BBQ- Part II (the dry meat)

Yesterday we went to Louie Mueller's (pronounced Miller's) for authentic Texas bbq. Now that I've seen this place, I understand that Rudy's from the other day is a chain restaurant! I'm glad that I got to experience REAL TX bbq.

The atmosphere... messy but that's what it's supposed to be! The walls are covered in soot! There are business cards tacked to the walls and they are black and curled. The windows in the roof are cracked and black. Loved it. Oh, and the smell was divine.

We walked in through a rickety screen door and served ourself some ice and lemonade. They also had sweet tea which I couldn't bring myself to try. There was a cool drink though, by filling your cup up with lemonade and sweet tea together.... the Arnold Palmer drink was born! That sounded kind of good, but I stuck with regular, delicious, tart lemonade. Yum. It was the perfect compliment. I didn't even miss my Mtn. Dew (which is saying A LOT!).

The food... there's not much to say here... but... there is nothing like it. The brisket was soooooooooooooooooo tender, the blackened skin was salty and smoked to perfection, and the meat had so much flavor. Again, Heaven. I'd never had little pieces of meat! In Oregon you get a steak, or a big hunk of pot roast, but here you get little chunks of different kinds of meat. Awesome.

The other meat that we tried was a sausage. I was thinking breakfast sausage type links, BUT NO! Again, it was like Chorizo, but it's more than that. A little spicy, a lot of deliciousness, and it was huge like a big sausage. Mmmmmmm.

Finally the sides. There was no creamed corn, much to my dismay. We had beans which were really spicy! But the potato salad. Ohhhhh the potato salad. It was mashed-ish and had mustard based sauce. And no onions! I love that Texas potato salad has NO onions! That's a great way to ruin potato salad.

In all, my BBQ experience was perfection. I haven't had much smoked meat in my middle-length life, which is such a disappointment. And where am I going to get BBQ in Oregon? Seriously! I will be on the lookout, but I won't be holding my breath.... which means that I WILL HAVE TO COME BACK TO TEXAS!

Round Rock, TX- Part 1 THE FOOD

What can I say about the food in Texas. It's got a stigma all of its own, and it's true! When I thought of Texas I thought of Mexican food and BBQ. Bam! I was right! Those two things were totally different than I had expected or had ever even experienced.

#1- BBQ. More importantly Rudy's BBQ. When we walked in we were given nicknames. I've never been so proud to be called a ROOKIE. They gave us samples of their wares so we would know what to buy. Moist (brisket), hottie (jalapeno sausage), smoked turkey, lean (dry brisket), and creamed corn (a ton more on this delicious side dish later.

Holy cow--- I can't EVEN begin to describe this experience. BBQ is truly Heaven on Earth. We sat at long camp tables and ate family style. The table setting was almost as good as the food! It was a square of waxed paper, a school cafeteria style boat for the screamed corn, and plastic utensils. Oh and paper towels to hose off afterward.

Now the food. First the creamed corn. It wasn't like any kind of canned, Oregon style creamed corn. It was full kernels of corn in a white sauce. I googled the sauce online and it seems like it's cream cheese, heavy cream, and spices. It was DIVINE! The corn was sweet, almost as sweet as Eastern Oregon sweet corn at the end of August. That was pretty impressive for what probably started as a bag of frozen corn. The meat was soooooo tender and juicy. The brisket had just the right amount of smokey taste and practically fell apart as I tried to shovel it into my mouth. I should have made a sandwich out of it! One of the little girls did make a sandwich and she used her piece of mop-up white bread, put creamed corn on it, put some of the smoked turkey on it, add more creamed corn, and she said to repeat if you're really hungry. I will try this next time.

The hottie was delish and we brought the rest home to put in eggs the next morning. I think it ranks right up with a Basque chorizo.... it's just that good!

Now this restaurant had sauce available. I used a little bit for the experience. BBQ sauce here in TX has a different flavor! It seemed to be a vinegar base which made it stronger and less sweet than I'm used to. It was decent. The meat totally didn't need it though!

Now I'm noticing how long this post is so I will have a few more food posts! I still need to write about my Tex-Mex experience at the house and about Chuy's Mexican food... oh and about the HEAD SIZED DONUTS! I've also got pictures to deocument the food! It's real!

"Od People in Old Days and Food in Old Days"

Here is a story that I just unearthed from a huge pile of Daily 5 stuff... One of my students wrote it and I think it's hilarious.

Chapter 1

Here's food in old days, corn, mashed potatoes, apples, and bananas. Just healthy food. It was crazy. No candy, just health food. The people were called pilgrims. They had no video games but tag and stuff like that. Not that cool.

Just tell me, do you want to be a pilgrim? It's your dream not mine. Anyway it was hard to cook those days. No houses either. No wait a sec, oh just tiny ones only one room. The end.

It's sweet and funny and fits his personality to a T. Love it.

Old School... New School

I've shared pics of my current school a few times over the years, but nothing compares to my classroom this year. It's always messy, seems unorganized, and there's garbage everywhere! Translated- we are so busy that we don't have time to clean and organize! Really, it's true.

For your refreshing pleasure, here is my current classroom.

This year is especially exciting for our staff and students. Our school is almost finished and we will be moving into it in March. I got to go inside of it yesterday and it's hard to believe that it's real. It's weird to say that the building plays a part in educating a child, but it really does. Our new school will not have overflowing toilets in the classrooms, huge 30+ sq. foot air conditioners hanging out into the room that are just loud enough to drown out the really loud boiler clanging, or chunks falling out of the walls! It won't stink or have mold, and hopefully won't have dust or spiders for a good, long time! I will take more pics as we get moved in and will share the pics of my packing disaster... which reminds me, I've got sub plans to write and boxes to pack. Headed to school now...

Creating My Living Room

Romans 12:12
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer.

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

James 1:2
Consider it all joy when you encounter trials.

Stay tuned for my living room redo. It's pretty cute.

We're Gonna Knock You Out!

Well I enjoyed watching the Stanfield boys beat Heppner for the 3rd time this season in basketball, and a funny memory popped into my head during one of the boring moments of the game.

Last year the Stanfield Tiger boys made it to the final 8 at the state tourney in Pendleton. The gym was pretty packed for their first game, but I don't remember who it was against. Right before halftime, one of our boys got whistled for a foul and everyone dropped to their knees seemingly looking for something.

It became apperant what they were looking for... a tooth. They called the boys to the sideline and the coaches and refs continued to look. Then they brought out some cleaner because there was blood on the floor. Then. We. Heard. It.

The Stanfield cheerleaders, who never go to away games (and somehow came to this one) started a cheer which ended with, "gonna knock you out", and then they started pretending to punch each other! It was classic. That's genius I tell ya.

Stress Balls

This story comes from a friend...
A student from another school saw a stress ball on her teacher's desk and decided to make a set for her whole class to use for OAKS testing. The next day she came to school with the beloved stress balls. As she was handing them out the teacher saw that they looked a little peculiar. Upon closer examination, the teacher noticed that they weren't regular balloons... they were a certain type of pregnancy preventer (and I'll leave it at that) filled with rice! Needless to say, this story has gotten quite a bit of milage around Umatilla County this week. :)