No Grocery Store, Day 167

I have been fending off a hamburger craving for weeks now.    Yesterday, I succumbed and took my mom to Jack Allen’s.  We had burgers and they were good.  Green Chile Cheeseburgers and sweet potato fries to be exact.   And I was happy.  Jack Allen’s is great, and where feasible, sources 70-80% of their food locally.  I see Jack Gilmore frequently at the farmer’s markets.  Cudos, Jack Allens.

Later in the afternoon, I headed out to Niederwald with my friend Christian, to do a garden consultation for Ben of Salt and Time, at their salumi making shop.  Look for some amazing photos and an interview of Ben at Austin Food Journal dot com soon.  Ben was a gracious host and spent a good deal of time explaining the process, then he gave us tastes of  lots of his cured meats, the chorizo being my favorite, his pickled radishes, pickled beats, and even some lemon cake made by the chef.  It was all outstanding.  Look for Salt and Time at Antonellis Cheese Shop and at the HOPE Farmer’s Market as well.  He’ll be doing hot dogs for the 4th of July at HOPE.

After that, we headed to Boggy Creek Farm for the Slow Food Happy Hour, with food provided by Ecstatic Cuisine and drinks from Tipsy Texan and Bill Norris.  We were late and I was stuffed from salumi sampling, so I didn’t eat.  Boggy Creek is in fine form these days, and there were what seemed like miles of tomatoes, and an amount of basil growing that we decided could only be described as a shitload.  Pardon my German.  It was a lot of basil.  Enough basil to make pesto for life.  I’ll get some photos up later.  The arugula was in great shape, which makes me want to plant some.  I had figured it was too hot, and it may be soon.

No dinner.  I got home too late and wasn’t hungry.