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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Chip Arledge at the Depot, in Marshall, on December 27, 2023.It was a cool November morning, still a couple of hours before sunrise, and downtown Marshall’s main drag was quiet except for the muted din of Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” emerging from speakers beneath the white awning in front of KDPM-FM (92.3) “The Depot.” Shortly after the song ended, the Fat Man came slowly walking around the corner and let himself into the three-year-old radio station’s studio.The Fat Man is the nom de deejay of Chip Arledge, the manager and lead host of the Depot, which specializes in country music and, in Arledge’s words, classic rock “that doesn’t piss off country fans.” The station gives extra play to Texas artists, especially those hailing from East Texas. You might hear a Willie-and-Waylon song segue into a…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Our Hopes, Dreams, and Predictions for Beyoncé’s Most Texan Release YetWith the benefit of hindsight, it’s now clear why Beyoncé showed up to the Grammys in a Stetson. Exactly one week later, Houston’s favorite daughter chose to one-up the Super Bowl with the surprise announcement of Act II, her follow-up album to Act I: Renaissance, and immediately dropped two singles. The first, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” had the Texas Monthly staff sprinting straight to Slack. With the second, “16 Carriages,” which comes with visuals of Bey luxuriating in the act of putting on a rhinestone cowboy hat, it became clear that come March 29, we’re going to get the long-awaited Beyoncé country album.Staffers Doyin Oyeniyi, Emily McCullar, and Dan Solomon convened to discuss the singles, their hopes and predictions for the album, and the singular joy…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

texanist crockett school march 2024Q:  I went to two schools named after presumably notable Texans: James S. Deady Middle School and Charles H. Milby High School. Who were these people?Rick, via emailA: The Lone Star State brims with institutions of public education whose facades are emblazoned with names that are instantly familiar to anyone who ever set foot in a seventh-grade Texas history class. If one took the time to count up all the schools graced with the names of Austin, Bowie, Crockett, Houston, and the like, one would be counting for a very long time. But many other schools are named after worthy Texans of much less renown. Case in point: though the Texanist’s early education did include a stint at a middle school named for famed Alamo defender…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

The dessert case at Thomas Craft Confections.One day in late January, I was awed by the desserts under the glass case at Thomas Craft Confections, in Brenham. The selections ranged from cupcakes iced with mountains of swirled buttercream to more-delicate sweets like pastel-colored macarons and tartlets made with fresh seasonal fruit. On the countertop sat big chocolate chip cookies and still-warm canelés de Bordeaux, with crisp, caramelized outsides and chewy insides flavored with rum.On the shelves along the walls were holiday season stalwarts of nicely packaged chocolate bars, toffee, and other confections. Back in the kitchen, the staff was preparing artisanal truffles and breakable chocolate hearts for Valentine’s Day.Such a bounty might be taken for granted in a big city, but the high-quality sweets of the expertly led Thomas Craft Confections…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

tim-dunn-midlandTim Dunn was fascinated by bees. When he was a teenager, he spent hours studying a colony near his home, learning how it functioned. Each bee knew its role and embraced its work. Scouts found pollen. Guards prevented unwelcome outsiders from entering the hive. He even discovered that the larger drones didn’t sting, creating an opportunity for amusement. “I’d tie a piece of thread on them and walk them like a dog,” he said in a folksy West Texas accent.His audience, the adult Sunday school class he teaches at his church in Midland, was gathered inside a gray-walled room lined with stackable chairs. Dunn went on, explaining that there was a lot to learn from the hierarchy of a bee colony. “When everybody does what…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Houston Police officers watch over displaced churchgoers outside Lakewood Church, in Houston, on Sunday, February 11, after a reported shooting during a Spanish church service.A female shooter opened fire on Sunday afternoon at pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, in Houston, which has one of the nation’s largest congregations. She was fatally shot by off-duty officers. No one else at the church died.The woman, who was between 30 and 35 years old, entered the church at 1:53 p.m. wearing a trench coat and a backpack and carrying a long rifle, Houston police chief Troy Finner said during a press conference Sunday after the shooting. A young child who police said was approximately 4 to 5 years old accompanied her.The woman began shooting upon entering the church. After the officers shot her, she died on scene, according to authorities. The child was also shot and is in critical condition at Texas…

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Texas Country Reporter Billy HassellArtist Billy Hassell has always enjoyed natural things and natural places. And over the years, his work has increasingly explored those subjects and been embraced by conservationists at the Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society. When Texas State Parks turned one hundred, Hassell was one of the artists commissioned to capture the beauty of our parks. In this latest dispatch from Texas Country Reporter, the artist visits the newest park—Palo Pinto Mountains State Park—and reflects on why Texans need natural spaces.

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Stuff Texans Love: Bun B & QueenieRap legend Bun B and his wife, Queenie, the Houston supercouple whose Trill Burgers won Good Morning America’s award for best burger spot in America, have been married for more than twenty years. That means two decades of Valentine’s Day celebrations and gifts—some extravagant, some sweet, and some, as Bun says, “that can’t be talked about.”There was that time he filled her room with hundreds of roses. “It was a grand gesture, and she appreciated it,” says Bun, whose conversation regularly veers back to the many things he loves about Queenie. “But then she was sad they were all going to die. So she took the leftover roses to the nursing home and gave them to elderly people. . . . She’s a deeply thoughtful person.”“And now he’s not…

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Texas-style BBQ in North Carolina“One can’t help but notice the recent intrusion of Texas barbecue into places where it doesn’t belong—like North Carolina,” John Shelton Reed wrote in Gravy magazine in August 2021. In “A Curmudgeon Looks at Barbecue,” Reed, a noted barbecue scholar, shared his lament about the waning regional distinctions in barbecue culture. It was published a few months after I heralded the smoked brisket at North Carolina barbecue joints Jon G’s, in Peachland, and Prime Barbecue in Knightdale. I recently returned to the state to check in on a few old favorites and try some promising new spots. I can report that Reed’s beef was only a preview of North Carolina’s current brisket bounty. Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and the surrounding suburbs make up the Research…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

This Election Season, Texas Isn’t Sending Its Best Slate of CandidatesThe late Texan writer Molly Ivins famously quipped, “Good thing we’ve still got politics in Texas—finest form of free entertainment ever invented.” In these grim and angry days, “entertainment” is perhaps not the first word to come to mind. Insurrection, violence, Ted Cruz’s podcast—none of these brings the warm fuzzies. Current events have assumed a surreal, almost hallucinatory nature: Did Greg Abbott really seem to lament that shooting unarmed immigrants was off-limits? Did a state representative really propose a duel to big-hatted agriculture commissioner Sid Miller? Did actual neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes really meet with some of the most powerful Republican operatives in Texas?Still, we must muster the courage to stare into the abyss, to find levity in the madness. Even if We the People aren’t…

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