Eating Like a Cavewoman (and Hanging on South Congress) in Austin: Part Two

You saw part one of my Austin PaleoFX eating adventures last week, and now I’m happy to share part two! And like I said in my first post, Austin is one delicious town.
I began my day in Austin with a green smoothie whipped up by my travel buddy Sheryl. She’s a master at the smoothie. I forgot to snap a photo, but it had spinach, sweet potato, zucchini, almond butter, Structure and almond milk in it. Yum. Totally delicious. After sipping on that healthiness, we dropped in on a local yoga class for some stress-reducing zen time.
After that, we hit up the PaleoFX conference for a bit and worked up our appetites again. Then, our gracious host Ale took Sheryl and me down to South Congress Avenue for some good ol’ shopping and eating.

Such a cool area with shops and restaurants and boutique hotels, our first stop was one of Ale’s favorite joints: Guero’s Taco Bar. Seeing that I like tacos and bars, I was down. They have a bunch of fresh salsas you can sample, which, of course I did. Beware: the green stuff is the hottest (and therefore the best, in my opinion).

I ordered an Al Pastor taco—marinated pork, topped with chopped onions, cilantro and pineapple—and a Shrimp taco—marinated shrimp grilled with mushrooms and tomatillos, and subbed fajita veggies for beans and rice. The ish was delicious!

Bellies full of tacos, we walked up and down South Congress, browsing through open-air markets and shops. Austin is FULL of food trucks. This one in particular cracked me up; it says “Gluten allergy? Really? Cowboy up, you wussy!” Ah, gluten humor!

I’d heard from some readers that I just HAD to try Jo’s at some point, so we did!

The place is worth the hype—cool and delicious. Literally. Behold my iced coffee! By now the temp had really warmed up, so this was oh-so refreshing and needed. (So was sunscreen, which I forgot. Bad, Jenn.)

While there, we also did the total touristy Austin thing.

Like, maybe a few times…

After getting some sun (my poor white, white skin), we headed back to Ale’s place to chill. I had scored a bottle of Orin Swift F at Whole Foods earlier (hard for me to find in Kansas City!), so obviously that had to be popped.

Not the most usual pairing, but we decided to do brinner with it. Protein pancakes to be exact! Sheryl worked as Master Chef. (Will try to get the full recipe, ya’ll!) Simple ingredients always make for the best dishes…

A quick blend of the batter in the blender…

And then into the pan!

Meanwhile, while Sheryl has working her protein-pancake magic…

I was drinking wine and gheeking (har har!) over ghee. Seriously, clarified butter is amazing. It has a higher smoke point than plain butter so you can saute with it, and the dairy is removed so it’s more Paleo-friendly.

We ghee-d it up with some apples as a topping for our protein pancakes.

Once ready, we all sat down to a freakin’ fantastic brinner buffet of protein pancakes with toppings.

While all the toppings were good—sweet potato puree, almond butter, those apples with ghee—the raw coconut butter was my favorite. Obsessed.

We all played around with different flavor combinations and rolling them up like a big ol’ taco. (Clearly, I had a thing for tacos while in Austin—I ate them every darn day!)

Afterwards, more wine, good convo, music and snuggling with this guy. (Don’t tell Siena.)

So, yeah, suffice it to say that I’ll be coming back to Austin. Probably for more tacos!
What’s your favorite Austin cuisine? Have a favorite taco topping? —Jenn