Two good meals today - both restaurants we'd visit again. Unfortunately, neither meal photographed well - aluminum foil, paper wrappers, and messy foods.

Lunch: We tried Maria's Taco X-Press (2529 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 444-0261‎) for lunch.

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What I Ate: August 19, 2009 (Maria's Taco X-Press, Elevation Burger)

Dinner: Tina and I had been craving ramen since yesterday, so we went to try Banzai (3914 N Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 323-2151‎) which has ramen on their menu. Now, when I say ramen, I don't mean that dried stuff in a cup (instant noodles). I mean the yellow wheat flour noodles that are slightly firm, slightly chewy, and slightly alkaline that has been prepared in a rich flavorful broth (usually pork and chicken based). Ramen was one of those foods that I made sure I had when I went to Japan (once in Osaka, once in Kyoto, once in Tokyo, and once in Yamamoto) and also had fairly often while living in California (my favorites were the shoyu ramen at Ringerhut and the ultra-rich ramen at Ramen Hulu). As far as we could tell, there's no ramen-ya in Austin, so we started looking around for Japanese restaurants that had ramen on their menu. So far, we've only found Banzai, but Peter Tsai has informed me that his friends recommend Kyoto which we'll have to try in the future.

Banzai is counter service - you order at the counter, pay, then take a seat and food is brought to you. I started the meal with an order of seaweed salad ($5).

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What I Ate: August 18, 2009 (Banzai)

Lunch: Leftover Papa Murphy's pizza heated in a countertop convection oven until the crust was crispy again. (Just noticed there's no sales tax on a Papa Murphy's pizza - I think it's because they don't cook it for you.)

Dinner: We wanted ramen, but couldn't find a place in Austin for it. Ended up heating up the noodles from last night's Chinese food and augmented with some roast chicken and kale. Tina had the remaining manicotti.

Lunch: Tina and I headed to a Steak 'n Shake because Marc Summers said it was the best thing he ever ate between two slices of bread. I got a Double Steakburger with fries and enjoyed it. For a thin patty burger, this is my favorite since coming to Texas. It was somewhat similar to In-N-Out (as opposed to the Whataburgers and Sonic burgers). Next time, I'll have to see if I can make some special sauce and slather it on.

Tina had three shooters which were poorly constructed but very tasty. The Chipotle sauce was our favorite.

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What I Ate: August 16, 2009 (Steak 'n Shake, Hays City Donuts)

Lunch: I made a couple of Turkey and Swiss sandwiches (with kale sandwiched in the middle)

Dinner: While coming back from visiting our home site, I swung by Papa Murphy's and picked up a family sized half Papa's Favorite Pizza (pepperoni, Italian sausage, ground beef, fresh mushrooms, mixed onions, green peppers and black olives) and half Gourmet Chicken Garlic Pizza (grilled chicken, roma tomatoes, green onions and herb & cheese blend), baked it, and enjoyed it while watching this week's America's Got Talent with Tina. (Strangely, I watch the results show first to take the suspense out of it and then watch the performances knowing if they did well or not.)

Lunch: A couple of Coyote Creek Farms pastured chicken eggs cooked over easy and served atop wilted arugula.

Dinner: Chinese stewed beef with bamboo shoots and shiitake mushrooms with white rice and sauteed kale.

Dinner: I cooked a ribeye steak and served it with mustard greens and homemade tortilla chips.

Lunch: Leftover pasta

Dinner: I was invited to a food blogger event at Gumbo's restaurant (710 Colorado St # 100, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 480-8053‎). The food was pretty good today with the Redfish Francine my favorite. I'll have to go back and give them another try in the future. (We had eaten here last April and had mixed feelings. Tina's fish was poorly prepared and she had to order a replacement dish. I didn't feel like the gumbos they served tasted like what I was expecting - an authentic New Orleans style gumbo. Tonight's food was much better prepared, so I think it'll be worth trying again.)

Crab Cake served with chiptole aioli and jicama slaw

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What I Ate: August 12, 2009 (Gumbo's)

Arkadium is testing a new flash game for the next three Fridays at Shake Shack in New York City. The first fifty people to show up, play the game, and provide some feedback gets a free burger.

Might be fun if you're in the area.

I recently had the opportunity to try a couple of kitchen knives from Saber. These knives are intended for culinary students or people just getting started in cooking (recent college grads, etc.). The knives will be sold in a set of ten: two chef's knives (8-in and 10-in), two paring knives (3.5-in and 4.5-in), santoku, serrated bread knife, utility knife, boning knife, and two slicers (8-in. and 10-in ham slicer). The set also includes a steel and a unique bag that holds all the knives in place when transporting them. I had an early prototype bag which worked well for the smaller knives, but the 10-in. chef's had some trouble staying put (not dangerous since the blade stayed put, but he handle sloshed around a bit). The new bags have a solution involving magnets that supposedly works very well, so I'm eager to see that.

The set will be priced around $200 or so. This puts the knives in the same price category as the J. A. Henckels International knives (the discount line from Henckles). However, in our testing it outperformed the J. A. Henckels (premium line) Four Star chef's knife that we usually test with. Something to note is that our Four Star chef's knife costs $80 at cutleryandmore.com and $125 retail. The Saber knives also performed on par or better than the Wusthof Classic (a knife similarly priced to the Henckel's Four Star). When we moved up to the Japanese blades (Global, Tojiro, MAC), the Saber fell short, but for the price of two of these Japanese knives you can get the whole set of Saber knives. That makes Saber's performance/price value extremely high. Also, every blade has a granton edge which really does help prevent sticking when julienning. It really is nice to have it on every blade.

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Saber Chef Knives