First Texas MeatUp In Houston Is Finally Here! April 2025

[Michael_in_TX]

SheilaAnn tries an HEB flour tortilla. My reputation is on the line here!!

[SheilaAnn]

Michael_in_TX Aces!

[Michael_in_TX]

Bacon.

[yakima]

These meat-ups are great to follow. In this one, I particularly appreciate the bbq joint write ups.

[Michael_in_TX]

Tacos. A team effort. It came together flawlessly and with no issues whatsoever. Most straightforward endeavour ever. Really.



These were good! (I ate four.)

[Oak Smoke]

I hate missing a good cluster. They were a highlight of my time spent in Oklahoma. My people could screw up a one man rock fight. I shall return! Come on fall meet up!

[58limited]

"thanks to my patience..." LOL!

Oh, wait, you're serious, let me laugh harder BWAHAHAHAHA!

[realdocBBQ]

Oak Smoke yeah, here in OK, we can just about flustercluck anything and everything you can think of. lol

[Michael_in_TX]

This trip has inspired me.

Things I now want to get:

• A very large GMC truck. (Where would I put it....)
• An offset smoker. (Also, where would I put it...)
• A sausage stuffer. (Where would I....same issue.)

Things I do not want to get:

• An in-counter gas grill of a certain manufacture.

[58limited]

As this Meat Up winds down I would like to thank Tom Mosca for offering to bring cheese from Shpoppy Shawn's Cheese, I bought a lot and he graciously brought it with him on the flight to Houston. Also, thanks for the Lebanon Bologna and for finding such an excellent taco joint for breakfast.

Thanks Panhead John for setting this up and for the gift bags, Mosca also contributed to this project as well. In the Total Wine gift bag: Country Boy's Bacon, hot garlic sausage, and Texas Heat Trail Mix from HEB.

Thanks to WI Bubba (and everyone else who contributed) for providing and cooking the taco fixins for dinner tonight in what will always be known as the smoothest most flawless cook ever.

Thanks to all who attended, it was a fun weekend and it was nice meeting new people.

[Sid P]

At the two hotel meatups I’ve attended it was agreed in advance that we wouldn’t attempt a group cook. I now understand why.

[Panhead John]

Sid P It was like herding cats….Talk about a bunch of hard heads that wanted everything done a different way 🤓....I was the only one who was calm and laid back about it…🙄😂

[Uncle Bob]

Those gift bags sound nice...........too bad we apparently didn't have enough to go around......

[Michael_in_TX]

I had an absolute blast this trip. Ecstatic beyond measure that I finally was able to make one of these. It was an absolute delight to put some names to faces. I will be talking about the food for days.

Panhead John likes to pass it off as if it is nothing to organize/coordinate these things, but it is. (I run conferences professionally, so I know what can go into these things.) Even for a small gathering like this, it can be a bit of work. John, your efforts are much valued and appreciated. This was fun.

[Panhead John]

Thanks Michael, I’m really glad you were able to attend! The only bad part is Sunday comes too soon.

[Draznnl]

I'm going to echo Michael_in_TX This was a great weekend. Even the inability to get cooking equipment to cooperate last night didn't put a blot on it. We just wound up eating at a European dinner hour.

Thank you to Panhead John for all of your work organizing the weekend and to everyone else for their contributions and camaraderie. I met some wonderful folks and had a blast. If you've been thinking about coming to one of these Meat-Ups, but have been putting it off, come. They're fun, the food is terrific, and the people are great.

[Michael_in_TX]

Goodbye, Homewood Suites. Thank you for everything, except, perhaps, the grills.



(Also, we could not have asked for better weather this week!)

[Mosca]

Yeah, the Saturday dinner was… interesting.

There are two really beautiful gas grills here. Beautiful. The stainless steel grate rods looked brand new!

And we soon found out why. It’s because they’ve never gotten hot enough to actually cook anything. Another group was there, and they took one grill, we took the other.

WI Bubba prepped big batches of food, and brought it all down to the patio; Panhead John provided the bacon, and (since we all know what we’re doing) we pitched in to help cook everything. I volunteered for bacon, and Will loaded up the pan, and we set the burners to high.

Half an hour later, I was still looking at pink bacon, that maybe was starting to render, a little? At that rate the bacon would be ready around midnight. Somebody got the great idea to take it to a room and do it on the stove! I agreed. I took the bacon, two pans (the rooms stoves are double burner) and headed to my room to get that sweet pork sizzlin’!

So I’m cooking the bacon, and stuff is finally getting hot, but one pan is too big, so I went back outside quickly to swap it for a smaller one, so I could do bacon twice as fast! And I came back to my room, and I could smell the bacon in the hall, and I opened the door, and I could smell that it had started to burn….

BEEP! BEEEP! BEEEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEEEP!

The smoke detector went off.

I waved a bag at it, and it stopped for a couple seconds, then it came back, REALLY MAD THIS TIME. BEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEP!

Damn.

I turned the ceiling fan on. I propped open the door. I waved at the smoke detector.

BEEP BEEEP BEEEEEEEP!

The phone rang, it was the front desk. I didn’t get to it in time. The front desk agent came down to the room, and said it would stop eventually. But she had to get back to the desk, because the smoke detector calls the fire department, and they call the front desk….

BEEP BEEEP BEEEEEEEP!

Everything smelled like bacon, up and down the entire hall.

BEEP BEEEEP BEEEEEEEP!

After 15 minutes of waving at the smoke detector, my arms were tired. I went back to the patio. Half an hour later, I went back and checked. I didn’t get too far down the hall. And I could hear, faintly, behind my door… beep, beep, beep!

Everything still smelled like bacon.

Oh well. Back to the patio, with my mellow severely harshed by this time. “I’ll just check it again in another half hour,” I figured. Half an hour later, halfway down the hall: “beep, beep, beep….”

And the hall smelled like bacon.

I went back to the front desk, embarrassed and discouraged, with my tail between my legs, and I apologized to Tiffany, and explained that the alarm wouldn’t turn off. She told me to go back and pull the battery. But those alarms are hard wired, and connected to the fire station. No can do. She said, “It’s showing on my panel as not triggered now… let me look….” And she opened the panel, pushed a couple buttons, and said, “Go check now. It shows, ‘alarm disabled.’”

Tiffany is the awesomest front desk agent in the history of front desk agents. The beeping was stopped.

The hall smelled like bacon.

I went back to the party, my mellow recovering quickly! We all joked about it, by this time we had control of both grills and the food was almost done! SheilaAnn had predicted (around 6PM) that we wouldn’t be eating until around 8:30; I think she missed it by what, 8 minutes? Sheila?

Anyhow, the food turned out killer. Will made hash out of leftover bbq meat, there was bacon, eggs, salsas, hot sauces, fresh tortillas from HEB, sausage, cheese, all sorts of great stuff. We all ate well past full. All’s well that ends well!

And the hall finally didn’t smell like bacon any more.


But my room still did.

[Panhead John]

Tom did not exaggerate one bit…😂 Great writeup Tom!!! Luckily we can all laugh about it now, but I’m with ya buddy, all that happened wasn’t too funny at the time. And yeah, those gas grills sure LOOKED good…🙄

[WI Bubba]

And the fact that with a lot of people pitching in and helping get things done, we had a good dinner. It really was the smoothest most flawless cook ever.

[Mosca]

Sunday morning. No more bacon smell!

David ( 58limited ) Sunny (LA Pork Butt) and Irene (Mrs Sunny) and I went to La Cocina Taco House again. If you live in this area, these are absolutely great tacos. Tortillas are pressed (or rolled) to order.

[Michael_in_TX]

I decided to extend my trip just a little bit and stopped by the famed B&W Meat Market as it was literally right on my way home.



John was not exaggerating -- the meat counter stretches from one side of the store to the other and there is just piles upon piles upon piles of sausage.

I got a few of the venison hots, some jalapeño and cheddar, and, of course, more of the beef & pork garlic hot (can you tell I liked it)?



It is actually temporally closer to my house than I thought it was. Even with the typical slowdowns going through downtown Houston, on a Sunday it was 40 minutes point-to-point from there to my house. (Yes, 40 minutes is what we in Houston consider to be "around the corner" lol.)

[Panhead John]

Good deal Michael. Pretty sure you’ll be a regular there now. Here’s some pics I have of the meat counter and sausage area. 😳

[Uncle Bob]

To add to the last night cook out achievements: the gang soldiered on as best they could without much drama (well except for the bacon burnt offering thing). To give another frame of reference, the folks who were using the other unit were cooking skirt steak for fajitas. If you've ever done them on a decent, well functioning cooker your total cook time is somewhere 5-10 minutes tops. They were on the grille for just over an hour and never did get much char on the meat..........sigh.

I want to give special thanks to Sheila for taking on the egg cooking responsibility, she's even more picky than me about the level of doneness/texture............she knows what she's doing kids. Plus, she knows a real margarita from a slushy.

[SheilaAnn]

Uncle Bob 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

[Mosca]

I had (have) some time to kill, still, so I decided to walk around Old Town Spring, which is really nice.


This guy sells hot sauces, pickles, rubs, hot pepper powders, etc. This is one wall out of 3 rooms.




Lots of new age and mind altering options.




I sampled a Granny’s tamale; delicious, but man. VERY filling.




I would have gone in here, but they weren’t open.




This is the coffee shop we spent time at yesterday. It was really nice, it had a relaxing vibe.




And just some other stuff.




I’d spend more time walking around here, it was pretty cool.