I felt like Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places, when he's standing there in his filthy, bedraggled Santa Claus suit looking in the window of a fancy restaurant, where everybody's drinking champagne and smoking big cigars.

Night after night, I'd press my nose against the glass at Salty Sow, while they were in their soft opening run up toward opening their doors to the general public.

Then I'd shuffle off down the street, whistling an old hobo song, praying for the day that would come when the regular folk could stroll in the door and order up a plate of chow.

The wait is over. The Salty Sow is now open daily to the public at 4pm.

Remember when Reagan throatily ratcheted "THE SOW IS MINE" in that great scene from the Exorcist? That's what I'm hollering when I finally get some food from here.

Previous Salty Sow coverage http://www.scrumptiouschef.com/food/index.cfm/2012/5/10

From our archives. We attend, and judge, a lot of barbecue cook offs in Texas each year but only one is the ruler of our heart. The grande dame of them all: The Brady Texas Goat Cook Off. Hundreds of cook teams vector in on Brady on Labor Day week-end each year to compete, do a lot of drinking, and renew old bonds from the year before.

We wouldn't miss it for the world.

Poring over some old photos via our brand new software, we stumbled upon this old gem: A Texas girl hovering over the carcass of well-smoked goat.

This was from 2009. If you love barbecue and camaraderie, then pencil in Brady, Texas on your calendar for Labor Day week-end; it's one of the best barbecue parties you could ever hope to attend.

previous goat party tales http://chowpapi.com/wordpress/wordpress-2.8.6/wordpress

Texas Barbecue http://www.scrumptiouschef.com/food/index.cfm/Barbecue

We've been all over the Yassine Enterprises scandal since before the contretemps exploded into the public consciousness.

It's an incredibly juicy story with the Yassine family being implicated in murder, tax evasion, cocaine dealing, terrorism ties, rape allegations, money laundering, marine mammal abuse, indentured servitude, and just about any other foul behavior that humans choose to indulge in.

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Justice was dispensed yesterday in Williamson County. How many times has that sentence been written? Thousands.

Down a dark, county road northeast of Austin on April 17th of 2010 an ambush was set. Three thugs: Bobby Burks Jr, Veronica Evonne Ortiz, and Isabel Michelle Gonzales had hatched a plan to send the women into an Austin nightclub, choose a victim, lure him into the county, and rob him.

As these plans often do, the robbery turned into a murder.

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My friend and Scrumptiouschef contributor, Ron, is the biggest meat lover I know. He collects the stuff. Which means that every once in awhile we have to prowl through his vast freezer, sort through his custom cryo-vacced meat pouches and figure out what absolutely needs to be cooked.

Which meant that last night was steak night.

Pictured: 3 big New York Strip steaks, hot off a red-hot grill. Simply seasoned with salt and pepper, and rubbed with a little oil before flash cooking on a hot fire.

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SF Weekly has a great article about SceneTap, the now Austin-based company's spread to the Bay Area. Writer Erin Sherber, in an article titled "San Francisco Bars to Install Creepy Facial Detection Cameras Inside Venues", discusses the outfit's entrance into the city.

It's not coming without controversy.

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Tex-Mex cooking empress Sylvia Casares is nearly healed up after being gunned down in March of this year, allegedly by boyfriend Michael Warren.

After shooting Casares, Warren reportedly stole Casares SUV and made a dead run for the Louisiana border, apparently successfully returning to his hometown of Lafayette, before returning to Texas with the aid of family.

Bad move.

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We're down to the wire on our first app for iphone and android. It's titled "Austin Texas Barbacoa Taco Trail." The heavy lifting, visiting a ton of barbacoa joints in the Austin area, is largely done. Now we're in research mode on features that should be built into the app.

One reader posited that he loves users to be able to post comments and add content to the app. Check, it shall be done. The same reader loves free updates to be added to the app as warranted. Check, this too shall be done.

What are your favorite features on your restaurant apps you have loaded onto your smartphone?

Old stand-by.

Cherry Creek has been running strong down in South Austin since way back in the 90s, and they've come by their popularity honestly. They give you a heavy plate of chow, cooked to order, and usury is not part of their business model.

We discovered them around '96 or '97 when we were having a love affair with El Real, then, the best taqueria in Austin, now, a used car dealership. We had run by the little taco joint to get our fix of shrimp cocktail and they were closed. At loose ends, we wondered into Cherry Creek and were blown away that they offered fried green tomatoes.

New lover, same zipcode.

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While there is nothing I'd rather do than spend an entire day in the kitchen crafting a recipe into being, sometimes I have to bang out a quick lunch and get back to the affairs of the day.

Like today.

Multiple writing projects are bowing me to the ground right now so I barely have time to wolf down a sandwich and get back to the Underwood.

But I still have to eat well. I can knock out a tuna sandwich in no time flat so I hit the kitchen running full bore and 10 or so minutes later I was on the business end of the beauty in the picture.

Standard sides: Grippo Potato Chips, ice cold dill pickle and bottle of Topo Chico.

recipe: the best tuna salad you'll ever put in your mouth http://www.scrumptiouschef.com/food/index.cfm/2010/8/30