Cooking Up New Beginnings in West Texas Cuisine

As we unpack our boxes and set up our new kitchen in the heart-warming West Texas landscape, Fred, our resident grill skeptic, stirs in her two cents on the surprisingly sparse local BBQ scene. We're bantering about everything from the unexpectedly scant 'meat and three' joints we've left behind to the tantalizing Mexican eateries that have welcomed us with open arms. Our culinary journey doesn't stop there; we explore the fusion of flavors in our own home, creating comforting dishes that have quickly become staples as we navigate life's latest chapter.

Cracking open the next phase for Sweet Tea and Tacos, we're spicing it up by seeking the untold stories of local niche farmers and producers. This episode whets your appetite for the rich tapestry of specialized agriculture that's just waiting to be explored, and we can't wait to bring you along for the ride. Join Jen, Dave, and the occasionally indifferent Fred for a feast of conversation that's sure to satisfy your hunger for the unique and undiscovered tales of our new, flavorful frontier.

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

Speaker 1 0:01

Hello everybody, hello everybody Hello.

Speaker 2 0:30

Hello Hi.

Speaker 1 0:33

And we're back on Sweet Tea and Tacos finally.

Speaker 2 0:38

I'm Jen.

Speaker 1 0:39

I'm Dave. And we have our daughter joining us as well, who we'll refer to as as fred yeah, because that's her animal crossing name. Yeah okay, so it's been a year over a year now since we produced the podcast, which is kind of hard to believe it is, and we're sorry.

Speaker 2 1:00

we're really sorry that we've been absent so long, but we've had a few things.

Speaker 1 1:05

We've had major life changes. Yes, and there you go. So we moved. That's the big news from the deep south.

Speaker 2 1:15

Ta-da To the wild wild west.

Speaker 1 1:17

The wild, wild west Texas for job change.

Speaker 2 1:30

And that was a big process, yeah, big adventure I'm sure a lot of y'all have been through things like that. But yeah, we really had not um in all the time that we had been married. We we've not moved, we've just been yeah in one kind of city or one area and uh, so yeah, big change yes, and you know change in the uh, environment and food changes of course oh yeah a lot of different stuff, so um a lot of new experiences there.

Speaker 1 2:01

It's been good yes different very different.

Speaker 2 2:05

Um so what uh?

Speaker 1 2:10

yeah, what are some different things that yeah um?

Speaker 3 2:12

there's a lot of fred. What do you want?

Speaker 2 2:14

to call what do?

Speaker 3 2:15

you want to talk about. There's a lot of mexican food a lot of mexican.

Speaker 1 2:19

I kind of expected that yeah, like very authentic yeah. Yeah, and where we are in West Texas it's not as much Tex-Mex as it is like real.

Speaker 2 2:29

Mexican. Oh yeah, yeah, and it's good.

Speaker 1 2:31

There's some.

Speaker 3 2:32

Tex-Mex.

Speaker 1 2:33

Yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah, there is Not as much barbecue as I thought there would be Mm-mm.

Speaker 2 2:38

No, definitely not.

Speaker 1 2:40

I expect a little bit more.

Speaker 2 2:41

We had some good barbecue in Lubbock. Yeah, and we had some good barbecue in Abilene, but right where we are is, there's just hardly any.

Speaker 1 2:50

Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:51

So, it's.

Speaker 1 2:52

There's been some coming and going.

Speaker 2 2:53

Yeah, we want to do a little bit more traveling around. That's kind of one of our goals while we live out here is to really explore Texas and maybe do kind of a barbecue trail, you know, adventure or something Like San Antonio, Austin, that kind of thing Right.

Speaker 1 3:11

Yeah, I've been able to go to some places in my work travels, but yeah.

Speaker 2 3:16

Yeah, I have really not, and Fred, you haven't.

Speaker 3 3:20

Although barbecue is not necessarily your favorite thing, I mean, I like barbecue, I will eat it, I just don't like crave barbecue.

Speaker 2 3:28

yeah, I will totally eat it, but I'm just not like oh, I have to have yeah yeah, I think dad and I are a little bit more into it yeah, I mean, I like it, I just, I don't know, I don't yeah, and that's fine, that's fine not a whole lot of meat and three which is kind of a very southern thing Sad. Yeah, we really. Well, I miss that yeah. I love a good meat and three.

Speaker 3 3:52

And there's like hardly any Greek places either.

Speaker 1 3:55

Yeah.

Speaker 2 3:56

Greek, Lebanese, that kind of.

Speaker 3 3:58

Thing.

Speaker 2 3:58

And then we haven't found just a ton of good, really, really outstanding Asian sushi, yeah.

Speaker 1 4:06

We're working on it.

Speaker 2 4:08

We had a place back home that we just absolutely loved.

Speaker 1 4:12

Nothing compares to it. Checking things out.

Speaker 2 4:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1 4:17

Grocery stores. Of course we need to move somewhere else. The other thing of course we love to do that on vacation even, we'll go to the grocery store, which is weird. But anyway.

Speaker 2 4:26

Well, I mean, it depends. If we're at the beach or something you know you need to go.

Speaker 1 4:29

You kind of have to Pick up a few things for the week but even New Orleans. I love going on grocery stores in New Orleans. That's one of my favorite things to do. But yeah, so we got a couple different grocery store chains out here and nothing that we had back home.

Speaker 2 4:42

Oh no, we only pretty much just had the one back home.

Speaker 1 4:45

Yeah.

Speaker 2 4:47

And out here it's kind of the Texas, I mean we shop at the one that's kind of the Texas store, the real big one.

Speaker 1 4:55

Yeah.

Speaker 2 4:55

That's very well known.

Speaker 1 4:57

Yeah, and of course, a lot of different ingredients, a lot of things that you have out here, that you just didn't have, or where you are, you know, tortillas the good ones the good fresh tortillas, oh yeah they're so good, yeah, yeah, so that's been fun.

Speaker 2 5:13

That has been fun A lot of new vegetables and things. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 5:16

Things you can get like that fresher.

Speaker 2 5:20

Right. And then there's also to me a lot more kind of good like pre-prepared foods that you know, like, for instance, say, lasagna you might back home go and there's just one like like brand of frozen lasagna at the grocery and here you know they have a store brand and they have several other brands. And you know, with the move we were not doing a lot of cooking at first because we were just trying to survive, trying to get our stuff unpacked and all that, and so we were. We were really needing to rely on a lot of that kind of quick, pre--prepared, just heat it up and eat type stuff. So that was nice.

Speaker 1 6:00

Yeah.

Speaker 3 6:03

We also just had to find a lot of easy meals to make you know, right, what was that? That we did with the sausage?

Speaker 1 6:11

A little sausage and cabbage.

Speaker 2 6:12

Yeah, oh, yeah yeah, like a beef sausage.

Speaker 3 6:15

We saute it and then do cabbage, cabbage and onions, that kind of thing or we'll do like pasta um fish sometimes, yeah, like frozen, just breaded fish and you know, yep, highfalutin culinary there.

Speaker 1 6:32

It's not gourmet by any means but we all have to do that we have to live too, yeah.

Speaker 2 6:38

It's kind of like when you have kids and then you're just in survival mode. We were after the move, just in survival mode. So your culinary standards go way down. You just got to eat.

Speaker 1 6:53

And then tamales. There's a couple tamale places here which are nice to have they're still different. I don't know if I was just young and enough to not really realize how big the tamales really were when I lived in California. I always thought they were a lot bigger. We had the delta tamales and the southern style tamales are real small, so I expected the tamales out here to be a little bit bigger, and they are, but not as big as I remember. But it might have been because I was small.

Speaker 2 7:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 7:32

But they're good. We have several here, which is nice Right.

Speaker 3 7:36

Oh, and the food, remember, we went and we got enchiladas. Oh, okay, and they were so, so spicy.

Speaker 1 7:41

That's the other thing. We weren't used to it at all. The spice level.

Speaker 3 7:45

Yeah.

Speaker 1 7:47

It was, it was. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, you can definitely tell we've been raised in the south, with a style of mexican food, which is not bad but doesn't have the heat that maybe it kind of supposed to have. Yeah, um, because there's, there's been some places we've been dude.

Speaker 2 8:03

It's like, oh my this is good, but oh man and I've just kind of stayed away yeah because y'all, y'all found those places and and you're, oh my gosh, it's so spicy.

Speaker 1 8:18

So there's this one place that's just burritos and they're only open for breakfast and lunch and they have some really good breakfast burritos. And then I went for lunch one day and I got a lunch burrito and I was, oh my word, it was good, but I was like this is so hot.

Speaker 3 8:36

I just don't know if I need that and you have a pretty good spice tolerance yeah, I thought I did, you thought you did. Yeah, I thought I did I think my spice tolerance has definitely gone up I think it all has for all I like ate, something that I used to think was really spicy, and I was like what is this? This is nothing.

Speaker 1 8:52

After having like crazy enchiladas yeah, you go a couple places in. The enchilada sauce is even the basic one.

Speaker 3 8:58

Oh yeah, and I got like the least spicy one and I was dying yeah.

Speaker 1 9:03

So that's been a change. And the other interesting thing is so many of the Mexican places have breakfast you know which is interesting.

Speaker 2 9:10

Not that I've been able to take advantage of it too much, but yeah, well, and I think a lot of places focus on breakfast out here, because of where like yeah probably the industry is where we are with the oil industry. I mean, we don't work for that, but there's so much of that out here that people are up really early, or maybe they're coming in off the field, you know, after a night on the clock, and they just need somewhere to get some breakfast.

Speaker 1 9:37

So yeah, the barbecue has been a little disappointing. Where we are, there's just not a lot of it?

Speaker 2 9:43

There's hardly any. I'll be honest.

Speaker 1 9:45

I don't think we've been to a barbecue. We tried once.

Speaker 2 9:50

One place and it wasn't open.

Speaker 1 9:53

The grocery store has a barbecue restaurant in it.

Speaker 2 9:55

It does, and we've not tried that yet.

Speaker 1 9:58

And there's a couple new ones that have opened recently.

Speaker 3 10:01

There's a food truck one. Oh, okay, yeah, there's lots of food trucks.

Speaker 1 10:05

Yeah, there's a lot more food trucks here than we had back where we lived, which is interesting. Similar size area to an extent.

Speaker 2 10:12

Yeah, it's about About 300,000 kind of population in that area. I think back home was a little bit more populated.

Speaker 3 10:21

We had food trucks, but I feel like you see them regularly here. Like back home. You would get a food truck for an event.

Speaker 1 10:29

Or like a festival.

Speaker 3 10:30

Yeah here.

Speaker 2 10:31

You'll just like go to an event, or you'll go anywhere, and there's one in the parking lot. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 10:38

Remember we had that really good birria ramen, oh that birria, oh my gosh, two things that when I heard about it I was like oh, that's two things. She loves birria and ramen.

Speaker 3 10:49

It's amazing, birria ramen. I'm addicted to birria tacos. It's a problem.

Speaker 1 10:54

We had those a little bit, but not like there are here. They're so good, they're amazing, and if y'all don't know what birria is, it's like kind of a I don't know dave you describe it it's kind of a hot roasty, almost a barbacoa ish, yeah. But then they have a sauce and so they cook the tortilla in the with the sauce kind of like, yeah, like on the griddle, yeah, on the griddle Before they make the taco. And then there's cheese.

Speaker 3 11:22

It's kind of like a quesadilla taco thing, with the soup and then you dip it in the soup. Yeah, it's like a French dip.

Speaker 1 11:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3 11:31

Kind of in a way yeah, mexican French dip.

Speaker 2 11:33

But there's kind of spices in that broth too. There's like kind of spices in that broth too.

Speaker 3 11:37

It's just outstanding.

Speaker 2 11:39

So that was the base of the ramen, and then it had the noodles and the beef yeah.

Speaker 1 11:44

But, like I remember for the new year, we were trying to find some black eyed peas.

Speaker 2 11:49

Oh, nowhere. Nowhere, nowhere Not even at that place that you think of as being a meat and three chain place, yeah, and we had just come back. We had gone chain place.

Speaker 1 11:59

Yeah, and we had just come back. We had gone home actually and come back, so it really wasn't time for us to cook and couldn't find it anywhere, so I don't know how our luck's going to be this year.

Speaker 2 12:05

I mean, you can find them in the grocery store In the grocery? Yeah, but you would have thought they would have had them at that chain restaurant the meat and three Characteristic southern restaurant.

Speaker 3 12:13

Yeah, Especially for New.

Speaker 2 12:15

Year's Eve or New Year's Day? Yeah.

Speaker 1 12:18

Nothing so but yeah, it's been an adventure and yeah, there's some things you know. Obviously we don't have out here Some things we're learning to appreciate and learning about you know. Hopefully we're going to do some more traveling and get the experience. Get you guys some good Texas barbecue, some more, some more places like that. Work away through the the top 10 list.

Speaker 2 12:43

We've been to one so far yeah, yeah, but and then hopefully um some of the famous places right, right, so yeah but yeah, so I don't know.

Speaker 1 12:59

I mean, that's just kind of uh, hey, yeah, we're still alive right and uh, there is. Uh, we're trying to get ramped back up. We're cooking a fair amount now we are yeah, so I'm excited you got me a really cool looking book for christmas it's a walk. Book a walk cookbook, so that gives me a whole another good thing to get into.

Speaker 1 13:18

Yeah, and you've got that crepe pan too, we've got a crepe pan for my birthday, so I'm going to try that out. I know Ann-Erin will be proud of us when we decide to do some crepes.

Speaker 2 13:28

Yep, and remember that thing that Jacques Pepin says about the first crepe goes to the dog.

Speaker 1 13:34

Yeah, who is right here? Yeah, she's dog. Yeah, and which? Who is right here?

Speaker 3 13:41

yeah, she's being the podcast dog today.

Speaker 2 13:42

Yeah, she's not super interested in the moment, oh, but uh, she's sitting right next to me but anyway so yeah, so that's an update of sweet tea and tacos and we do plan to kind of get back into it and yeah, and hopefully we can interview some, like we, we know of some cool things that are right around in our area, like really cool stuff that there may be like kind of a niche yep farmer type uh, they're growing a certain crop, or you know just whatever, and so so that's kind of where we're looking to go in this year is is do some more interviews and find some of those uh niche, uh producers, some neat stories to tell, right, and so, yeah, so hopefully good things to come.

Speaker 2 14:22

Yeah, so hang with us. Sorry for the lapse, but you can go back and listen to some old episodes and get caught up on some of that maybe.

Speaker 1 14:33

Yeah, absolutely Well for Sweet Teen Tacos. I'm Dave.

Speaker 2 14:36

And I'm Jen.

Speaker 1 14:38

And.

Speaker 2 14:38

Fred Yep.

Speaker 1 14:40

All right, y'all have a good day. © transcript Emily Beynon.