If you’re not already busy on the evening of Friday, June 3, consider going to the Edible Austin-sponsored Texas wine dinner at the AT&T Conference Center in Austin. I could be prejudiced, because I was one of the judges who got to choose the finalists, but it sounds absolutely
If you think of the two-year budget passed by the Texas House as a bankruptcy filing for the State of Texas, then the budget approved by the Senate Finance Committee yesterday is a reorganization plan that requires a substantial liquidation of assets. Finance Chairman Steve Ogden (R-Bryan) and other senators
We talked to Senator John Whitmire Wednesday afternoon about his objections to the Senate budget proposal and how he sees the budget endgame playing out.
Awesome Tomatoes Feature: Fried Green TomatoCritics 83% Audience 91%Movie InfoGenre: Southern, Comfort Food, ComedySynopsis: The Whistle Stop Café it ain’t, but the Fried Green Tomato, on the corner of South First and
From Bloomberg: Texas’s reserve fund may climb to 28 percent more than officially forecast by 2013 as energy prices rally, a gain that might help the second-most populous state avoid some spending cuts, a key senator said. The fund, fed by energy taxes and forecast by the state comptroller
One of the hazards of watching the Legislature at work is that everything else in the world drops off the radar screen (baseball excepted). So it was that I missed Public Policy Polling's tabulation of the Republican field that was released last week: Donald Trump 26% Michael Huckabee 17%
Sitting in Senate Finance yesterday, and listening to Robert Duncan present his proposals for non-tax revenue, was pretty discouraging. The sum was well below the hoped-for $5 billion. I’m not blaming Duncan, who has carried an heroic load this session. Rather, it was just the sense that the Senate budget
On March 29 we received this letter to the editor: The greasy slop recipes in Home Plates are disgusting, the photos were stomach turning. The chili looked like diarrhea, the meat was charred and carcinogenic, and anything fried and/or covered in cheese and grease is disgusting. The enchiladas look
This is district 88, an open seat, ten counties across and one couty wide, with U.S. 380 in the middle. Here’s the conspiracy theory: It’s designed to bring wind power from West Texas to the Metroplex. The new representative will not object to the construction of the lines. The beneficiary:
It was when I was talking to our cover boy, Buffalo Gap Ranch owner Tom Perini, about frying chicken, that I realized something: The common denominator in a good half of the dishes we feature in our April cover story, “Cook Like a Texan,” is a cast-iron vessel. Think about
I spent the last seven years living away from Texas - that's right, got back as fast as I could - and there were times, especially in smallish Missoula, Montana, that the best restaurant in town with Texas food was certainly our kitchen. That wouldn't have happened without Lisa Fain,
How had six years gone by since I attended the Buffalo Gap Wine and Food Summit? It’s the best of the small-scale wine and food fests in Texas–maybe in the country–and the most scenic, with walk-around tastings under the live oaks behind the Perini Ranch Steakhouse and a
Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst and Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden today talked to reporters about the Senate’s two year budget proposal. The bottom line numbers, they said, will remain a squishy secret until Thursday. And how extra money for the plan will be raised will be revealed Tuesday. But for
Long before this month’s “Cook Like a Texan” package, in December, 1983, Texas Monthly published a cover story boldly headlined “The Texas Food Manifesto”. The author was Alison Cook and even today, more than 27 years later, the story is an astonishing tour de force. And an enormously
Last week we spoke with Rep. Mike Villarreal about the tax exemption for high-cost natural gas drilling and its cost to the state.
Hochberg has been paired with Hubert Vo as a consequence of Solomons’ decision to hold Harris County to 24 seats. Harris qualified for 24.4 legislative seats. I haven’t discussed Hochberg’s plans with him, but I did hear from sources close to Sarah Davis that she expects Hochberg to move into
It’s on the House calendar for Monday: HB 2131 Geren / Solomons / et al. Relating to the issuance of a pass for expedited access to the State Capitol. Bill analysis: All of the old political hacks won’t have to put up with the public getting in line ahead of
A story in Saturday’s Statesman by Ralph Haurwitz chronicles the governor’s continuing interest in his proposed higher ed reforms, based on 700 pages worth of e-mails the newspaper obtained through a freedom of information request. Perhaps the most significant revelation in the story, however, is that Perry is no
When I read in yesterday’s Star-Telegram that U.S. Senator Patty Murray, chair of the Democratic Senate Campaign committee, intended to target the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2012 , my initial reaction was that Democrats had lost their minds. Everybody knows the score. The
(Photo courtesy of Sylvia's Enchilada Kitchen) Last month, Sarah Kliff, a food and travel writer for the BBC, visited Texas. It was on the half-hour flight between Houston and Austin that realized I might be descending into some culinary trouble. I, a vegetarian for a decade now, was flipping
A sixth-generation Texan and 30-year food writer, June Naylor’s passionate about food, about Texas, and about the intersection of the two: While she was working on this month’s “How to Cook Like a Texan” cover story, she was also busy promoting the 9-month-old Foodways Texas, an organization dedicated to
The outcome of redistricting for Nueces County — which is trending red — is that Calendars chair Todd Hunter has a strong Republican district, and the remaining two reps, Connie Scott and Raul Torres, are paired. They will face each other in the 2012 Republican primary. I think Scott wins
Photograph by Jody Horton Talk about the saying, “nothing succeeds like success”: The instant that Austin’s Franklin Barbecue moved into its new, bigger, brick-and-mortar location at 900 West 11th (512-653-1187), it had already outgrown the space. I asked owner Aaron Franklin about this
Senator Eddie Lucio recently rode in a parade for Brownsville’s Charro Days Fiesta, a festival created in 1937 to raise the spirits of those living through the Great Depression. Suddenly, a man in the crowd shouted in Spanish at Lucio: “There goes the state official who is going to cut
A House redistricting map with eight empty seats raised some eyebrows. My first thought was that the leadership wanted to recruit their own candidates for these districts. The fact is, five of the new seats were the result of population growth (one each in Tarrant, Denton, Collin, Williamson, and Fort
There’s no wolf at Raymond Tatum’s new dining venture, Three Little Pigs, but the food will certainly blow your house down. The renowned chef, formerly of Austin institutions such as Jeffrey’s and Jean-Pierre’s Upstairs, has finally opened his own trailer, with the help of his son,
This is the debate hardly anyone cares about: Is one Railroad Commissioner better than three? I’m not going to waste a lot of space on this issue, but I think it’s clear-cut that a single commissioner is a bad idea. The Sunset folks seem to have gotten it in their
Our April “Home Plates” package included “Last Meals” from Jim Lehrer (“no dessert or coffee” – with good reason), Willie Nelson, Jason Moran (who takes up for mac-and-cheese as a vegetable), Charles Butt, Karen Hughes and Governor Rick Perry (bing-cherry congealed salad with cream cheese and pecan topping –
Current map: 82 seats > 55% R Proposed map: 92 seats > 55% R + 10 "safe" R seats Depending upon how you look at it, Republicans gain ten seats as a result of the proposed House redistricting map, or they lose seven seats. They gain ten because they currently
The initial House redistricting plan released today by Chairman Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, was not the freshman slaughter that it might have been but it does target a Democrat who is annoying to the GOP leadership. Pairings in the plan include: Veteran Dan Flynn of Van against freshman Erwin Cain of
If I’ve learned one thing in 36 years of writing about food, it’s that everybody’s a critic—and Texans, being naturally ornery, are more opinionated than most. So when we here at the magazine decided to do our April cover story on the topic “Cook Like a Texan,”
We spoke with Conroe Representative Brandon Creighton, the chair of the Select Committee of State Sovereignty, about the committee’s mission, its relationship with the federal government, and its response to federal health care mandates.
After all the news that has come out concerning how much revenue the state loses from tax exemptions, it is stunning that Hilderbran’s Ways & Means committee is considering making the $1 million franchise tax exemption for businesses permanent. (It is scheduled to expire in September.) Here in a nutshell
Yesterday evening, while my husband and I were out admiring our highly productive (read: are you tired of lettuce yet?) raised vegetable gardens in the backyard, the neighbor called us over to ask us a very important question. “Say,” he started, beer in hand, “Would y’all mind it if my
A lot of speculation is going on about whether a special session will be necessary before the budget can be finalized. I have even heard a date mentioned: July 11. No doubt many readers have heard the same thing; there aren't many secrets in the Capitol. Is a special session
[Information about the release was initially published by the Quorum Report. I learned about it from a text message from a friend who follows the activities of the comptroller's office.] This is pertinent information from the release. For a link to Comptroller's complete statement, click HERE. Selected paragraphs from
This was the big news that emerged from his appearance on KXAN's Sunday morning political show, "Session '11." Beyond politics, however, the significance of Dewhurst's appearance was that he came down on the side of producing a Senate budget that addresses the state's needs: "We're putting a lot of
MALDEF filed two congressional redistricting plans last week. The Latino advocacy organization also issued a statement Thursday arguing for more Latino representation. A key excerpt: The maps presented today demonstrate that additional Latino-majority congressional districts can and should be created to provide a fair opportunity to Latino voters, stated Nina
As the House and Senate move toward a conference committee on the budget, a new player has emerged — Larry Taylor, the chair of the House Republican caucus. Jim Pitts, the House budgetmeister, has said from the start that the level of spending in the House bill is inadequate. He
Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst’s sincere effort to overhaul state Medicaid to save taxpayers money and improve health care for the poor has become the best jibe of the session, mirthfully described in Capitol hallway whispers as “Dewbamacare.” That may be nothing more than a joking reference to the federal Patient
I see that my colleague Nate Blakeslee and I have been working on the same story–the leaking of the proposed one-time savings that would help certify the budget, and he finished his post nineteen minutes before I began mine. Some of the proposals are not going to be controversial. I
It has been three weeks since the creation of Senator Duncan’s Subcommittee on Fiscal Matters, the panel charged with finding around $5 billion in non-tax revenue to cover the funding the Senate Finance Committee intends to restore to public education and health and human services, among other items. Today we
Most residents of urban Texas have probably never heard of the Texas Department of Rural Affairs. It is an obscure state agency that was originally known as the Office of Rural Community Affairs upon its creation in 2001. TDRA was part of then-speaker Pete Laney's effort to bolster rural Texas
California has long had a constitutional threshold of a two-thirds majority to pass a budget. This requirement for a supermajority produced gridlock after gridlock, year after year, until 2010, when California voters approved Proposition 25, an initiative providing for passage by majority vote. Another provision stipulated that legislators will
Most of the time, comfort food from a trailer translates to french fries. Forget mashed potatoes, chicken-fried steak, or anything else that requires a fork and a knife. Instead, your choices are hand-cut, frozen, Belgian, waffled, chili cheese. But once in a while, you come across a truck that has
I suppose you could call it a working vacation, but since I’m in Marfa (staying at the Paisano Hotel, loafing around, going to see Donald Judd’s magical aluminum boxes, hanging out at the bookstore), the vacation part seems to have priority. But, still, after dessert today at the
We aren’t surprised that Bryce Gilmore, the brains and creative talent behind Barley Swine and Odd Duck Farm to Trailer, has been named one of the 2011 Best New Chefs by Food & Wine. He’s been on our radar for quite some time (his father, Jack Gilmore,
We spoke with Houston Senator Dan Patrick, the chair of the legislature’s Tea Party Caucus, about whether the state has a structural deficit, his opposition to using the Rainy Day Fund for the next biennium, and his vote to restore funding to public education.
(scroll over the photos to see captions; click to see full photos) Imagine a farmers market on steroids. Now add alcohol. Hey! You’ve got the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival’s sold-out Sunday fair. Despite the scorching 85-degree weather, everyone had a grand time at this large gathering of
On Friday, April 1, food writer Josh Ozersky (he composes the Taste of America column for Time magazine and was formerly the editor of New York magazine’s don’t-miss food blog, Grub Street) spoke on the ideal hamburger, the burger of his dreams. He’s entitled. The man wrote the book