The Eyes of Texas are Upon You….

The University of Texas was our kickoff to the College Football Tour of 2009, and what better way to get the season started than to watch the Longhorns stomp one of their perennial early season patsies.

In fact, it had been over two years since my inaugural trip to Texas Memorial Stadium and I was curious to see how some of the newly completed renovations looked. The answer was simple: enormous. This place has become absolutely enormous, and with capacity now over 101,000 you can pack a lot of burnt orange into the place. The beefed up capacity (101,096 on this night) coupled with the “Godzillatron” (the 134ft behemoth HD scoreboard-formerly the largest HD screen in the world) make this place a truly imposing facility. The words “everything’s bigger in Texas” never rang more true.

The game itself was, shockingly, never really competitive from the start. Louisiana Monroe was expectedly physically outmatched at nearly every position, readily evident as the Longhorns imposed their will on both sides of the ball. Despite the disparity, Heisman hopeful Colt McCoy managed only two touchdowns against a foolish interception. While LAM had a few periodic outbursts to keep the 2^nd string Texas defense honest, it was never really a game unless you count keeping it within the 34 point spread “competitive”.

The lopsided matchup turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however, because after a few quick beers in the UT Alumni center during halftime, we returned to the stadium midway through the 3^rd quarter to discover a glut of empty seats. Evidently some of the diehard Texas fans were more interested in getting a jumpstart on traffic than staying until the last whistle. As is usually the case, the most “ardent” fans always occupy the first and second rows, and we were able to slide ourselves into a vast desert of empty seats that put us close enough to make out the waist size on Mack Brown’s khakis. We enjoyed the rest of the game in front row seats right behind the Longhorn bench!

Final score: Texas 59 Louisiana Monroe 20

Hook em!

Special thanks to our friends Jared and Kimberly for showing us what Longhorn Football is all about!

Snow's BBQ

There are precious few things that I like to wake up at 6:30 in the morning for. There are even fewer that don’t involve massive piles of eggs and generous slabs of bacon. And despite my undying devotion to it, BBQ isn’t on that exclusive list of things I routinely wake up at sunrise for. Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, TX shattered all of that.

For those of you unaware, Snow’s BBQ was recently rated the #1 BBQ joint in Texas by Texas Monthly Magazine. In this upset for the ages, Snow’s usurped such perennial favorites as Kreuz Market and Smitty’s Market in Lockhart, long considered the stalwarts of true Texas cue’.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/magazine/bbq

Adding to the lore of Snow’s, the place is only open on Saturday’s, and they typically sell out of food before 10am. As if that weren’t enough, Lexington is about 60 miles from anywhere you might be inclined to visit. As such, any visit to Snow’s requires some dedication to BBQ, and can be considered a venerable notch on the belt of any BBQ aficionado.

http://www.snowsbbq.com/

I’m here to tell you first hand, this is the best brisket I have ever had in my life. Period.

Many other BBQ websites can do a far better job of going into excruciating detail explaining why. Brisket can be the most difficult of meats to smoke properly and consistently. This brisket stands above the rest because every single piece is uniformly perfect. Suffice to say, this brisket is otherworldly out of the smoker, and was still amazing eaten as a leftover, 5 hours later and cold. It is that good.

Of course both their ribs and local homemade sausage are first class as well, and on par with anything you will find at the traditional BBQ powerhouses. But if you only had stomach space for one protein here, the brisket is a runaway winner.

Here we are with Tootsie herself, the 70 year old pitmaster who has been smoking some of the best BBQ in Texas for almost 50 years.

I’ve eaten more than my fair share of BBQ in Texas, so trust me when I say it’s worth your time and effort to get to Snow’s, and I would happily roll out of bed at the crack of dawn to join you.