Comedy is when your social network sites are down.
Tragedy is when a legendary local barbecue joint catches fire.
Archive for the ‘Beef’ Category
Tragedy versus comedy.
Saturday, August 26th, 2017Headline of the day.
Thursday, August 3rd, 2017
Smoke, smoke…
Friday, July 31st, 2015I thought the barbecue wars were over. Or, at least, we were at the point where the Treaty of Franklin’s was being negotiated.
Nope.
(I think this link will bypass the paywall. If not, Austin Eater’s story is here.)
After action report: Spokane, WA.
Saturday, June 27th, 2015The Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association annual symposium was in Spokane this year.
More tags that I don’t get to use together enough.
Friday, April 3rd, 2015This would be the “Food->Beef” and “Austin->Politics” tags.
The council meeting was last night. And?
So we’ve gone from a code change to “starting a process to get input from stakeholders”.
“Recommendations will be made”. Nice use of the passive voice there.
I was actually in favor of the original version of the resolution, and I’m kind of sad to see it watered down. Why? Well, I’ve never seen an entire city council tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail…
Not this crap again.
Wednesday, December 31st, 2014…
Because of the quantity of meat stolen, [APD Detective Ricky] Jones said it was a safe assumption that Avery was selling the meat to a restaurant.
“I have yet to know a person who could eat that much meat in that short of a time,” Jones said.
I was going to offer to introduce Detective Jones to Lawrence, but “that much meat”, in this case, is entire shopping carts full. I can honestly say I have never seen Lawrence eat an entire shopping cart full of meat.
When he is successful, Avery would make off with upwards of $900 in meat in each theft, Jones said.
Previously on WCD. When they catch Avery, I will be interested in seeing if APD manages to track down his customers. Granted, it doesn’t seem like this is pants meat, but I’m sure the restaurants in question had no idea how long Avery and company were driving around with their stolen briskets.
Edited to add 1/5/2015: Avery is now in custody. The briskets are safe.
After action report: Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Monday, November 17th, 2014I’ve sort of hinted at this, but now the full story can be told.
Mike the Musicologist and I went on a road trip to Oklahoma the weekend of November 8th.
TMQ Watch: October 7, 2014.
Wednesday, October 8th, 2014Now that we’ve finished banging our heads against the wall (for reasons that will become apparent shortly), let’s jump into this week’s TMQ…
Ancient trade secret, huh?
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2014This is a couple of days old, but I was waiting to find a non-paywalled report.
Kreuz Market (yes, the barbecue place in Lockhart) is accusing a former employee of stealing trade secrets.
That’s pretty much the nut. The rest of the story is a decent overview of Kreuz Market history and expansion plans, probably worth reading if you don’t follow Texas barbecue obsessively.
(For my younger readers, subject line hattip.)
Bread blogging: experiment #1
Tuesday, January 14th, 2014This requires some background.
One of my Christmas presents was a box of smoked meat from Goode Company Barbecue in Houston. The meat itself has been very good so far. But included with the meat was a loaf of Goode Company’s Jalepeno Cheddar bread.
I was warned in advance: “This stuff is addictive. You’ll find yourself eating the whole loaf in one sitting.” Well, I wasn’t quite that bad (it took two sittings to finish the loaf), but it is very very good bread. I wouldn’t put it at the “crack cocaine” level; that’s reserved for Caramel deLites (or Samoas, depending on which part of the country you’re in). It is even better if you toast it and spread some of Trader Joe’s Pub Cheese on the toast, but that’s a digression.
(And by the way, Girl Scout cookie season is upon us again.)
Anyway, after I finished the loaf, I found myself saying the following: “Hey! I have a bread machine! How hard could it be to replicate their bread?”
Happy Bastille Day, everyone!
Sunday, July 14th, 2013Whether you’re eating Beef Bourguignon and drinking a good Burgundy, or storming a prison to get at the gunpowder inside, I hope your celebration is a happy one.
I heartily endorse this event or product. (#8 in a series)
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013This endorsement may be of limited utility to most of you, since Silvercar currently only operates in DFW and Austin. But I am hopeful that they will expand to other cities.
What are they? Silvercar is a car rental firm, but they’re different from your normal car rental company.
First of all, they only rent one type of car: silver Audi A4s. That’s not so bad, for reasons I’ll get into in a bit.
Second of all, their prices are reasonable: right now, they’re charging $75/day on weekdays and $50/day on weekends. That’s actually about what you’d pay for anything from Enterprise at the airport. (I just checked the Enterprise site: cheapest is $66.99 for a full-size car, going up to $127.56 for a “luxury” car.) That is with unlimited milage.
Thirdly, the experience is nowhere near as annoying as your average car rental agency is:
- They pick you up at the airport. You pick your car. You scan the QR code with the Silvercar app on your phone. You drive away with your rental. If you want, they’ll give you a briefing on how to use the navigation and audio systems. If you need help, they have some very pleasant people available to walk you through the process.
- Unlimited mileage.
- Fuel is charged based on what you actually use (at prevailing market rate) plus $5 if you don’t return the car with a full tank.
- They don’t get pushy about the “collision damage waver”. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they have such a thing.
- Those nice people they have on duty kept asking if we’d like a bottle of water or something while we picked up and dropped off the car. When’s the last time Hertz asked you if you wanted a bottle of water?
And the Audi A4s they rent are fun cars. Yes, they have Bluetooth. They also have WiFi. Seriously. You can use your rental car as a WiFi hotspot while driving. Most of this stuff is your basic Audi features, as far as I know, including the navigation and audio. But it is still really nice to have these features in a rental car, especially at this price.
I should note that I didn’t actually rent the car: Mike the Musicologist came up for a visit and handled the interaction with Silvercar. But I was along for the pickup and dropoff, and from what I saw it was the most friction-free car rental experience ever.
We drove the Audi down to New Braunfels Sunday night to have barbecue at the Cooper’s there (which I liked very much). Then we drove back through the city and stopped at the Buc-ees (yes, the one that won the “America’s Best Restroom” contest – and, yes, it is a darn nice men’s room). Monday, MtM and I drove down to Boerne and had lunch at a wonderful German restaurant called Little Gretel. I want to go back. Actually, what I want to do is take a long weekend, book a motel room in Boerne, and stay for a day or two, eating at Little Gretel, feeding the ducks in the creek across the street, and exploring the surrounding area.
We drove back to Austin by way of Fredericksburg (stopping briefly at the shop for the Nimitz Museum/Museum of the Pacific War) and the Audi never missed a beat. It felt like it was on rails even when I pushed it close to 100 MPH, and we got around 26 MPG for the entire Monday trip.
The one small issue I’d bring up with Silvercar, if they asked me, is that they only provide an iPod connector for the Audi MMI system. It’d be nice to have at least the Audi USB connectors as well. (I was unable to find a USB port in the car: the MMI system does have two SD card slots, though, as well as a SIM card slot.)
So, anyway, if you need a good rental car in Austin (or DFW), give Silvercar a try. And thanks to Mike for organizing this adventure.