A heapin' taste of Texas hospitality ...
We met Doc Holiday and FILO Girl in the line outside the stadium lots at 6:30. They started us off with some of Carrie's tasty Texas Kolaches. Mine was ham and cheese, with a soft, golden pastry wrapped around. Just the thing to kick off a great day of tailgating.
By 7:30 Doc was mixing up his Bloody Marys for the crowd that by then was starting to grow. And at 8:00, when the lots opened, the line of die-hards moved in and set-up tailgate parties that looked more like the county fair.
Even with all their cool tailgating gear, our neighbors were pretty excited when we opened up the basement of our Tour Coach to reveal our coolest new tailgating toy... the outside Entertainment Center!
The Texans own tailgating band stopped by to treat us all to some tunes, as we started to scour the lot to find contestants for our Taste-off.
We saw kebobs, steaks, and sausages on the grill, and lots of corn on the cob (in the husks). There was a noticable influence of Mexican cooking -- lots of beans, salsa, and tortillas -- as well as Gulf Coast foods like red beans and rice and boudin sausage! (It's been nine months since my last taste in New Orleans, and they're as delicious as I remembered!)
As Taste-off time approached, tailgaters started lining up to enter their recipes. Seems folks in Texas like to be able to say that they're the best!
The judges had a Texas-sized task ahead of them, but they tasted their way through them all and selected 5 (they just had to give an honorable mention to Paul Shroud for his South Texas Hot Sauce) winners.
In addition to the Blacktop's Best going to the Chaparral Cookers, Lance Creech won for his Stuffed Mushrooms, Wayne Spake for his Beef Riblets, and Carrie Halliday for her Monkey Meat (???). They all took home great prizes from Camp Chef, and will have their winning recipes published in the AFC edition of the cookbook.
Congrats and thanks to all for a great Texans Tailgate! And see you On the Blacktop...
Friends of the Tour !
"Doc" Holliday and his wife Carrie ("FILO Girl") have tons of Texans tailgating stories, recipes, and traditions. And we were lucky they shared some of them - like Doc's Bloody Marys and Carrie's Caramel-Covered Cheetos -- with us, as well as their hospitality!
Photo of the Week!
Our winning Blacktop Chef from Dallas drove down to Houston to show Team Blacktop that he's no one-trick pony. This time, Bart prepared two spectacular trays of shellfish that looked and smelled absolutely irresistable. These mussles with white wine and prosciutto were nothing short of a work of art.
See more pictures from the Houston tailgate in our Scrapbook OntheBlacktop.com!
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