When, on a normal summers eve, Texas looks like this…
…you may be wondering how on Earth we Texans stay cool. For starters, it helps that we often experience dry heat with a decent breeze instead of unbearable humidity.
And then there’s the iced goodies. Yes, we stuff ourselves with…
That was my weekend in a nutshell. Then there was the Culver’s strawberry milkshake I downed the night before I arrived in Texas and the lemon blackberry ice I downed right after leaving Texas. It’s important to stay hydrated, after all. You have to be dedicated to manage all that cold goodness in only two and a half days. If I am anything, I am dedicated.
Least you think I ate only frozen yogurt and drank all my meals (I did not), allow me to share the other indulgences that aided me in my noble quest to eat my way across Texas. This is only a small cross-section of the evidence. Some of it, like the Bill Millers sausage and brisket poor boy with potato fries and pickled onions or the Mexican fish tacos at Aldacos, didn’t quite make it on film before I devoured it. My compliments to the chefs.
- The most delicious tortilla soup ever made
Do you recall my quick quip about the jalapeno cornbread muffin I sunk my teeth into assuming it was a lemon poppyseed muffin? Only in Texas. Prior to that little adventure I’d briefly mentioned on our car ride to Milwaukee last Thursday afternoon how delicious our wedding cake was, especially the lemon poppyseed layer which was my absolute favorite. Ted spent the weekend in Green Bay and was going to pay a visit Monnie, his best man’s mom/his other mother/The Green Bay Cake Lady/our wedding cake baker. Jokingly, I told him that if she was baking a wedding cake that weekend and had leftover scraps when he went to visit that he should bring some back for me. Coincidentally and ironically, hearing about the jalapeno cornbread fiasco was just icing on the cake. My mishaps have good timing.
Have I ever mentioned how incredible my husband is? He is. He’s a pretty practical guy and we’re not big into flowers or gift-giving but he occasionally surprises me with sweet little unexpected things or kind gestures just to say I Love You – a new pack of hair ties because I’ve lost all mine, a pumpkin to carve because the raccoon ate mine, a pack of Packer pencils because I appear to be out of Packer pencils, glow sticks because I like glow sticks, or a lemon poppyseed cake just because.
Ted surprised me with this beauty on Monday night when we got home from our 7-hour Milwaukee to Cincy car trip. While I was in Texas he must have been missing me terribly (or, likely, he was just plain overjoyed to have the whole bed to himself) because he asked Monnie to whip up a small lemon poppyseed cake for me, knowing how much I love it. Monnie remembered the pumpkins at our wedding and she made and decorated a beautiful cake for us! It was such a sweet “just because” surprise! I certainly never expected a cake to be sitting on our living room table when Ted said “open your eyes.” He packed and transported it in the truck without me ever even seeing it. It was as sweet as it was delicious and I’m totally looking forward to enjoying lemon poppyseed cake every night this week! We ate some of it while watching Lilo & Stitch and sharing a leftover bottle of our Door County wedding weekend wine. My husband is clearly one cool dude. Jealousy is an appropriate reaction :-)
