Former First Lady Laura Bush Takes Us on a Tour of Her Prairie Chapel Flower Garden
On a warm summer morning, former First Lady Laura Bush walked among the butterflies in the garden behind her dogtrot-style vacation house on Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford. The likes of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and U2 singer Bono have ventured on these grounds before, but on this July day viceroys and queens were the VIPs. They flitted about as Bush interpreted the landscape. There’s antelope horns milkweed, she said. There’s gaillardia. There’s basket-flower, and there’s a gourd. “This one’s called purple mist, or blue mist,” she said. “If you want butterflies, then plant this.” Read More »
How Oprah Helped This Smoked Turkey Company Become Famous
Sam Greenberg, the third-generation owner of Greenberg Smoked Turkeys, can pinpoint the day his bird became the word: Nov. 11, 2003. Oprah Winfrey’s people had called. The famed talk show host wanted to feature Greenberg turkeys on her annual—and very influential—gift-giving episode, “Oprah’s Favorite Things.” Read More »
Executive Chef Gerard Thompson Embraces Biscuits and Frito Pie at the Lauded Rough Creek Lodge
Gerard Thompson wields a large, sharp knife with one hand and carries a wooden stand holding a cured hog’s leg in the other. He moves quickly to greet tables of newcomers and regular guests at Rough Creek Lodge. Thompson, the lodge’s executive chef, shaves off paper-thin slices of prosciutto from the ample pig trotter and hands them out as appetizers. Read More »
Lemon Olive Oil Cake Recipe
Using Sandy Oaks’ olive oil in this simple recipe keeps the cake moist, while the limoncello, an Italian lemon liqueur, gives it a little kick. Serves 10-12 Read More »
This South Texas Olive Orchard Feels Like a Mediterranean Oasis
Visits to Italy in 1994 and Spain in ’99 inspired Winokur to recreate that Mediterranean setting in her home state, just south of San Antonio. After living in Manhattan for 14 years, taking art classes and illustrating children’s books, she had returned to Texas to help take care of family. “I’m a sixth-generation Texan, and most of my folks ranched, so certainly I wanted to have cattle, but I also wanted to do something else,” she says. “It seemed to me that olives could be a good crop for Texas. Read More »
Home on the Texas Range, Where the Longhorns and Bison Play
An up-close visit with a Longhorn or bison can be humbling. The animals’ large chestnut-brown eyes reveal a complex blend of wild animal and domesticated stock. It’s hard to know whether they’re plotting an aggressive charge or happily anticipating a bucket of feed. Read More »
BBQ and Tex-Mex in Lubbock
Searching for down-home comfort food? Try Wiley’s Old Fashioned Bar-B-Q and Burgers on the East Side. The simple ... Read More »
Port Aransas Inn’s Beach Funkiness
The three-story “pink palace,” as regulars call it because of its pink stucco exterior, sits a block from the Gulf ... Read More »
Opportunities to Fish Abound in Port Aransas
Fishing is intrinsic to Port Aransas. What would you expect from a town that was once named Tarpon because the fish were so bountiful that even President Franklin D. Roosevelt was drawn to these waters? Over-fishing reduced the tarpon population years ago, but this year’s anglers will find ample opportunities to cast for flounder, kingfish, shark, mangrove snapper, ling, and Spanish mackerel. Read More »
Texas History and Pride Combine in Gonzales
When you’re known as “the birthplace of Texas freedom,” you have a lot to live up to. Gonzales doesn’t disappoint, celebrating its past like Austin does its live music scene. This town of 7,628 has the only state-designated Texas History Museum District, plus there’s a Pioneer Village of cabins, blacksmith shops, a barn, a church, and a smokehouse that embodies the 1800s. A few miles outside of town, a monument marks the site of the battlefield where the first shots of the Texas Revolution were fired in 1835. The actual cannon is on display at the Gonzales Memorial Museum; flags depicting it with the defiant “Come and Take It!” slogan, which taunted Mexican troops, are omnipresent reminders that Gonzales might as well be nicknamed the “Live Texas History Capital of the World.” Read More »
Where to See Spectacular Monarch Migrations Along the Coast
Early one morning on Trinity Bay, the autumn sky began to glisten. Myriad monarchs unfurled in clouds from the shoreline, fluttering overhead, some landing on our boat, on our fishing rods, and even on me and my husband. We watched, enchanted, as they danced ever-southward, propelled by a light north wind and their biological imperative. Read More »
Need to Recenter? Try the Silent Treatment
In an attempt to quiet my mind and turn my attention inward, I’d come to the small town of Windom, an hour and a half northeast of Dallas, for a 36-hour silent retreat. Over a dinner of white rice, lentil curry, and homemade yogurt, my fellow retreaters at the Siddhayatan Spiritual Retreat Center, a Jain ashram, smiled knowingly as I folded my handwritten greeting into a square and tucked it into my pocket. “Oh, I did that for half a day once,” said Carmen, a 37-year-old mom from Saskatchewan, Canada, a devotee who’d come to the ashram to help out with a kids’ camp the following week. “It’s so hard if you’re a chatter like me.” Read More »
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