Texas Fall/Winter thread!

[pacerron]

Bird, I'm guilty of putting tomato sauce or paste into my chili too, but I realize the pure bowl-o-red is without tomatoes or beans.

I put salt and pepper on my steaks after cooking and will use rubs for sirloins and such, but in the US Navy I used to eat a filet mignon at the Chief's Club in San Diego that was only flavored with the bacon wrap (to my knowledge), and it was my eye opening moment to start eating good steak with nuthin' added but salt/pepper. I buy rib-eyes at Sam's and have yet to get one that wasn't tender, juicy, and delicious with nice charred outer layer and rich red meat inside. Once or twice a year is all I splurge on that thought.

We got a 12 pound hunk of boneless something last spring and had it cut into 1" thick steaks, about a pound each.
Rubbed them with steak rub, let sit for a while and then did 3 minutes, turn 45 deg for another 3 minutes, flipped over and did the 3 +3 on the other side.
I really like the infrared gas grill as it has a very consistent 170 deg temperature.
Even got a little Taylor digital timer with a magnet on the back to stick on the grill, so I didn't mess up looking periodically at my wrist watch while talking :confused2:
My wife and I split one of those steaks about once a week. We don't eat near as much meat as we did when young.
Don't work near as hard, either.

 

[pacerron]

Any of you Texans like to ice skate?

If you do you better get here soon. We are supposed to get 6-8 inches of snow this afternoon and evening with wind of 40-50 mph.
That's why we have 3 foot plastic stakes stuck in various places including all along our 1600 foot driveway. With the drifting of snow
we often get that's the only way to find it.:hissyfit:

 

[pacerron]

I think all this talk of beans in chili is a red herring. Sure, you can put beans in chili just like you put chopped onions and grated cheese. What I've been surprised about is I've heard tomatoes mentioned a couple of times in this thread and true Texas chili has neither tomatoes nor beans. Now, you can fix it anyway that suits you, but a pure Texas bowl-o-red is made from chili paste and course ground beef, no beans nor tomatoes.

Jim,
This chili discussion started back a few pages with Ron Hall planning to stop at Wendy's on the way to Texas to get chili.
Up here, Wendy's chili is soup, quite watered down at that.
Then the homemade favorite ways of making it began to surface with some great variations.
I realize the "True Texas Red" you have been describing is not what we call chili soup with crackers up here.

When the lady of the house hollars, "Soups On" as my grandmother and mother always did, they check to see how many
hungry folks are there for supper and have to add liquid to the stock accordingly.

 

[Bird]

Jim, we, too, buy our ribeyes at Sam's Club in Denton, then I repackage them individually with the FoodSaver machine.

Ron, we have a Hamilton Beach LPG grill. My wife likes things cooked a bit more than I do, and a good big ribeye steak is enough for both of us, so I grill it about a half minute to a minute more on each side than you do.

 

[dave1949]

We don't know much about chilies or chili paste around here. With the growing number of people who char/toast various chilies on the grill, the grocery store does have a selection of fresh chilies in the summer. I wouldn't even know which is for what. I don't think they have ever been in danger of selling out. :laughing:

Growing chilies in a home garden here could be a challenge. Peppers are largely tropical or near-tropical plants as far as I know. Cool nights and a short growing season aren't the best thing for those plants. I have never attempted raising chilies.

Green peppers for salads grow okay here and mature fairly quickly. Anything with a maturity over 90 days, I don't even mess with.

 

[Western]

. Anything with a maturity over 90 days, I don't even mess with.

Now that's a place to have kids!! Have'em and 90 days there on their own:thumbsup:

Dave, I have only been to Maine once and I was little, but I do remember allot of big trees! I cant even remember why we went, but it seemed soooo different than the Chesapeake bay area at the time.

 

[sixdogs]

We don't know much about chilies or chili paste around here. With the growing number of people who char/toast various chilies on the grill, the grocery store does have a selection of fresh chilies in the summer. I wouldn't even know which is for what. I don't think they have ever been in danger of selling out. :laughing:

Growing chilies in a home garden here could be a challenge. Peppers are largely tropical or near-tropical plants as far as I know. Cool nights and a short growing season aren't the best thing for those plants. I have never attempted raising chilies.

Green peppers for salads grow okay here and mature fairly quickly. Anything with a maturity over 90 days, I don't even mess with.

dave1949--chilies do great in Maine. We used to start indoors, harden off like tomatoes and plant in late May. We hot capped on risky nights or covered with a bucket or small spare old tire. You can also put rocks up close around them at night to hold the heat. We grew them by the boatload and the plants were very prolific. Then just BBQ them and follow your nose.

dave--also, get yourself a couple of grow lights. Big help with seedlings.

 

[dave1949]

dave1949--chilies do great in Maine. We used to start indoors, harden off like tomatoes and plant in late May. We hot capped on risky nights or covered with a bucket or small spare old tire. You can also put rocks up close around them at night to hold the heat. We grew them by the boatload and the plants were very prolific. Then just BBQ them and follow your nose.

dave--also, get yourself a couple of grow lights. Big help with seedlings.

I may give it try this spring. I have a seed starting heat mat, tray covers and a big south window. Grow lights would definitely be an advantage as I have noted my seedlings can get leggy.

I was reading a web site about growing jalapeno peppers telling how they like 80-85 degrees as seedlings and 3-4 month maturity. That sounded iffy. One of those tented rack things with lights would be the ticket.

What pepper varieties did you raise?

 

[dave1949]

Now that's a place to have kids!! Have'em and 90 days there on their own:thumbsup:

Dave, I have only been to Maine once and I was little, but I do remember allot of big trees! I cant even remember why we went, but it seemed soooo different than the Chesapeake bay area at the time.

Ninety days to maturity kids would be a life-changer. :laughing:

Truly big trees are not that common here anymore. Most get logged off when they become marketable. Once in a while I'll see a log truck with a load of good-sized stems. Due to the shorter summers, trees here take longer to reach a given size than what you would see further south. When I visit home in Ohio, I am always noticing how huge the trees are lining the streets of small towns compared to here.

The really big trees here like most places I suppose, tend to be along the roadways. They get light, reduced competition, and usually grow leaning over the road reaching for the light. Once they get to any size, nobody with just a chainsaw wants to mess with them for fear of dropping them in the road or on the power lines. So, they grow until they get rotten inside and pieces start breaking off in a storm. Once the tree has taken your power out, it gets cut up by the power crews before they set the new pole. What a system. :laughing:

 

[sixdogs]

dave1949---on peppers, transplant earlier and harden off earlier. Not sure what we grew but it worked and I think we got the seeds either at Johnny's or that place in NB, Canada that I forgot the name of. They're the one that carry the Howard Dill giant pumpkin seeds and also have a shipping address out of Calais or nearby.