You Can Be Texan Wherever You Are
Native Texans know that all of Texas doesn’t look like the picture to your right.
We love our barbed wire and prickly pear, but Texas is so much more. We have mountains, pine forests, flat plains, the Gulf coast, big cities, small towns, oilfields, and miles and miles of Texas.
Did you know Texas has four distinct geographic regions and a few more sub-regions? So forget any stereotypes you may have about Texas….we’ve got all we could ever want right here at home and the scenery can change to your liking by just getting in your trusty truck and driving a little (or maybe a lot). We have everything nearly any other state has, but we have more of it.
From the mountains in the Big Bend to the Cruise ships in Galveston, Texas is still what many pioneers called it….”a great place to start a life and make your fortune.”
Pick out your favorites from the list below and remember…………………
You Can Be Texan ‘Wherever You Are’ by enjoying Real Texas Food
1. Texas food
One of the very first things Texans want to do after being out of state for any period of time is to go to a good Tex-Mex restaurant for 
a plate of enchiladas, tamales, nachos with plenty of jalapenos, and tortillas. Texas makes the best Tex-Mex food on the planet; Even better than any place in Mexico.
And here is a tradition you can start in your house every year like we do: We make it a point to make Christmas tamales every year. It’s a Real Texas tradition that many families follow. We make 10-20 dozen tamales during the holiday season and have perfected the technique so it goes much faster than in previous years.
Cold Lone Star or the beverage of your choice is a key ingredient in making tasty tamales. During the first years of tamale making, it usually gave me a headache the next day. Now we have a masa spreader that dramatically decreases the amount of time it takes to turn out the tamales…..and no more headaches…must be a connection there somewhere.
We give a lot of them away to family as gifts. Some Texas families make tamales to make extra money during the month to cover extra expenses. At around $8 per dozen, you can pick up some needed extra funds that way.
While at Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Florida years ago, I had to find Mexico to even get theme park fast food I could eat. It was not good Tex-Mex by any standards, but it did keep me from starving to death. After returning to Texas, the very first thing I had to eat was enchiladas, nachos, and tacos. I breathed a big sigh of relief. Dang it was good.
You can be Texan Wherever You Are by finding and frequenting as good a Tex-Mex restaurant as you can find. Good Margarita’s are a plus. If you find a good Tex-Mex restaurant out of Texas, consider yourself blessed. In this part of the world we go to Henry’s or Armenta’s.
There are so many good Tex-Mex restaurants in Texas it would be hard to choose just one, but I would bet there is one close to you.
Texas sized steaks is a food group-
I would say after Tex-Mex comes a good steak. It might be the 72 ounce steak in Amarillo. I actually know a couple of good old boys who have eaten the 72 ounce Steak in Amarillo. Yes, they are both huge good old boys.
It might be one from Lowake Inn that fills your platter, or it might be steak night at Zentner’s Daughter in San Angelo or Big John’s at Fuzzy’s Corner.
A good Texas steak just fills the bill. Some of the best steaks are those made at home in backyard cookouts.
Bum Phillips and the Houston Oilers swore by a good steak from Zenter’s Daughter in San Angelo when they held their summer camp there a several years back.
As good as those steaks are, there seems to always be one better and every Real Texan believes the steak he fixes in his backyard could be the contender. Many times cooks use mesquite wood to get the flavor just right, and a little smoke ring around the steak is a good thing if it’s thick enough.
You Can Be Texan Wherever You Are by getting a good grill or pit and fixing a tasty steak. If circumstances prevent you from doing 
that, enjoy a good Texas steak wherever you are.
I learned to cook steak on a Weber grill in my backyard. I have since graduated to a big ole’ steel pit custom made for me as a gift from my future wife. It was made with a smoker in the very top for smoking brisket. There are some very big Texas sized pits out there and some that are not so impressive. You just do the best you can with what you have and start turning out some good Texas steaks and brisket.
But, we’ll get to brisket later on in this series. And no, that big boy is not me and that is not my pit. I took that photo at the Miles Cotton Festival and there were some very impressive pits there. I tasted his steak and it was delicious. Looks like he enjoys his pit a lot….a whole lot!
If you do happen to find a good woman who has a pit custom made for you…marry her quick…she’s the one!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
What I miss the most is tamales. Ofcourse you had to show off with a mouthwatering photo of Tamales!
Amen to TexMex and steak. It don’t get no better!!!!!
My sweet Jan was in upstate NY in her previous life and she said she missed the Tex-Mex the most. They did have a Mexican food restaurant in an adjoining town. The name of it was “Casa Too Mucha”. She said she did not even have the heart [or the stomach] to try it. It closed fairly quickly.
As strange as it seems down here in Mexico there are no real TexMex restaurants . Oh there’s one that advertises TexMex but it not even close. Glad to hear the Lowake Inn is still going. When I was in High School the whole football team would go there for platter size chicken fried steaks. And if you could convince them you were old enough you could get a fishbowl of beer that took two hands to pick up. All that was there then was two restaurants, a service station and a landing strip for light planes.
You’ve got a good memory Jim. And the memories of Lowake are accurate. The steaks of any kind are huge and delicious.