Eating Our Way Through Austin

I'm way behind on blogging, although the eating and cooking have been going fabulously. I had the amazing opportunity to go to camp for grownups, grownups who write poetry... It was just lovely. I flew to Austin with two of my friends, we flew the airline that offers TV's and SNACKS! FREE SNACKS! That part alone was work the trip. We arrived to a slightly muggy city that was spitting rain. It has changed so much since I lived there, but the heart and soul of the city is eccentric and easy going. We stopped at Mellow Johnny's Bike Store where we picked up bikes and grilled the guys who worked there about what to eat and where to go. They directed us here... but on our way, the traffic picked up and we started to feel the fact that we had only had FREE SNACKS all day, and it was almost 6pm. So as we stopped and started along Congress in the traffic, I saw Magnolia Cafe and we did a u-turn and were in front of a bowl of queso and chips in a matter of seconds. In minutes we had huge orders of pasta, quesadillas and gingerbread pancakes and life was great again. When we wander back out, fat and happy, we saw that there was a line of cool airstream trailers parked across the street, each offering a specialty food. We landed on the cupcakes of course, and they were above and beyond. I had a vegan mint choc chip, Mark had a vegan orange cupcake with almond frosting and Augusto had a yellow cake with choc frosting. They offer this cool option of whip cream jammed into your cupcake, to make it more airy and wonderful and because we needed to confuse the vegan option, we did it. Can't wait to do that at a kid birthday party.

We headed out to the festival which was out of town, in Round Top Texas about an hour and a half away from Austin. It was drab and rainy and eventually dark when we arrived. I egged Mark along a two lane road, in the pitch black, not knowing that we were very close to being stuck in the water and mud if we veered off the pavement, and eventually we landed at Festival Hill. Mark said landing there in the middle of the night was like a fever dream and it was.

Stay tuned for more about the next day... and Royer's Round Top Cafe.