Houston: A food dairy...

If you didn't know this already, my work takes me to the Houston area of Texas often.  I go about as far west as Schulenburg, TX (about halfway between Houston and San Antonio), east as far as Beaumont (practically the border of Louisiana), far south as Galveston and as far north as the Livingston to Jasper, TX area.

The one thing about Houston is it's proximity to the Gulf where fresh seafood is in abundance.  If you order any seafood you can tell the difference from seafood purchased in areas like Chicago.  It's very fresh. So the one thing helps me deal with the travel of the job is knowing I can get some wonderfully delicious seafood.  It's like an "attaboy" for doing a good days work.  

So I thought I would do a food photo montage of what I had to eat this week. 

While in Beaumont, TX I went to a restaurant called Floyd's.  There I had fried catfish and sauteed vegetables. I opt out of the french fries to save my calories and fat intake.

While there I noticed this different hot sauce.  The one thing which brought it to me attention was the color.  It was so dark,unlike most hot sauce which looks like the one on the right.  I tried both.  The dark one was so much  more spicy but GOOD!  I loved it! 

Tuesday while in Houston, I ate at a restuarant called "Fish Place, All you can Eat" for lunch.  It's a franchise which I'm beginning to notice in the area.  It must be new.

I ordered cCajun tilapia with sauteed green beans, red beans and rice, garlic toast and a remoulade sauce.  It was very good.  I think this was my favorite meal of the week.  It was less than $10 too!  Another visit to try something different is definitely on my list for my next visit.

That evening I drove to Galveston for the next day work.  The restaurant of the evening was called Casey Gaido's.  There are actually two restaurants.  One called Gaido's and the other called Casey's.  The locals explained Gaido's was more upscale dining and Casey's was the casual restaurant.  Of course the upscale place was more expensive but they also told me it was the same food. LOL.  Anyway I had this wonderful platter called Casey's Shrimp Platter, but first came this delicious salad with a pecan honey vinaigrette. 

 

There were four different shrimp on the platter which included fried shrimp, grilled shrimp, shrimp stuffed with seafood and boiled shrimp.  Also there was a Cajun rice too.  It was good!

On Wednesday for lunch I had went to a restaurant which was recommended to me.  It was called "Fish Tales" and it's located in Galveston, TX.  For lunch I ordered the shrimp and andouille gumbo and sauteed vegetables for lunch.  My gumbo wasn't impressive at all.  It didn't have enough flavor for my taste.  Quite bland.  My most disappointing meal of the week hands down.

For dinner on Wednesday I went to a place called Benno's.  I ordered a simple fried shrimp dinner.  It was delicious! I ate all the shrimp and one of the hush puppies.  I didn't bother with the french fries.  LOL

Cinco de Mayo was a fun day for me.  I went to a chain restaurant called Taco Cabana.  It's one of my favorite casual chain restaurants in Texas.  The tortillas are homemade and the food is well seasoned and very reasonably priced.  My usual meal is the steak fajita tacos with guacamole and chips but for the celebration I had 3 chicken flautas, borracho beans, spanish rice and a scoop of guacamole.  Yummy! Oh there was a dollop of sour cream too but I decided against eating that to cut back on unnecessary calories. LOL  I also had sides of pico de gallo and salsa verde.  Ooowee!  It was good!

OK my last dinner in Texas I decided to go to Chik-Fil-A to get my banana pudding milkshake.  It was so good.  I also got a char-grilled chicken sandwich too.  Now in the Chicagoland area we just got two Chik-Fil-A restaurants.  But they don't carry the banana pudding milkshakes.  So I make a point of having one every time I go to Texas. It's another special treat! LOL

OK now you would probably think I was done for the week right?  Well I'm not.  Tee Hee!  It just so happened the vending machine was just outside my hotel room.  I took a look and noticed something I had never seen before.  Check it out!

If you haven't figured it out already I love banana pudding!  But it has to be good banana pudding.  I'll also try anything that's had bananas in it since it's my favorite fruit. LOL.  But I had to purchase these to try them out.  So I bought them in the evening and I didn't want to ruin my daily calorie allowance since I've been doing so well.  So I decided to eat them the next day. 

For breakfast I ate these cupcakes.  First of all they were just OK.  Banana flavored cake with cream filling just like the Hostess Chocolate cupcakes except it had the banana frosting with the crumbled vanilla wafers on top.  I wish they were a little more moist but overall they were just OK.  At 200 calories per cake I don't know if I would want to waste any of my 1,794 daily calorie allowance on them again. LOL.  But not bad.

Don't worry I do have breakfast but those are usually uninteresting meals so I didn't bother.  But while in Galveston I didn't have an opportunity to eat in the morning because I was always running a bit late. LOL!

That was fun!  I hope you enjoyed looking at the photos.  There's more to come!

Bon Appetit'