La Casa Mágica del Pan

There's a place in town, near a fabulous outdoor market (more on that another time!), which has got to be one of the best bakeries around. It's called El Bolillo (The Bread Roll) which is as great a case of understatement as I have ever heard. I gave it my own name, in the post title above, with the help of Google Translate - I can't be sure it's grammatically correct, but either way it's more accurate.

It's filled with racks and shelves (in gorgeous wooden cupboards) loaded with every baked good you could ever imagine, and a few you never could, and customers walk about and fill their trays using big silver tongs (see them on the chair?).

 You can pause for a bit at the back and watch the fresh new plain rolls going into or coming out of the ovens..

 
...or watch the tortilla machine in action, with little blobs of dough flattened and cooked almost instantly and pushed out the end, or you can admire the made-to-order extravaganzas for weddings or quinceañeras.
 

The first time we went we were a bit shy, and just observed; the next time we dived in and selected a trayful of random goodness; when we brought it to the cashier I thought we'd pay at least $15, but it was about $5. We wandered up the street munching :)

Crawfish Boil

My apologies for such a long absence from this blog. Busy-ness at home and work, a "new" church, and a malfunctioning computer are all contributing factors... But now I'm going to try and get caught up... we'll see. 

Starting easy with a pic of a very Texas tradition - a crawfish boil we went to with Rebecca. Money to charity, and you eat a great big pile of crawfish! Not my favourite thing but interesting and fun and worth doing just for the experience.

The video below isn't very good - I had been hoping that the band would be more audible as they were pretty classic - but it gives a bit of an idea of the atmosphere (and the size of the event! We could see them cooking the crawfish from where we sat and they were being brought in in enormous vats...)