melissa-dallas
Well-known member
This is from Dallas News columnist Jacqueline Floyd this week:
It’s sweet — it’s touching, really — to see the nation swooning over Texas in general and the greater Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area in particular as the Super Bowl approaches.
If we’d known that all it took was a billion-dollar stadium and the temporary importation of a few celebrities to make everybody make a fuss over Dallas, maybe we would have nailed it down sooner.
As it is, the out-of-state media is suddenly brimming with cheery if cliche-studded stories about oil money and Neiman Marcus and how everything’s bigger here. They’re feigning pleased surprise to find that we have art museums and live theater and restaurants with sommeliers.
It’s nice to bask in the friendly glow of their Super Bowl-hyped approval, free for once of catty remarks about rednecks and mega churches (“Dallas prides itself on its sophistication,” gushes the Toronto Star).
It’s natural, then, that by way of consolation for those who can’t actually make the trip, food editors and home-entertainment bloggers across the land are urging fans to concoct “Texas-themed” Super Bowl parties.
“If you can’t make it to Dallas for Super Bowl XLV, don’t fret,” says a piece in the Tacoma, Wash., paper (ignoring, like everybody else, the share-the-spoils dictum that we be officially addressed as “North Texas”). “You can still eat like you’re in the land of the Alamo and armadillo.”
Alas, I would rather eat an actual armadillo than some of the peculiar items that out-of-staters seem to think represent “authentic” Texas cuisine.
It’s not that they don’t know what we eat. They’re wise to the gifts we have showered on modern civilization with our mastery of Tex-Mex, barbecue and the blissful marriage of Velveeta to canned Ro-Tel tomatoes.
But, gosh, what have they done to our cherished staples?
“Pay homage to Texas with a chili canape,” urges a Nashville writer. A what? Is she talking about a nacho? Follow up with tacos made out of “turkey legs cooked slowly in beer.”
One blogger explains that “real Texas barbecue” is produced by — it pains me to say this — baking a brisket in the oven. Another claims that the correct method for authentic guacamole calls for “2 teaspoons blue agave nectar” (or honey, in case you’re fresh out of agaves). Don’t even ask about the “Lone Star” pinto beans, baked in a gluey emulsion of maple syrup and mustard.
A recipe I found for “Texas queso” correctly calls for Velveeta and peppers, but also for celery (!) and sliced carrots (!!), ultimately rendering what sounds like a sort of cheese soup for recovering invalids.
Well, people are free to eat what they want. We’re traditionalists at our house, so I expect we’ll be having one of those cheese logs rolled in nuts and a summer sausage shaped like a football.
But “Stompin’ Texas-Style Chili,” as described by one California paper, will come as a surprise to any Texan who tastes it: The recipe not only erroneously calls for beans, but includes such curiosities as brown sugar, bittersweet chocolate and vegetable stock (“where possible, use organics”).
Don’t forget the decorations: One party consultant advises that “an inflatable cactus on either side of the TV screams Texas,” and that a good way to get your Super Bowl guests in a party mood is to perform rope tricks or play recorded CDs of cowboy poetry.
Why not just invite everybody to go out in the yard and shoot guns in the air?
And finally — I saved this for last, because I know it will hurt you — is an allegation so blasphemous that we need to draft an Eleventh Commandment to stamp it out: “Many Texans like to top their Frito pie with catsup.” Faugh! Not even ketchup-with-a-K, but “catsup” with that whiny Yankee spelling! Why are they spreading these dreadful lies?
Really, though, I’m touched by the thought, inflatable cacti and all. It’s charming to think of all those people in far-off places planning their Lone Star menus for Super Bowl Sunday.
Just don’t ask me to eat it.
It’s sweet — it’s touching, really — to see the nation swooning over Texas in general and the greater Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area in particular as the Super Bowl approaches.
If we’d known that all it took was a billion-dollar stadium and the temporary importation of a few celebrities to make everybody make a fuss over Dallas, maybe we would have nailed it down sooner.
As it is, the out-of-state media is suddenly brimming with cheery if cliche-studded stories about oil money and Neiman Marcus and how everything’s bigger here. They’re feigning pleased surprise to find that we have art museums and live theater and restaurants with sommeliers.
It’s nice to bask in the friendly glow of their Super Bowl-hyped approval, free for once of catty remarks about rednecks and mega churches (“Dallas prides itself on its sophistication,” gushes the Toronto Star).
It’s natural, then, that by way of consolation for those who can’t actually make the trip, food editors and home-entertainment bloggers across the land are urging fans to concoct “Texas-themed” Super Bowl parties.
“If you can’t make it to Dallas for Super Bowl XLV, don’t fret,” says a piece in the Tacoma, Wash., paper (ignoring, like everybody else, the share-the-spoils dictum that we be officially addressed as “North Texas”). “You can still eat like you’re in the land of the Alamo and armadillo.”
Alas, I would rather eat an actual armadillo than some of the peculiar items that out-of-staters seem to think represent “authentic” Texas cuisine.
It’s not that they don’t know what we eat. They’re wise to the gifts we have showered on modern civilization with our mastery of Tex-Mex, barbecue and the blissful marriage of Velveeta to canned Ro-Tel tomatoes.
But, gosh, what have they done to our cherished staples?
“Pay homage to Texas with a chili canape,” urges a Nashville writer. A what? Is she talking about a nacho? Follow up with tacos made out of “turkey legs cooked slowly in beer.”
One blogger explains that “real Texas barbecue” is produced by — it pains me to say this — baking a brisket in the oven. Another claims that the correct method for authentic guacamole calls for “2 teaspoons blue agave nectar” (or honey, in case you’re fresh out of agaves). Don’t even ask about the “Lone Star” pinto beans, baked in a gluey emulsion of maple syrup and mustard.
A recipe I found for “Texas queso” correctly calls for Velveeta and peppers, but also for celery (!) and sliced carrots (!!), ultimately rendering what sounds like a sort of cheese soup for recovering invalids.
Well, people are free to eat what they want. We’re traditionalists at our house, so I expect we’ll be having one of those cheese logs rolled in nuts and a summer sausage shaped like a football.
But “Stompin’ Texas-Style Chili,” as described by one California paper, will come as a surprise to any Texan who tastes it: The recipe not only erroneously calls for beans, but includes such curiosities as brown sugar, bittersweet chocolate and vegetable stock (“where possible, use organics”).
Don’t forget the decorations: One party consultant advises that “an inflatable cactus on either side of the TV screams Texas,” and that a good way to get your Super Bowl guests in a party mood is to perform rope tricks or play recorded CDs of cowboy poetry.
Why not just invite everybody to go out in the yard and shoot guns in the air?
And finally — I saved this for last, because I know it will hurt you — is an allegation so blasphemous that we need to draft an Eleventh Commandment to stamp it out: “Many Texans like to top their Frito pie with catsup.” Faugh! Not even ketchup-with-a-K, but “catsup” with that whiny Yankee spelling! Why are they spreading these dreadful lies?
Really, though, I’m touched by the thought, inflatable cacti and all. It’s charming to think of all those people in far-off places planning their Lone Star menus for Super Bowl Sunday.
Just don’t ask me to eat it.
