The Boiling Pot in Austin, Texas

Dinner at SXSW. Bibs. Food dumped on your table. Spicy crawfish, shrimp, taters, juicy corn, homemade honey mustard sauce, homemade cocktail sauce, warm bread. Delicious. The kids menu had chocolate covered crawfish heads on it....that's weird. Go to this place if you are in the mood for some simple, good Cajun style seafood! Here is a pic of the waitress telling us how to peel / eat a crawfish.

The Boiling Pot
700 East 6th Street
Austin, Texas
512-472-0985

Foodspotting @ SXSW in Austin, Texas

I had the wonderful opportunity to come to SXSW in Austin, Texas for work and I just had a very relaxing and delicious Sunday. My coworker and I spent the day at a very cool gathering for foodies, then lounged outdoors with Mexican Martinis (Martinis made with tequila in plastic cups), and explored Austin. For those of you who don't know, Foodspotting is an awesome new startup for people who love taking pictures of food,  finding good food and eating food. The event was called the Foodspotting Street Food Fest. It was an empty lot with Austin's best food mobiles. The bases were covered with slides, BBQ, tacos, Aussie pies, a few others and, of course, a cupcake mobile for dessert. The picture above was from a Korean BBQ Taco truck called Chi'lantro and was a Mexican Korean fusion. I ordered the vegetarian tacos which were DELICIOUS. They were made with soy vinaigrrete Korean salad, cilantro, onions, sesame seeds, perfectly lightly fried tofu, and some special Chi'lantro house sauces - all served up on two warm tortillas with a lime wedge. While I didn't order it - the truck was also serving a delicious looking side of Kimchi fries with melted cheese....ummm...that is genius (see menu picture below). The Mexican-Korean fusion is a winner combo....dare I say that it is the peanut butter - chocolate combo of the savory world?

The coolest looking truck was an old jalopy of a school bus serving up some good'ol bbq. The shirt hanging on the bus is Foodspotting's awesome shirt.

For dessert I had a very yummy red velvet cupcake from the adorable Hey Cupcake. I highly recommend checking out the little intro video on their website HERE. The red velvet was moist, not too sweet, and the cream cheese frosting had just the right amount of tangyness.

Finally...this was unexpected but a surprisingly awesome product re-do - Peeps was going through an epic re-branding. Maybe epic wasn't the right word but whenever I think of Peeps I think of mildly stale Easter candies from the drug store. I'm not hating on Peeps but they have never actually tasted all that good. The entire company is dependent on the Spring for a reason. At the Foodspotting tasting event, some Peeps reps were there decked out in tiedye shirts with sparkly hula-hoops giving away the new Peeps candies. Below is an example of how Peeps has actually done some consumer research and refined their candies. It is dark chocolate dipped Peeps and little dark chocolate candies with a creamy mallow filling.

The reps were also giving away some awesome Peeps schwag, like adorable colored Peeps key chains...I wonder does anyone buy Peeps in all seasons?

Off The Grid in India: Sleeping & Cooking in a Cave, Scramble to the Summit

This picture is taken from the location where the cave is looking up to the summit of the Indrahar pass. It looks close but it is a steep and super challenging climb up. I took this picture the day before - when we arrived to set up camp at the cave. Our plan was to wake up around 3am, make a quick meal, and scramble to the summit before sunrise....
The cave was the warmest night's sleep I'd had since arriving in India. Here are the two lovely English folks getting ready to sleep in the cave.

Here is our cook, Gulab preparing some hot chai and dinner in the cave:

And here is dinner: chapati with vegetable curry

The next  morning we woke around 4 am an started the scramble to the summit. It was really hard for me. The sun came up and I had not yet reached the summit, I was close but slowing down significantly. Breathing became hard and it felt like each leg up was 200 pounds. Finally, we all made it to the summit of Indrahar pass and when you reach the top you see the beginning of the Himalayan range...

At the pass we were at 5000 meters. At first you feel warm and start removing all your layers, then you feel bone chilling cold. Breathing is still easy until you laugh - then you are really gasping for air. After about 45 minutes, we started to feel light headed and began our descent. Here I am at top with our guide, Papaji!

A few days later I would continue toward this Himalayan range...