivian market by my apartment  I think I even saw a Greek market for specialty items and many more.  There is also (as there are everywhere else) farmer's markets for fresh local produce.  I am loving this...

So, when I have a recipe that I want to try I do not have to worry about finding the ingredients ..  I am sure there is a market that carries it somewhere in this city.  The only issue that can arise is that there is also a restaurant right next to the market... c'est la vie.

P.S., Yes, I made the bread in the photo (puffed up chest).  There is simply nothing better than the smell of bread baking in the house.

A Hanoi sandwich..?

It is with a deeply held shame that I write this post...  I allowed my euro-centric mindset to keep me from allowing the possibility of something different.  I was so convinced that the Earl of Sandwich's concoction could ONLY be applied to American and European cuisine that when I saw the sign for b10 Vietnamese Cafe (on Westheimer) which advertised soups AND sandwiches, I admit to have been taken aback.  A Vietnamese sandwich?

Now, I will readily admit that I consider myself to be quite the sandwich connoisseur.   To my rather simplistic way, there are few things that can satisfy my appetite like a sandwich.  So I happily charged into the b10 Cafe to make a discovery.  What I found there was absolutely wonderful.  The b10 does have the more readily associated Vietnamese soups and rice spring rolls (I got a shrimp roll with a wonderful peanut sauce), but I was tickled to find that they offered beef, chicken and pork sandwiches.

I thoroughly enjoyed my beef sandwich.  The beef strips were prepared with what I always considered more traditional Vietnamese garnish and seasonings and it was delightful.  I will be going back.  I picked up the "to-go menu".

The road less traveled

As you will probably learn, I have a tendency to live outside of my head.  I speak before thinking, have trouble with editing, and can have the attention span of a tsetse fly at times.  Now, while I am seriously trying to work on parts of these character traits, they have recently manifested themselves with regards to how I go to work every morning.

For the first couple of weeks, I followed Garmin's directions to the office which had me getting on the major highways and landing me at the office in about 20-25 minutes.  I found that I am still very adept at driving the bypasses and negotiating rush hour traffic.  The only thing that is any issue at all is the fact that the drive can be a rather dull one.

Then, one of my staff members mentioned that I could take Westheimer Road straight to the office.  As you can well imagine, this thought intrigued me to no end so I gave it a try and sure enough it was true.  The downside was that it nearly doubled my travel time because of the street lights.

Westheimer Road is basically a long "strip mall" full of restaurants and shops.  Everything from the seedy pawn shops and taco/burger joints sitting right next to high end Galleria stores and Ruth's Crisp steak house.  British Pubs, "Adult" nightclubs, Brazilian steakhouses, a Fondue restaurant (I still giggle at that notion and simply HAVE to try this place), Ikea, and everything in between. Driving through the glittering downtown and through some of the Houston slums.  There is simply a plethora of visual images to drink in...

As I am sure you have guessed by now that I am going to stick with the road down Westheimer.  I will always keep the highway route in mind for those times that I have the need for expediency, but having that visual, ever-changing pallet is too much for me to give up.  So, I will leave a little earlier...for now.