Dining

How to get the best brisket on your plate

I love a moist, tender, juicy and flavorful brisket. Something I’ve learned from dining at Rudy’s is to always ask for the “MOIST” brisket–stay away from any brisket at Rudy’s not labeled as such. Fact is: brisket consists of two sections, the flat and the point. When shopping for a brisket to barbecue, one will find that the flat section is a chunk of lean meat, and usually more expensive, whereas the point is more flavorful and fattier. Fat = flavor, get it? If you’re lucky or have a good butcher, you will find the “packer’s cut” which is a full-sized brisket that includes both flat and point ends blanketed in a layer of fat. True Texas barbecuing involves the whole chunk of meat, a smoker, and a good amount of patience to cook. But eating Texas barbecue…well, you have to know the lingo. Every BBQ joint I’ve visited, I’ve always called for brisket that was “moist” (Rudy’s and Big Daddy’s Roadhouse), the “fatty” cut (every BBQ joint I’ve been to), or the crusty flavorful “cap” (Dickey’s)…but after reading an article on barbecue, I will have to add “off the point” and “deckel end” to my bbq-feasting vocabulary. It has been a rarity that I don’t get the well-marbled brisket that I asked for (of course, it perhaps helps my cause that I’m a petite asian girl demanding a piece of fatty brisket on her plate). But when I have to choke down flavorless, dried-out lean brisket, then I can safely assume that the restaurant serving me such an atrocity have no clue about real barbecue.

So there you have it: don’t be embarrassed to ask for the best brisket on your plate…because if you don’t, the next person in line brave enough to ask for the “crusty fatty brisket” will enjoy their meal much more than you did.

Ye Olde Garden

Casualty list

All of my lavender plants are gone…the rosemary bush is on its final legs. Let this be a lesson: xeric plants that don’t like their feet wet MUST have a sandy soil mixture that doesn’t retain water. Perhaps I will need to consider older specimens in the future, as well bigger planters with sufficient drainage.

I noticed that my Devil’s Wine calla is dropping all of its leaves…I suppose that it’s done for it’s summer show. The other callas are following suit. Perhaps it is the planter environment, or perhaps they just don’t get enough sunlight to keep the greenery up. I generally have had longer foliage life when the callas are in a garden setting, but perhaps these callas are a little less hardy here in the south and less suited to a patio environment.

I’ve noticed that one of the ornamental pepper plants have ripening fruit. What started as a rich purple fruit has now ripened to burgundy-red color. With sporadic flowering of the neighboring dianthus, the colors stand out marvelously.

I am not sure why the potted salvia are looking thin and reedy, despite sufficient watering. I am wondering if their potted state just isn’t giving them enough room to grow and spread.

Dining, Reviews

Tummy lovin’ brisket

Rudy’s Country Store & BBQ

Rudy’s BBQ…how I LOVE your super-moist brisket, your sweet creamed corn and your death-by-butter new potatoes. When I heard the franchise was opening a location in the DFW area, I was ecstatic. I drove to Waco and Austin many a time solely to visit Rudy’s and savor their juicy, tender brisket and bring home bottles of their original Rudy’s BBQ sauce–they have a sissy version for those of you with sensitive palates. I realize that the moist (fatty) brisket isn’t for every one (don’t ever order the lean brisket), just as not everybody enjoys watching their potatoes drowned in butter. If you don’t relish the idea of dying happy from the cholesterol-overload, then best to steer clear of Rudy’s. As for me, serve me up another pound of that fabulous moist brisket!

My rating: 4.0 stars
****

Technical

CHMOD and the recursive

I encountered an unusual situation in which a directory on the web server had exclusive permissions assigned to the root owner only. I had been attempting to ftp an image file to a directory on the server, but I had no permissions to do so, despite that the account I used had FTP rights. I couldn’t change permissions either via telnet (PuTTY) or another FTP client. It took me a bit of research before I figured out that I couldn’t change just the directory itself, but the entire directory including subs and files. To do this, I needed to add the argument “-R” (without the quotations) to recursively change the permissions of all files in all subdirectories of the directory whose permissions were being changed. What worked:

chmod -R 777 filenameordirectory

I had to log in as root via telnet to the server to make the changes.