Bar-B-Cation

Good Evening Sleepy Muffin Readers!

I mentioned in my last post that we went to Austin on a short weekend trip. Well, the reason for the trip was a mini vacation to the 2nd annual Texas Monthly BBQ festival. My husband dubbed the trip a Bar-B-Cation since our main focus of the trip was some of the most amazing, succulent BBQ I've ever tasted in my life in cause you were wondering about my odd title this week.

The excitement in the air that day was almost palatable. Wait...that might have actually been the smell of slow cooked meat in the air. Regardless, everyone from the event coordinators, to the pit bosses, to regular attendees like myself were super excited about this event and ready to declare to the world their love of barbecued meats.




Prior to the event starting, we wandered over to some of the vendors parked along the edge of the event area to scope out all the different types of custom grills and see the pit bosses in action. One of the pit bosses (Boss's BBQ) even allowed us onto his trailer to view his kitchen setup and rotating grill up close.After checking out all the grills and posing for a few pictures we decided to head back to the line to wait for the event to actually begin.

BBQ Sauce in a baby bottle? Yes please!

At exactly 1:00pm, the event coordinators finally let us in (we just happened to be first in line - yay!) and the feast of ribs, brisket, and sausage was on. Our game plan was to start at one end and work our way around only sampling each vendor unless we absolutely loved their meats. I hate to be wasteful in that sense but considering there were 24 vendors at this event and some also provided sides in addition to their meats it made sense to try and pace ourselves.

The absolute best overall BBQ we tried in our opinion was from Franklin's in Austin (they actually won the people's choice award for brisket this year too). In addition to some amazing BBQ they also made this wonderful espresso bbq sauce that paired very nicely with their meats. I was such a fan I had to purchase a BBQ t-shirt from them to add to my growing collection of restaurant t-shirts. A few of the other things we tried there was corn pudding from Wild Blue, sausage from Smitty's, and some tasty brisket and ribs from Baby J's.

With so many vendors to visit and so many people moving around  I ended up running around with BBQ sauce smeared on my face unashamedly for a while. Sadly, I think we barely made it 3/4 of the way through all the vendors before we called it quits but not before I got myself a vanilla fried pie for dessert.  I am a rabid fan of the fried pie, however I've never tried a vanilla pie before because it just seemed a little too plain. I was completely wrong: this baby was just the right amount of sweet to offset all the smokey goodness we had just gleefully consumed.

After a few hours at the event, we went to the Bob Bullock History Museum to walk off the huge meal we just finished which is also where I found that cute tote I used in the DIY tote pillow project. The museum consisted of three stories of nicely put together and very well presented exhibits. The only downside I can say was that there were not enough areas for a pregger Muffin to sit down and rest her poor feet at. Thank God for those little video features they had scattered throughout the museum. Believe me: I watched them all.

Finally, we decided to head back home but not before getting some ice cream at Lick, a new ice creamery that opened just recently. We got to sample flavors such as Bacon, Beet, Sweet Corn, and Butternut Squash before deciding on 2 scoops of Cilantro Lime ice cream,  a scoop of pumpkin pie, and a scoop of grapefruit and ginger ice cream. My absolute favorite turned out to be the Cilantro lime ice cream because it was so light and refreshing. It also doesn't hurt that I'm a huge fan of cilantro and tend to use it very generously in my own cooking.

Overall, it was a fantastic (although, short) foodie vacation. We left Austin smelling like smoke and happy as a clam. We're already planning on making this event into a yearly family tradition when the little tummy monkey decides to arrive. I can't wait to see what's in store next year.