Happy Wednesday! Today is a good day because I am officially a resident of the state of Texas! I spent an hour and a half at the DMV this morning to emerge victorious…. and with a giant, paper, temporary license. Seriously, in Virginia you get a real license immediately! Here they hand you a paper and mail you the real one. How the heck am I supposed to go to a bar with a license that looks like I printed it out from home?
Well to fuel myself for the DMV, I made myself a delicious dinner last night. I made one of my staples: the perfect baked sweet potato.
Baked sweet potato topped with vegetarian baked beans & goat cheese; cactus pear
To make the perfect baked sweet potato, simply rinse off and dry the potato with water, drizzle/spray a bit of olive oil onto the skin, rub it down with some salt and pepper, and place it on a baking sheet for 45 minutes in a 400* oven. And you have perfection. As for the cactus pear, or tuna as I know them from my summer in Mexico, they are impossible to find in VA but bountiful here in TX! I sprinkle them with lime juice & chili powder, just as I ate them for an entire summer in Guadalajara!
This morning I had a baby green smoothie & toast and headed off to the DMV. I also got very angry with my bank and joined the UT credit union here in Austin shortly after leaving DMV. Yay! After all that excitement, I was hungry again. Thankfully I had lunch plans/a social life!
Yesterday I geniusly thought to use the departmental mailing list to find friends and classmates to hang out with. One student, Sam, said he wanted to check out Resistencia Book Shop which is a shop of Latin American literature (what we’re both studying in grad school). It is in a cool part of town, so we figured we’d find a restaurant near by for lunch.
Resistencia Book Shop
It said it was closed but they had a sign in the window that said they’d be back at noon. So we waited until 12:10pm and then figured they were running late and decided to grab lunch next door at Somnio’s.
Somnio’s serves “South Austin Cuisine” and it is a good thing I live in South Austin because “South Austin Cuisine” is local, organic, and mostly vegetarian. That is a cuisine I can get behind! Also, Somnio’s serves nirvana, known in the food pyramid as a TACO.
Somnio's in South Austin
Nynavae's Tacos (panko crusted mushroom fritters, slaw, amazing sauce, wheat tortillas)
I have a new religion: mushroom fritter tacos
Thank you, Somnio’s Cafe for making the best vegetarian taco I have ever had. Seriously, these were epic. And for offering whole wheat tortillas! Even their daily specials sounded incredible, I had such a hard time picking what to order. I mean spicy watermelon gazpacho?! Don’t be surprised if I go back soon…
We went back to the book shop after lunch and, of course, it was still closed. Sam and I parted ways, but hanging out with him was really great. It was nice to get back in touch with my academic side and it has made me start thinking about grad school and my classes. I got a lot of responses to my email about meeting up, so hopefully I’ll meet more students soon!
Off to hang by the pool for a bit 
