Confession:

The primary reason I have been so bad about posting is not that I haven't been cooking.  I'll admit, while we were getting our house ready to go on the market, I was not cooking nearly as often as I usually do.  But the real reason for my unblogginess was this: 

I take terrible food pictures.  

It's probably reasonable to blame maybe  20-30% of this on my camera, which is your basic point and shoot.  But I'd wager at least 70% of the fault is my own camera ignorance.  Yes, I could take a class or maybe even an online tutorial.  But I'd rather be eating.


So I made a decision: I"ll continue to post what I'm cooking (and eating), but please excuse me if I use photos from other sources most of the time.

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With that out of the way:

Patrick has been telling me for almost ten years that I don't know what good Tex-Mex food tastes like.  The one time I was in Texas I was underwhelmed by the place he took me (he swears they were having an off day).  So when Chuy's came to Nashville last year, I was not signing up to wait in an hour-plus line for Tex-Mex, no matter how good the creamy jalapeno dip might be.  


Now that there's a midtown location and Sunday evening mass gets out at 6:00 though ... Chuy's is right there, and let's face it: we've gone to all the other walkable restaurants after mass at least five times.  So tonight I caved.    And the verdict?  Not bad.   There were some parts that were pretty good.  We started with the queso - because who can say no to hot cheese and meat that you can spoon onto a chip?  Our waiter was eager to recommend a secret menu item: a steak enchilada with boom-boom sauce in combo with one of their chile rellenos.   The enchilada was pretty good; although the steak was not super flavorful, the boom boom was tasty.  The relleno on the other hand?  Awesome.  That was one spicy poblano, with really tender chicken inside and a smoky ranchero sauce outside.  That will definitely be a repeater.    


And the creamy jalapeno dip?  I'm not going to lie, I poured it all over everything on the plate.   But what I would really like to do is take a bowl of that over to Outback and pour it all over some bacon cheese fries.