Food Truck Party

Having lived in Dallas for most of my life, I don't have much experience with food trucks.  I did frequent a food truck on the UT Austin campus.  They had the best egg rolls I've ever had; they were huge, filled with lots of delicious meat & veggies, and could be considered a small lunch.  I later heard a rumor that the owners of the food cart were doing shady things, and supposedly the truck no longer exists.

The Dallas food trucks have hit the Dallas scene hard over the past year.  At the end of 2010, Greenhouse Truck paved the way for other food trucks by fighting with the city on various restrictions and finally made its debut as the first Dallas Food Truck (http://www.greenhousetruck.com/).  D Magazine/SideDish is now tracking 23 food trucks!

Picture courtesy of D Magazine/SideDish.

Since I work off Greenville Avenue, I noticed Nammi and Ssahm BBQ parking their trucks on Wednesdays in Sigel's parking lot and then I saw advertisements for a Food Truck gathering the last Friday for all of December at the new Park Lane development.  Now, I just had to round up a few adventurous coworkers to try something new for lunch.

Jack's ChowHound Menu (subject to change)

We knew we'd be getting cupcakes from Trailercakes...but first we had to decide on our lunch.  We walked up & down and perused the various menus.  We had made our decision: 2 of us headed to Jack's ChowHound to try the Pulled Pork Grilled Cheese served on TX Toast with BBQ sauce & smoked Gouda cheese (how could you even screw this up?).  It tasted as great as it sounds.  The meat was tender and the cheese was rich and gooey.  However, we were a bit disappointed with their french fries.

The Tourist - Trailercakes

My remaining coworker headed over to Ruthie's to try a traditional Grilled Cheese.  Ruthie's offers a selection of different Artisan Breads (i.e. SF Style Sourdough or Jalapeno Cheese), Fine Cheese, Meats and Toppings (i.e. caramelized onions or grilled tomatoes) to create your custom grilled cheese sandwich.  She enjoyed her sandwich as well.  

The cupcakes from Trailercakes were delicious as well.  I ordered The Tourist which was a Vanilla Cupcake with Nutella Buttercream frosting.

Baking is HARD!

I am not a baker; that has been proven! But the idea of baking sure sounds nice. The house smelling of fresh bread & sweet treats. Always having freshly baked cookies or a piece of pie if your mother-in-law or next-door neighbor stops by (see cute snowmen picture!). Martha Stewart makes it look so easy! Her cookie lady is a cookie gangster (*more on the cookie gangster to come...)!

I tried to make a Pecan tart at Thanksgiving, and the crust had little holes in it, so the filling went through the crust....filling was everywhere. It tasted ok, but was not pretty!

I made sugar cookies from scratch this Christmas holiday...the dough alone takes forever! Chill the disks for 2 years (typo, but I'm choosing to leave it)...roll out, chill another hour, cut shapes, chill 30 minutes, preheat oven, bake! Geez!! I tried doing this on a Saturday when we had people coming over so I had to stop- midway through, and needless to say it took me two days just to get the two batches of dough completely cut out & baked into sugar cookie trees & snowmen! And don't even think about those intricate cookie cutter shapes- Rudolph will lose all of his antelers, legs & tail by the time I am done with him.

Then for the icing... I read online about how to make royal icing from scratch. I bought the piping tips, the meringue egg whites and the sprinkles, and for some reason my cookies are still sitting in tupperware unfrosted. Part of this can be blamed on the fact that I have been sick, and don't want to get others sick by icing cookies while I am ill, or it could also be the fact that it's a huge pain in the butt!

*Cookie gangster: Martha's cookie b*tch made these snow globe cookies and thinks we can too. She's crazy!

A few weeks ago, I did make a banana bread loaf with some leftover bananas that I didn't completely F up!

It didn't have to chill for 3 hours, didn't involve pie crust or cookie cutters, and we ate every last bite. You can basically just dump all the ingredients into a kitchenaid mixer, hit the magic button & throw it in a loaf pan. 45 minutes later- banana bread!

Just so I know that I'm not the only "BakeTard" in the world, here are some pics from CakeWrecks' blog, which makes me

laugh!

Reindeer poop cake anyone?

Or maybe a Christmas elf to take home for the kiddos?