When I was 11 my social studies text book had small descriptions of what all 50 states were famous for, as any child would do I quickly looked ahead to see what they said about Texas. Expecting them to maybe mention the Alamo, the Dallas Cowboys, bluebonnets or something of the like. It listed two things. Ten-gallon hats and barbeque. I told my teacher I didn’t know what a 10 gallon hat was and I didn’t like barbeque or barbeque sauce. I was very concerned about my status as a Texan. She explained what a 10 gallon hat was and told me not everyone likes barbeque. I told her that our textbook had a skewed perception of our state (I don’t know remember my exact words, but I was opinionated then too, so you can imagine).
While I love the great state of Texas (we are the only state to ever be our own country). Upon moving to California I was quite excited about the new types of food that were offered. Gone were the days of fried items with gravy or over-sized portions. Even Mexican (which I love) isn’t smothered in cheese and sauce. You can eat pretty clean anywhere you go and in the whole city there was only one place I knew of that served barbeque. And in 2 and a 1/2 years I’d never been there.

But today that all changed. Jake got a hankering for ribs and kindly suggested we go to that one and only barbeque place to see what they had. And since I’m a nice wife (and I wanted him to drop me by Target on the way) I agreed. We got there and there was a line around the building. Which would be fine except that we had our one and only torrential downpour of the year today. But people were still waiting. This only fueled Jake’s fire that we would have the best meal ever. (If people would endure the elements to eat it, it had to be good). So, we waited and as we waited I realized that this particular place had pretty much one item in many different packages. RIBS. Pork, Beef, Full Rack, Half, Rack, Off the Rack, Ribs and Chicken, Ribs on your salad. So, I decided to go for it and get ribs.

I told Jake that a 1/2 Rack would do for me, but NO we had to get food bigger than my face.

You see that sauce on my face? It’s too bad I only kinda enjoyed it, cause I know there’s people that have died for those arm sized ribs.

So, maybe I’m not a true blue Texan after all. Who knows….