Beer, Brisket, and Guns: God bless Texas

There are moments in my life where I take a step back and think, "Only in Texas!" Most of the time this is a good thing. This last weekend I found myself in a tent, staring at a stack of white plastic boxes.




Somehow my friend Kelly and I ended up as judges for the final Brisket competition at a local cook off.



Brisket is a big thing in Texas. It's rubbed and slathered with special herbs and sauces then cooked for hours and hours. The end result is a tender, juicy meat that you should be able to cut with a fork. If you use a knife it's not good brisket. It should also have a "smoke" ring around it showing the long hours it spent on the pit. This means all the tastings will be heavy on flavor so between every taste we needed to cleanse our palates:



Our team made the finals for brisket but no award. They did win 7th for Chicken and 2nd place (YAY!!) in Ribs. Perhaps now I should mention this is NOT a place for a Vegan. I didn't see a single vegetable the whole weekend.





SO??? You say. We have cookoffs where I live, too! What makes Texas special? Maybe all the other states celebrate their birthday EVERY YEAR. Maybe other states run their flag more often than the American (factoid: The Texas flag is the ONLY state flag allowed to fly at the same height as the American flag.) But do they also run flags for battles? The one on the bottom right is the Alamo, the one on the bottom left is from Gonzales and says "Come and Take It"



But even more importantly...do they hold auctions selling SHOTGUNS to a bunch of beer swigging, meat eating country boys?



It's no wonder people think they are in a foreign country when they visit Texas!