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

During the Civil War, when food was scarce and meals needed to keep for days, Union soldiers subsisted on an inexpensive, dense, cracker-like ration known as hardtack. A mixture of water, flour, and sometimes salt, hardtack became a metaphor for survival—soldiers found creative ways to eat the unappealing, dry mass, dipping it into their coffee or mixing it with salt pork.Much like its namesake, Hardtack, a monograph by Austin artist and photographer Rahim Fortune, explores the triumph and adversity of Black communities in Texas and the American South. Drawing on nearly ten years of portrait photography, Fortune, whose work was featured in Texas Monthly’s 2021 feature on Lydell Grant, juxtaposes intimate landscapes with a diverse array of subjects—from his grandmother’s wrinkled hands to expressive praise…

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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.

Bella Hadid is trading the runway for the rodeo. For the last decade, the model has been the preeminent face of the fashion industry, dominating every catwalk, magazine cover, campaign, and red carpet. But now she has her sights set on a very different, more cowgirl-centric career move. In the past couple of months, Hadid has been spotted all over Texas riding horses, kissing cowboys, and generally causing a ruckus in every small town she visits, posing for photos with peoples’ babies like she’s running for political office. And clearly, it’s not just Texas who loves Bella, but vice versa—the model recently purchased a home in the Fort Worth area, per TMZ. In addition to becoming a registered resident of the Lone Star State, she’s…

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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.

Standing in his Waco backyard a little more than a decade ago, Bryan Shaw had a revelation. The lawn was filled with kids and their parents, there to celebrate the fourth birthday of Shaw’s oldest son, Noah. Among them was a preschooler whom Shaw watched happily crawl all around, occasionally picking up one of many toys that littered the grass and popping it into his mouth.The boy had been born with retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer, that resulted in the removal of both of his eyes. Shaw remembers watching as an “intense expression of concentration” spread across his face as he examined each toy. “I just thought, he’s kind of visualizing that with his mouth.”  The realization that this blind boy could picture…

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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.

As we’re heading into the homestretch of the Ultimate Texas Celebrity Bracket, some things have become clear: Texas Monthly readers have more affection for musician/author/overall colorful personality Kinky Friedman than we expected. You have a deep and abiding love for Fort Worth’s Kelly Clarkson, the American Idol turned daytime talk show host. You’re as proud as we are to claim Simone Biles as a Texas icon. And while Beyoncé has the heart of many a Texan, George Strait reigns supreme as the King of Country. We’re down to our last eight names, our top two finalists in each of our four divisions: Music, Hollywood, Sports, and Wildcards, where the names are random but your love for them is not. Let’s get to the voting! Illustration by Max-o-maticWho…

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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.

Up against the wall, Charles Butt! The Jacobins in the GOP have a new enemy, and it’s the 86-year-old chairman of Texas’s beloved grocery chain, H-E-B. This weekend, party officials in four counties in East and Southeast Texas voted to condemn the “Democrat billionaire” for involving himself in “advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform.” Among Butt’s alleged offenses against the party: —Advocating against “election integrity.” (Ahead of the 2020 election, Butt publicly supported Harris County, home to Houston, in its quest to send mail-in ballots to all eligible voters.)—Lobbying “against parents’ God-given rights and against empowering parents to choose the education that is best for their children.” (It’s unclear what “God-given rights” Butt opposes—in general, the resolution is poorly worded—but otherwise,…

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