RL Reeves Jr Recipe: Pinto Beans With Jalapenos and Bacon
When I’m motoring out to Central Texas barbecue’s legendary smokehouses I do not eat side dishes.
People fly to Texas from all over the globe to eat at the smoked meat temples of Smithville, Taylor, Lockhart and Luling.
It ain’t for the potato salad.
2025 Young Men Olympian Jr Benevolent Association Second Line
Young Men Olympian Jr Benevolent Association was founded in 1884.
2025 Young Men Olympian Jr Benevolent Association Second Line
Chester A. Arthur was in the White House while William J. Behan was in the mayor’s office in downtown New Orleans.
RL Reeves Jr Recipe: Spaghetti With Sweet Onion Brisket Ragu [photo courtesy Ryan Adams]
Such was the case on many trips to Agata’s kitchen in Alabaster, Alabama.
There is an enormous Italian diaspora in central Alabama.
For decades, immigrants from the Boot have traveled to Dixie to settle into the fertile blacklands, and begin their new lives among the country folk of Chilton, Shelby and Jefferson counties.
It’s a little known fact that the Birmingham area hosts some of the finest Italian restaurants in the whole United States.
Places where they still bring a hot loaf of bread to table the moment you’re seated, Chianti bottles line the walls, and the tablecloths?
Even after almost 20 years in professional kitchens I’m still picking up tricks and techniques from some of my friends who are skilled home cooks.
Such is the case as I sit to dine at my buddy Ron’s house in verdant Pflugerville Texas.
He’s a retired insurance adjuster and an enthusiastic home cook who can bang out a top notch smoked pork shoulder and bottles his own righteously fiery Tex Mex table salsa with loads of jalapenos.
We’re having a fish fry and he’s anxious to show me his rice pilaf recipe and technique.
American Association of Meat Processors, American Cured Meat Championships
A total of 76 meat companies submitted 873 products across 30 different classes at the American Cured Meat Championships [est. 1949]
I’ve been in the cured and smoked meat game since the late ’80s. I am a charcutier but in no way on these gentlemen’s level. Give me another 20 years of practice.
This shootout is the Superbowl if you’re in the meat scene or meat adjacent.
Strick’s Specialty Meats in nearby Hattiesburg took home two Grand Championships. Otherwise the old south that we love was blanked out.
Here are the winners:
RL Reeves Jr Recipe: Funky Hot Vietnamese Collard Greens With Fried Green Onions
The 2025 Valley of Silent Men Social and Pleasure Second Line parade marked the beginning of the fresh second line season. Hearts were a bit heavy as this is the first season we will experience without the singular Pableaux Johnson who was felled by a heart attack in January of this year.
Here were our favorite photos from the Valley shoot.
2025 Valley of Silent Men Social and Pleasure Second Line
2025 Valley of Silent Men Social and Pleasure Second Line
2025 Valley of Silent Men Social and Pleasure Second Line
2025 Valley of Silent Men Social and Pleasure Second Line
2025 Valley of Silent Men Social and Pleasure Second Line
The foodways of Alabama barbecue are second only to Texas for their primacy in the world of USA smoked meats. When I was a teenager growing up in Birmingham I raced across the state on my Honda Interceptor motorbike trying as hard as possible to eat from every smokehouse in the Yellowhammer state.
RL Reeves Jr Recipe: Oven Roasted Carnitas
It was a family reunion, puro la raza, and I was the only gringo there. The tias and abuelitas were gathered in the kitchen making all the tortillas, rice and beans from scratch but I had been entrusted with the carnitas.
Here’s how I became, as they put it, an honorary Mexican
2025 Satchmo Summerfest Second Line
If you were in New Orleans in the late 70s you were living in a Baby Doll desert. By my count we had less than five ladies masking and the tradition was in danger of becoming extinct. In the ensuing 45-plus years we’ve seen dozens if not hundreds of women embrace the custom, form their own Doll Houses, and take to the streets to shimmy, shake, and show out.
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