Monthly Archives: February 2017

The time we cooked a real, old-fashioned pit barbecue.

Chuck Wagon Cooking

When our kids were half grown and in college, we found ourselves having rather large gatherings of hungry teenagers. To feed these crowds we decided to perform the ancient ritual of barbecue in a pit. I’m not talking about a “pit” welded up from a used propane tank, I’m talking about a hole in the ground. Those were drought years, and the “soil” behind our house is hard red clay, like a brick. We used the post hole auger to drill a series of holes, then rolled up our sleeves and with talache and shovel hollowed out a pit 4′ x 4′, by 4 foot deep. We had a supply of dead post oak trees, so we burned about a cord of it down to a gleaming bed of coals about two feet deep. We kept adding wood all afternoon. It was a magnificent conflagration. We had turkeys, wild hog haunches, some beef roasts, and even lamb and a javalina. Each chunk of meat was wrapped in heavy foil, then with burlap. Finally baling wire was twisted around the bundle like a Christmas present, leaving a loop sticking up to handle them. We put a sheet of corrugated roofing tin over the coals, then lowered the bundles onto it using a hayhook. Last, we covered the pit with more tin, and shoveled dirt over it until no smoke was seen escaping. 

The next evening, we exhumed “the evidence”. (We crossed our fingers) we removed the dirt and tin, and hooked out the bundles, setting them on a makeshift table of sawhorses and boards. After twenty-some- odd hours in the pit, the turkey was so done that if you pulled on a bone, it came out easily and was white and dry. The meat, on the other hand was moist, succulent and had a faint effluvium of oak smoke. The two most astonishing pieces were the lamb, which actually melted in your mouth before you could even chew it, and the Javelina which was sabrosa! Most folks told us Javelina was inedible, but I don’t believe it anymore. It’s a true South Texas delicacy. This may not be a method you’d want to use for everyday cooking. But it was worthwhile for the occasion. My advice is not to do it in a drought year, and maybe hire a contractor with a jackhammer and a backhoe to dig your pit!

Giving Directions Country Style

Philosophy, Stories

There is a well-known old Louisiana Hayride routine that goes something like this. Tourist asks hillbilly, “how do I get to Little Rock? “After a series of “smart” answers Mr. tourist says, “you don’t know much, do you.” Whereupon the former retorts “I know I ain’t lost!” Country folks often have interesting if not peculiar ways of giving directions. We were in Louisiana some years back, looking for a friend’s horse operation. The “local” said “Go down to the Dummyline Road, turn right on the Chicken Farm road and it’s the first lane on your right.” None of the roads had signs with these names on them, you were just supposed to know, the local folks all did! Then there’s the Texas style “you go down this road about a mile and a half (it’s actually four) (and it feels like ten if you’ve never been there) and when you get to the end of the oil top (That’s pavement) there’s a white house with a red roof, where the black dog used to be. Well, you don’t turn there… ” Or, “at the fork in the road take the more used one, not the one with the grass down the middle.”

Where most folks would use terms like almost or approximately, In the country you hear “Purt nat but not plumb,” “purt’n’ly”, “near about” and “Plum Nelly”. But the all-time champion was the fella who said “go down the highway to the Red Hollow Road and take a left. No, that don’t work. OK, go down Frenstat road to 127 and turn… No, that don’t work neither.”

He paused and thought for a minute, then said, 

“Well, you just can’t get there from here!”

The Homegrown Surprise 

Stories, Training Horses

The sweetest surprise for a colt starter is to find a colt who is smart, willing to learn and doesn’t buck! This week that surprise was a homegrown Azteca filly named, apparently inappropriately, Habanera. (Named for a very “hot “chili pepper) we might ought to have named her Sugar Bear! Her daddy was our Lusitano,Trovador, and her mama a quarter horse mare named Jodi, who traced her lineage to such famous cutting cutting horses as Son’O’Sugar, and PocoTIvio , with some Driftwood and Hancock thrown in. Jodi’s daddy was called “Bud” and he was the nicest, calmest stallion I’ve ever ridden or known. He lived with Charles and Kelly Prude, in Fort Davis, Texas. When Habanera was born she was plain brown with no more white markings than seven and a half hairs of white on her forehead, which was wide, flat and handsome. She grew up out on the range, but always came to be petted and scratched when we went to that pasture. Now a fine stout bay mare we’re starting her under saddle, I suppose she’s been ridden a dozen times. Much of the time I have to devote to “outside” horses, so she’s had intermittent education at best. I was loping circles with her the other day when I noticed Sallie trying to move a group of cows. The cowhounds( catahooligans) had them bunched, and with only one horse she couldn’t get them to budge. So, I rode this green filly out of the pen to help, her first time outside the round pen. I guess It’s just a cowboy thing, I just shrugged my shoulders and said “well Habanera, let’s go help!”

This should have been a formula for “disastrophe”.The filly walked out of the pen, through the arena, and out to the field with bawling cows, and baying hounds as if she were going to Sunday school! The filly showed no hesitation as she pitched right in to help move the cows, sometime loping and stopping to turn a cow. It was as if I were mounted on a twelve-year-old ranch horse. Sometimes when you breed you get sevens and elevens, sometimes you throw snake-eyes, so when you get a good one you celebrate! This time a good daddy, a generous grandpa and a fine mama produced a princess! She sure ain’t leaving here!