shipping up to austin (+ san antonio)

we headed up to san antonio and austin for a long weekend, which did us a world of good. we had an amazing trip hitting our san antonio faves (you can check this year's previous trips here and here), and spent the afternoon chasing down the best food trucks and unique finds austin had to offer (boss' orders. it was so much fun to conduct some research on food trucks in other markets!)  we stumbled upon san antonio's chalk it up festival while getting our morning coffee on houston street, debated the difference between antiques and junk (and general hipster nonsense) at the uncommon goods store in austin, and saw plenty of festival garb in prep for the austin city limit's music fest. 

if there's one thing that stood out on this anniversary getaway, it's how lucky we are to be able to travel together so easily. through unknown territory, traffic jams, sketchy gas stations, caffeine deprivation and forgotten hairbrushes we experienced nothing but love and laughs (and a cvs trip to get new brushes.) i think when you find a person you can spend just about every waking minute with for days on end with nothing but happiness - you've got something kind of special.

especially after a decade together (!) meep, we're old. 

when we're in san antonio j likes to shed the traditional starbucks routine in favor of sip, a coffee shop conveniently located near our hotel of habit downtown.

we spent an afternoon chasing down the best food truck eats in austin, and found some really amazing places. we recommend the burro cheese kitchen, juice austin and especially ms p's fried chicken. the latter is moving to a brick-and-mortar store soon, but the food is not to be missed!

our favorite truck: ms p's featuring their trailer the owner has dubbed "peaches." their fried chicken comes in second in my book (only outdone by yardbird), and the truffle mac and cheese was some of the best i've ever had. definitely worth checking out if you're ever on congress street.

^ special shout out to this guy, who not only let me drag him all over, but helped me research and found the best spots for us to stop. he got some fried chicken and rockin' mac and cheese out of the deal.

san antonio is quickly becoming one of my favorite us cities. i love how you get the big city feel, without the crazed over-crowded feeling of other places. it's also relatively small and manageable for a long weekend/short vaycay.  i'm gonna need about a year to cover all that austin has to offer.

valley-style hot dogs

the last six weeks or so have been in a word - bananas. each time i think we might be past the clouds, we seem get inundated with the next wave of crazy and misfortune. thankfully in my twenty-something years i've begun to recognize this as a pattern; when life starts disassembling, it's in preparation for major changes. usually, in a bigger and better form than what we previously planned on. (and while this knowledge doesn't necessarily make things much easier, i do appreciate that there are people out there battling much worse problems than ours!) life is a cycle, and there are no highs without the lows, right?

meanwhile, summer in the valley is still going strong, so before we dive into autumn i thought i'd share a version of hot dogs we had recently. this started when the hubs saw a graphic of a chicago-style hot dog, which we adapted ever so slightly to valley-style using local ingredients. 

here's the original:

and here's what we did:

| ingredients |

hot dog buns (no poppyseeds for us - a) i couldn't find them and b) they just end up in my teeth)
all-beef hot dog
yellow mustard
sweet relish
sliced farmer's market tomatoes
diced white onion
sliced jalapenos (instead of sport peppers!)
celery salt, to taste

we omitted the kosher dill pickle spear. I think relish + spear is too much redundant pickle in one food, even if they do have varying flavors.

| method |

cook the hot dogs according to package directions, and toast the hot dog buns (optional). assemble with the listed toppings.