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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.

largest charcuterie illustrationA Central Market in Austin created the largest charcuterie boardin the world for the chain’s thirtieth anniversary, assemblingone thousand pounds of cheeses, cured meats, fruits, and jams.A woman in Harris County caught what is believed to be one of the largest alligator gars ever recorded, measuring more than eight feet long with a fifty-inch girth. Five couples are suing a Houston fertility clinic for allegedly implanting embryos that it knew were dead or damaged as a result of a cryopreservation failure in the lab. A country music festival in Fort Worth was postponed after negative feedback about its unimpressive lineup of artists, with one potential attendee commenting on the festival’s Instagram, “My neighbor just learned how to play guitar and started a band, maybe he…

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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.

Robert Roberson family at HuntsvilleThe Texas Supreme Court late Thursday halted the execution of Robert Roberson hours after it was set to take place, capping a flurry of litigation filed that same day by Texas state lawmakers in a last-ditch gambit to stop the state from killing a death row inmate they believed was most likely innocent.The order was a stunning eleventh-hour victory for Roberson and for the state lawmakers who opposed his execution and turned to novel legal maneuvers in an effort to buy him more time.The stay arrived in response to a separation-of-powers conflict touched off by a group of Texas lawmakers when they subpoenaed Roberson the night before he was set to be put to death. The unprecedented step sought to give the man a final…

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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.

Marc Fadel fell in love with smoking meat while competing on his high school barbecue team at the Dan Dipert Career and Technical Center, in Arlington. When it came to naming his business, Fadel knew it needed to reflect the love he wanted to share with others through his food. Habibi Barbecue, his truck in Arlington’s Ghost Food Park, opened last month with a moniker meaning “my love” or “beloved” in Arabic.I was first introduced to Habibi Barbecue through television. Fadel shared the idea when he was one of several students featured in a documentary series on Texas high school barbecue competitions. BBQ High debuted on the Magnolia Network in August and is now streaming on Max. Through six episodes, the show documented the path…

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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.

Blake Hinsey ProfileIt was the sound that made Blake Hinsey fall in love with motor racing. Blake first heard it when he was seventeen. He and his father traveled from their Dallas home to MotorSport Ranch, in Cresson, thirty miles southwest of Fort Worth. The roaring engines, screeching tires, and thunderous backfires created a wall of noise. “It was so raw and visceral,” Hinsey says. “That was the thing that made me go, ‘Maybe I could drive one of those one day.’ ”Hinsey’s dream of being a driver was short-lived. Instead, he became fascinated by the engineering behind the cars, the tiny adjustments that make them go faster. Hinsey’s interest grew into an obsession, which he followed first to a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Texas at…

The post He Quit Formula 1 to Start a YouTube Channel—Then Realized “Content Creator” Is a Harder Job Than “Race Car Engineer” appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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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.

Texas setting the stage for Trump second term authoritarianismEarlier this year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott appeared on the radio show of former National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch to discuss Operation Lone Star, his $11 billion border crackdown. “We are deploying every tool and strategy that we possibly can,” Abbott boasted. “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”Not everyone shares Abbott’s sense of restraint. National Guard troops participating in Operation Lone Star have shot across the border on at least two occasions, wounding two people. Vigilantes riled up by immigrant bashing have committed mass shootings across the state and country. In 2019, a white supremacist from the Dallas suburb of Allen shot…

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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-Pro-Palestinian-Protests-Mayor-John-Whitmire-residenceBy the time the pro-Palestinian demonstrators showed up in front of Houston Mayor John Whitmire’s house one night in mid-September, the cops had been awaiting them for at least an hour. A dozen or so young men and women lined up on the sidewalk as roughly the same number of Houston police officers watched impassively, standing by their cruisers. The protesters were aligned with activists who had been pleading with Whitmire and the city council to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and to disinvest from Israeli interests. Most of their faces were covered with masks or keffiyehs, the distinctive scarves that have become symbols of the Palestinian liberation movement.They chanted at roughly the same volume as kids in 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.

robert roberson texas tribune repub photoBrian Wharton’s voice cracked as he reached two decades into his memory to describe his role in putting a man he now believed to be innocent on death row.“To those who hold the power to do something here, now is the moment,” Wharton pleaded. “Hear his voice. . . . Listen, and you will hear innocence.”Wharton, the lead detective in death row inmate Robert Roberson’s trial, was testifying before the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence on Wednesday, just over 24 hours before Roberson’s scheduled execution.“I’m ashamed that I was so focused on finding an offender and convicting someone that I did not see Robert. I did not hear his voice,” Wharton said to a rapt audience. Donna Farmer, whose son was friends with Roberson growing up,…

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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.

armadillo illustrationEach month, we get to know one of the state’s many wonderful and quirky critters. Latin name: Dasypus mexicanusSize: Two to three feet long (including tail); ten to twelve poundsTexas habitat: Statewide, except far West TexasTexans have a soft spot for armadillos. The scrappy, scaly mammal adorns countless art prints, bumper stickers, and T-shirts. On Etsy, you can buy solid-gold armadillo earrings ($850) or a vintage belt buckle ($715) bearing the logo of the Armadillo World Headquarters, the seventies Austin music venue that memorably linked the critter to the counterculture movement. This year researchers discovered that there are more species of this strange creature than we knew. In fact, the Texas species now goes by a new name. Wait, what do we call it now?For centuries, scientists…

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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.

Forever-Oak-Park-High-Ada-Zhang-American-Short-Fiction-Story-featThis story is published in collaboration with the Austin-based literary journal American Short Fiction. Part IFreshmenThey were the only vegetarians, a fact that was highlighted every game day when the other girls loaded up on chicken sandwiches or steak fajitas while Yoon and Carmen ate salads of iceberg lettuce and shredded cheese, forgoing the ranch that came in rectangular packets, which they agreed was disgusting. They ate ironically, offering a round of applause whenever one found an actual cherry tomato. “Sustenance!” they cheered, stabbing the tomato ceremoniously before clinking sporks. Such surface similarities, at the age of fourteen, seemed indicative of a deeper likeness.“Why are y’all on the ground?” asked Roxy, the Jewels’ captain, a senior. They weren’t sure how long she’d been standing there, her shadow…

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Artist Juan Stockmeyer finds inspiration in a place many of us avoid: the junkyard. The 66-year-old El Paso native has been haunting the resting places for cars, broken appliances, and other objects on both sides of the border for the past two decades. He’s loved collecting metal since he was a child. “Mexico is like a graveyard of old gears,” he says. “You can’t really find them here, at least cheaply.” From his home studio near the University of Texas at El Paso, Stockmeyer turns the metal scraps into both decorative and functional art. When he found a bunch of old mining pickaxes, he began welding them onto large gears. These simple, free-standing sculptures, ranging from ten inches to twelve feet tall, started popping up all…

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