Who are Val and Thomas?

Hello!  This is Val, the female half of "...And that is what he/she said..."

     We started this blog after we realized we had a number of friends who would ask us about places to eat, liquor to purchase, or cigars to buy.  We discovered that we enjoy sharing our favorite places to eat and relax, and tend to send restaurant owners to each others' restaurants to try something new.  A few of our friends and a few owners of our favorite restaurants encouraged us to blog about our favorite places.

I am a 32 year old graduate student.  I have worked in a variety of fields, including market research, consumer ethnography, and education.  I grew up in Massachusetts and moved to Texas about 10 years ago.  I enjoy cooking, music, gardening, and art.  I have some dietary limitations - I do not like overly spicy foods and certain cuisines due to flavor combinations.  If it burns your tongue off, contains fennel or cilantro, or is overly bitter, I am not likely to enjoy it.  I love Japanese cooking, Italian food, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese for a short list.

Thomas is a 41 year old operations manager, who has lived in Texas his whole life.  He is a genius at logistics and organization, and enjoys art, music, reading, writing and cooking among other things. He loves spicy food from around the world, so we let him review all the set your mouth on fire food.  He is allergic to beef and seafood, so I get to review all of those (...oh how I suffer...) but loves Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Mexican and Italian food.

     We know small restaurants can end up struggling in the best of times, so we are doing our best to help them out.  Thomas and I prefer to dine at locally owned establishments.  It helps the local economy, the food tends to be better, and to be honest, we tend to get better service.  It is a lot of fun to talk to the owners and learn the stories of how their businesses got started.

What you will find in this blog:

A little bit of everything. We like a wide variety of things and while many of our tastes overlap, there is enough variation to allow both of us to express different points of view.  We will both write posts, and may occasionally invite a guest blogger to share their opinions, or a restaurant owner to share their story.

Preliminary categories of posts (subject to change)

1. Primarily we will be reviewing local restaurants.  For the most part we will not review national chains, unless we experience something truly amazing.  We will review smaller, local chains from time to time.  We are starting with our favorite local spots and fanning out from there to try something new every couple weeks.

2. Cigars - both of us love cigars, and have diverse tastes.  You will sometimes hear from Thomas about cigars, and will often hear from me, as I am relatively new to cigars, and am exploring the range of available flavors and types.

3. Liquor - We both enjoy fine spirits.  He loves beer, scotch, rum, gin and bourbon.  I love a good vodka, mead, and "girlie drinks".

4. Local establishments of varied sorts - we enjoy finding local businesses of all types, so if we try a local business, or go to a local museum or attraction, we will share our thoughts.

5. Travel - we love traveling around the beautiful state of Texas.  Favorite locations are Gruene and Fredericksburg.  As we explore sites and restaurants in our travels we will blog about it.

6. Miscellaneous topics about life - We will occasionally diverge from the main subject to share bits of our life and hobbies such as art and gardening.  We will also sometimes post links to interesting articles for events, restaurants, or hobbies to share with our readers.

We hope you enjoy our blog and look forward to your feedback!