2011 BBQ Crawl

On Saturday, August 27th, with a forecast of 109° F we set off on our 3rd annual Central Texas BBQ crawl.

The locations: Snow's, Franklin, Smitty's, and Cooper's
Distance driven: ~380 miles
Funds expended: ~$170
Start: 6:30am (meet in Round Rock at 7:15)
Finish: 7:15pm

My apologies for the pictures, they were taken with my phone and edited only slightly. I'd like to take a nice camera but the grease..... This is a BBQ crawl after all.

Snow's - Lexington TX
http://www.snowsbbq.com/

This was my second trip to Snow's and the food lived up to the 2 year old memory. BBQ at 8:45am is an experience that I think more people should experience. This is a great way to start a day and aside from the drive this is a great place. My brisket was excellent but a few of our party complained that they got a dry portion. The pork loin and the sausage were the stars here and probably the best examples of those meats all day. They have a little bit of seating inside but since it was so early we chose outdoors for more space.


Franklin BBQ - Austin TX
http://franklinbarbecue.com/

We got to Franklin between 10 and 10:30am. The line was already frighteningly long and it was approaching 100°. We spent 2 hours in line and ended up sitting outside where it was shaded but still fairly miserable. The brisket more than made up for the wait and the sausage was also very good. One of our party got the last 4 pork ribs and reported that they were very good. I can't say enough about the brisket here. It's juicy and has a condensed beef flavor that I am not used to getting in this cut of meat, and a perfect bark. The owner here is a true artisan, he just needs more seating, more meat and faster service.


Smitty's Market - Lockhart TX
http://www.smittysmarket.com/

Smitty's is in Lockhart and the food is good, the unfortunate thing about a BBQ crawl is that sometimes the order of the visits puts a location at a disadvantage. Following Franklin is tough for 2 reasons. First is the fact that noone lives up to Franklin's Brisket and second after the sun stroke inducing wait at Franklin, most weren't even hungry enough to order much real BBQ and settled for ice cream and drinks. The food was all good and I still think Smitty's is an excellent BBQ experience but their execution is just not up to the comparison in this years crawl. They were the biggest disappointment.

Cooper's BBQ - Llano TX
http://www.coopersbbq.com/

Our car was the only one to make it to Llano because of some nonsence about taking a wrong turn (in a car with ATLEAST 4 GPS units going to a place that they have been to before). We got there after 6pm and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they still had pork chops and even some lamb chops left. The brisket here was good but again after Franklin... well i think i have beat on that enough. The star here for me is always the pork chop, they are huge and juicy and the black pepper and salt crust is excellent. The lamb chop might even give the pork chop a run for the best thing I had here but pork is king and that settles any confusion about what is best to get at coopers. Their line was short and their service fast, their dinign area wasn't huge but its bigger than anyone but Smitty's on this crawl and they also give away free beans which would come into play on a normal trip where space in the stomach isn't at a premium.

The Conclusion....
It's hard to not pick Franklin as the best BBQ experience because their attention to detail and raw skill in their products is by far the best of the day but the wait in the sun and then not having a very comfortable dining experience thanks to the same sun leaves me with no choice but to say that Cooper's In Llano Texas is the best all around BBQ experience in Central Texas.

Here is a report card I made up to help justify my decision. I am a little disturbed because it shows Smitty's as a second best choice and I would have to go with Franklin or Snow's as a second on pure emotion.

Maple Syrup makes ticks almost tolerable

No I don't mean to eat.. though if I had to choose a topping....

We have been enjoying a few days of nice weather for the end of our stay in NH. Michelle got to get out into the woods for a short hike with her sister Eran and Eran's boyfriend who came up to NH to visit for a couple of days. Was fantastic seeing them and refreshing to get someone to come see us instead of us driving 2500 miles to then have to drive 200 more just to see people. Earlier in the week Michelle's brothers also came up to visit for a couple of days and that was a nice visit too, so this wasn't a unique visit but rare. You might think I am being a bit bitter here given that everyone is busy and this is MY vacation but we invest a lot to get into the area and it is sometimes disappointing when people can't (and understandably so) arrange to travel a little bit to spend some time with us. Times are hard and we understand that but taking a look just at miles traveled... The math supports my position of disappointment and bitterness to a point. A point I am not overly invested in and like I said it was nice to get to see people and get a bit of a visit on my own turf even if it is very boring (pretty though) turf. (Guess i should get off the soapbox now... it is so handy though).

While Eran was here, we were out one night strolling around the family property while various members of the party were inhaling toxins from major tobacco manufacturers (not allowed in my personal habitats, sorry is just how it is) I ended up with 13 ticks on me. I HATE TICKS! (The Tick is a totally different thing and anyone angry at me for hating on something that is so funny has never had one of these little freaks of nature on them) I mean I REALLY hate these damn things. The ticks removed and still feeling totally covered in them we showered and headed to The Muddy Moose in North Conway for dinner. It was great, they cooked my steak exactly how I ordered it and the ribs Michelle got were very good too. The next morning we headed up to Monroe's Family Restaurant in Carrol NH for a great breakfast and to say goodbye to our visitors (we were very close to the ONE major highway in NH this far north and it was convenient for them to head back towards Boston from there). Was a nice visit.

Today, we went up to see my cousin Jeff Parker and his wife Maria Neal at their 'off the grid' house in progress. Both Michelle and I were blown away by how scaled back Jeff and his wife have gotten themselves living and I think if we could afford it we'd start in on building a very similar (though perhaps different building style, we have long wnated a log cabin) house in a close by location. We were and still are very jealous of their amazing house and property sitting in the middle of one of the most wonderful forests that NH has to offer. Getting to see Jeff and Maria was great but we had a secondary motive for visiting them. Jeff makes the absolute best Maple Syrup I have ever had and I have sampled many. Our supply of the good stuff was dangerously low when we left TX but upon return we will be bringing back plenty for the next year or so. If nothing else, obtaining a gallon of NH's finest Maple Syrup made the tick encounter (even though unrelated) completely tolerable.. I think. *twitch*

Vacation Issues but dogs make work better!

Our trip to New England has been good overall, but it has not been 100% satisfactory. The weather has been much more like what I would expect from April (cold and wet) and our RV has had a few small issues.

Issues: I am going to treat this like a laundry list of complaints.
1) the weather just plain sucks, we haven't been able to spend more than a few minutes outside of the camper because its cold and rainy.
2) The microwave/convection oven broke lose from it's mount on the drive up here and I had to fix it so we could use it. Luckily nothing actually broke it was just that the utterly brilliant mouth breather who put the screws in securing the top to the cabinetry thought that screws going between the cabinet (yes between not INTO) and a piece of wood stapled (not screwed, stapled. I pushed these back in wish finger pressure) to the back side of the cabinet top, would hold. It didn't.
3) Did i mention the rain? Coming from Austin now rain is a welcome sight, even if its to much in a short period of time we always need more water in our lakes(rivers with dams, there are no natural lakes in central TX but that is another topic for another day) and streams. This is a bit much though.
4) The heatpump/Air conditioner unit is having issues working correctly. We do have a propane furnace for when it gets below the heat pumps operating temperature but its may, that should be in some of the time, not most every day. So we have heat but when we get home the RV needs warranty work already. Disappointing but not unexpected when you buy something "Made In America" I am unsure why as a nation we put up with half ass workmanship for top dollar. There are a lot of people out of work right now and it seems to me like it would be a good time to clean house and make sure that everyone who DOES have a job takes some pride in the final product they are producing, I know that if I started slacking off and producing crap at work I'd be replaced in a heartbeat by 3 recent college graduated from Brazil or India. I hate offshoring work but it certainly does make me conscious about the quality and quantity of my work output. Maybe it's time we legalize some of the Mexican labor in the country and train them to do automotive work and let the lazy ass bottom feeders (this include the plant managers who are more concerned with their bonus than the quality of their workers output btw) pick lettuce for a couple dollars an hour for awhile. The end product might not be anymore reliable but it would certainly be cheaper to produce and thus more accessible to the folks who do work hard to buy luxury items. Okay that was a rant I didn't mean to go on but there it is...
5) have I mentioned that it's been raining?

Now off to the positive side of things. Another list because I am apparently into lists today.
1) lobster rolls are awesome, expensive these days but awesome.
2) Having a dog snuggle your feet while you work makes every work day better.
3) Even if it is rainy the rolling hills and little mountains of New England are beautiful and the air is cleaner.
4) Dunkin' Donuts beats the snot out of Krispy Kreme (if you don't agree, you are wrong and you know it even if you aren't willing to admit it to yourself)
5) Why can't someone in Texas learn how to make good Pork fried rice and chicken fingers with duck sauce? It's obtainable here even in my small valley in the middle of NH.
6) Rain is a wonderful thing (in moderation)


Okay, thats all I have for the moment, some ranting and a few things I have been enjoying. The vacation has been good and the ability to work remotely is just awesome. I love that my job allows me these kinds of freedom. IBM has grown as a company in many ways over the years and adapted, i can't say that I always agree with some of the changes but I am certainly a very happy IBMer right now.

Tchau!

A trip!

All 2 of my readers already know this but here goes, to summarize recent events.

We went to the Noble Pig a lot. Ate a lot of TexMex. Cooked at home very little. Went to a couple of Noble Pig Sandwiches Dinners. Went on a precrawl BBQ crawl that was really a full on crawl but if you don't understand that well, we went to 4 BBQ restaurants in one day (for those of you not in TX a a BBQ restaurant isn't hotdogs and hamburgers its a type of food that is generally smoked slowly over a long period of time resulting in meat ambrosia). Had a BBQ. Signed up for what amounts to a second mortgage.

We bought a Class C RV a few weeks back and have driven it to NH on our first real vacation in a couple of years. The drive to NH usually takes about 3 days and covers about 2100 miles. This time it took 4.5 and was closer to 2500 because the middle of the country got flooded and with the RV I decided to stay on major highways as much as possible. We got to see way more of Arkansas and Missouri than I had planned. The drive went well otherwise though the roads in Indiana are probably the worst I have driven on in a long time considering we were on a major Interstate highway. The RV gave us the opportunity to stop a lot more for rest and we did spend 3 nights sleeping in it along the way. That made for a much safer drive in many ways but I still pushed way to hard a couple times and pushed Michelle and myself into a state of being so tired we were ready to strangle each other over the dumbest things. Food was a lot more healthy but still could have been better. Only actually ate fast food once though there was some snacking on Munchos that was probably a bad idea, the second bag of them was definitely a bad idea.

Now that we have been at my parents house for a couple days and have recovered it's time to start to get back to my normal foodie ways and hit a few restaurants in the area and report back on them eventually but it will likely be a somewhat subdued food adventure series because we just paid for gas at $4+ a galllon over 2400 or so miles for a vehicle getting between 7 and 8 miles per gallon. Some cheaper food is likely to be the price of driving a small house across the country. Luckily cheap doesn't always mean bad or even not interesting. I suspect we will be searching out some inexpensive but very fresh and tasty seafood very soon.

For those of you who haven't already found it Michelle is keepping a much more detailed and better written blog at: miceblank.blogspot.com

Persian, Birthday, A noble Tragedy, Korean and Hatch!

The weekend started off nicely with a dinner at Shandeez Grill (http://www.shandeez.com/) after Michelle went Climbing for a little while at Main Event's Rock Gym. The foos was excellent (if a bit on the cool side for grilled meats). We got a family platter that was supposed to be for 3 (they did not have one for 2). Will definitely be going back to explore their menu further.


(from their menu: SHANDEEZ FAMILY PLATE #2 [Serves three]
Combination of skewer of chicken kabob, 2 ground beef kabob, and steak kabob charbroiled, served with grill Tomatoes and fluffy basmati rice [white, Baghali Polo])


The next morning we got up early enough to make breakfast at The Noble Pig. We don't do this every weekend but It's a good way to start a Saturday. We had been warned that they got a writeup in the local paper and were extremely busy Friday but we went anyhow. At 10am they weren't busy at all and we got a leisurely breakfast and conversation with the staff. We had sent a message to a friend suggesting she meet us but she was to lazy to be awake at that awful early hour. Here is the blog post mentioned Tragedy. When this friend did finally drag herself out of bed later in the day The Noble Pig was closed... because they ran out of bread. Apparently they got busy after we left. Score one for being out of bed before noon!


Fried Egg potato and cheese sandwich with Sausage and a side of bacon. (I added the bacon as a bday present to myself!)

Saturday evening we have standing plans with friends that range from Pizza (most of the time) to Thai or Korean. This week we went to Korea House (http://www.yelp.com/biz/korea-house-restaurant-and-sushi-bar-austin) and had a great meal including sushi and Korean bbq. An excellent day!

The weekend feeding frenzy was capped off by the oh so usual but not mundane trip to Chuy's (http://www.chuys.com/) for a large dose of Hatch Green Chile with friends. As usual the food was good but we sat on the patio and it was really quite cold. They have heaters and curtains but their patio is designed such that the curtains leave a huge gap for cold air to come in. Did not make for a pleasant meal in some ways but there was Hatch so it can be overlooked.

I couldn't decide what to eat so I got Soup and an appetizer plater.

Review: The Noble Pig

The Noble Pig has been a destination for breakfast and lunch for Michelle and I for the past few months. We go there on average about once a weekand have gotten a chance to chat with the staff quite a bit. Their friendly attitude is outstanding.

As the name would imply, most of the sandwiches have a pork theme. The signature sandwich "The Noble Pig" is so amazingly flavorful my biggest complaint is that it might have to many meats on it. The BLT is not your typical crunch back lettuce and tomato but a gourmet sandwich on homemade bread with fresh tomatoes lettuce and 16 hour slow smoked pork belly. The meat reminds me more of a smoked brisket in cut and texture than bacon, but the flavor... This is probably the best sandwich on the lunch menu that involves pork. The other gem in my mind there is the deviled egg sandwich. They toast their homemade bread and serve you deviled eggs as the main ingredient. As much as I love their lunch menu I generally get breakfast. There is nothing special about putting together a fried egg, cheese potato and sausage sandwich unless you do it the way that they do at the Noble Pig. This is the best breakfast sandwich I have had. Michelle usually gets their oatmeal for breakfast which again sounds mundane until you dig in and taste the spectacular blueberry compote that they serve on top of the mug of oatmeal and the 5-spice twist in the oatmeal itself with a little bit of melting butter is fantastic.

Their soup changes as they run out and have to bring in a new pot so I can't tell you much about what there might be there at any given time but so far I have to say that the soups are amongst the best I have had in Austin. I was particularly in love with the tomato basil that was available on out last visit.

If you find yourself in North Austin and hungry this would be my first stop. They are a bit out of the way and hard to find thanks to a couple of trees in the small parking lot but the hunt is well worth it.

One more thought before I save this... 16 HOUR SMOKED BACON!!!!!!!!!!!

Been awhile...

While making dinner last night I realized that I was making the same recipe (sort of) as my last blog post and couldn't remember when that post had gone up. I put off looking it up because I was busy and as usual a bit lazy. I promptly then forgot about it in after dinner digestion bliss from a very satisfactory version of the Puerco Guisada, tortillas, chips and various salsa dips. On the way to work today I thought about it again and decided to check it out when I got to work. Gah! that was last March! I am not a big fan of people updating their blogs just because it's time to update... but this is pushing the limit and makes my blog stale. Instead of posting a rehash of the last recipe (which wasn't exactly the same but was very good) I thought I would bring the blog up to date with happenings from the past 10 months... New Job (same company).. interesting work yay! New Mexico visit. Lots of work. Cancel trip to NH/Mass due to conflicting work schedules between Michelle and myself. Job still interesting. Michelle's mom visits for Thanksgiving. Did I mention there was a lot going on with work? Xmas in New Mexico. Hmm that pretty much covers all the highlights. I also cooked a few meals in there and went to a few great restaurants. Here is a partial list of the restaurants in no order other than what my foggy brain can dredge them up so I guess maybe a slight bias to how memorable.

Austin Area:

The Noble Pig

The Emerald

The Noble Pig

O'Leander Cafe (they just reopened over the holidays, yay!)

The Noble Pig

Fogo De Chao

The Melting Pot

The Noble Pig

Kerby Lane Cafe

The Noble Pig

Albq. NM area:

The Range

The Standard Diner

La Hacienda

Twister's

Flying Star Cafe

Hmm did I mention The Noble Pig in Austin TX on 620 a little north of Anderson Mill? Perhaps that will be my first review.