Riding for the Brand

It has been a little while since the ole Calk Wagon went out to cook in competition but decided "it was about time".  A while back I became acquainted with a young man on the internet when he answered a question I had about a Masonic membership card.  We visited back and forth messaging and he became interesed in what was going on with this chuck wagon thing.  It turned out that there was a local event I had scheduled here in El Paso that involved cooking breakfast at a Ford dealership.  I thought it would be a good chance to get acquainted with him and him with chuck wagon cooking.  I had my usual help: Skip Clark, John Cooper, and Joy Leos.  They are all seasoned veterans with cooking, and getting there at 5:30 am was not a problem.  Turned out that John had come down with a bug and was unable to attend so the timing was perfect for the new recruit to get acquainted with some chuck wagon cooking.

Erik Briseno is a self proclaimed City Boy .  He told me that he had never had the opportunity to get out and go camping and the like but was willing to learn.  I think he explained that he once tried to fish but didn't want to get out of the car so they drove as clsoe to water as they could and he "fished" out the window. Right now it is about learning his way around a chuck wagon.  That in itself is quite refreshing.  The fact he is a Masonic brother it doubly cool.

Erik, sweating "it" in San Antonio

The gig at the Ford dealership was breakfast for 150 and that went really well with four of us preparing migas, ham, biscuits and gravy.  Everything was cooked on propane because of the asphalt location.  Even after the event was over he was still interested.  Next came the Fort Sam Houston/Cowboys for Heroes event which was a four hour serving time meal in which we fed 500 people.  He got to see all aspects of preparing many different dishes and multiple cooking techniques.

Still not deterred, we entered a brisket cook off in which we competed valiantly but did not bring home the gold.  We did however vow to come back next year with a vengeance.

He would keep telling me that he really enjoyed learning this totally "new stuff".  He took the ribbing from all the old hands in San Antonio and managed to become a team member.  He was still lacking. He had no cowboy threads and no idea what to buy but was interested in looking the part.  He said that he had never been a person who would try to look like something they were not, BUT added that sense cooking on the wagon he felt he had become the real deal and was ready to get outfitted with some duds that would make him fit in better.  You know, boots, hat, pants, shirt, vest, wild rag, authentic glasses.  You know the drill.  We are well on our way to getting him into the fold and I must say that he is fitting nicely into mold.  Yep, riding for the brand is what he is all about.  He has proclaimed about his time around the camp that everything is heavy, a person can easily get burned, cut, scraped, sun burned, exhausted, and dehydrated, cussed, yelled at, and in all kinds of weather.....and yet is still interested in hanging out with the boys of the wagon.

Pretty cool lad and now part of our wagon crew.

Calk Brisket

5-28-14

There are as many BBQ Brisket recipes as there are “Carter’s Little Liver Pills” (of course most of you have never heard of CLLP’s but some Boomers and beyond might get a chuckle).  I thought I would write a blog about the way I do my briskets.  Now this is somewhat related to chuck wagons in that beef or cattle were driven up the trail and briskets come from cattle. I feel like that is close enough to chuck wagon’s that this blog would be ok.

 Thinking about the price of briskets these days would astound the cattle barons of yesteryear.  A flat brisket is a trimmed brisket, sometimes called the point and it sells $5.87 per pound compared to the untrimmed that is priced at $2.89.  My consideration for using “flats” is the amount of fat and unusable portion just about equals the difference in the two prices.  Now think about this proposition:  the price of beef on the hoof was easily equal to today’s price for one brisket.  So when someone says “Some things never change”, you can tell them the price of beef surely has changed in the last year to say nothing of the last 125 years.

My friend Skip Clark was in need of about 40 lbs. of brisket for a party he is hosting on Saturday and I agreed to cook the meat.  The number of guests expected is to be in the neighborhood of 75.  I vowed many years ago to never cut to close on figuring the amount needed so I use the formula of ½ lb. of uncooked meet per person, plus a little bit.  In this case we purchased 41.3 pounds at $5.87 per pound for a total of $243.00.  Additionally I needed a gallon of Cattleman’s BBQ Sauce, Montreal seasoning, and crushed red chile pepper, mesquite wood,  a bbq pit, utensils, a pan, and approximately nine hours to complete the task. 

The cooking began on Wednesday at 9 am when I built a mesquite fire in my bbq pit.  It takes about 45 minutes to burn down to coals and then they are spread across the floor of the pit so the fire will be directly under the meat. 

The brisket usually has a little thin gristle and should be trimmed off along with just a small portion of the thickest fat.   I trim and prepare the meat while the wood is burning down and apply a liberal amount of Montreal seasoning and crushed red chili pepper (like what you put on pizzas).  When the mesquite wood has turned to chucks of coal the meat is placed on the pit fat side up.  Now there are some “Q” ologists  that say the lean mean will not absorb any of the fat drippings because the texture of the meat is too tight and it will just merely run off.  (a Q ologist is one who knows his business about BAR BE “Q”.  Wrong!  If you cook a brisket with a lot of fat still on the meat it will definitely obtain a taste that is drastically different from one that has been trimmed of all the fat. 

I try to keep the pit temperature around 250 degrees and sometimes it will vary between 200-300 degrees.   I add a small piece of mesquite about 2” x 10” to keep the temperature consistent.  Once the meat has been placed on the fire (I put mine on at 10 am) I will turn it over ever thirty minutes for a total of four hours.  I mix the Cattleman’s sauce 50/50 with water and using a plastic squeeze bottle squirt the sauce on to the briskets beginning with the third turning of the meat and then again every thirty minutes.  I sometimes add the same seasoning to the sauce that I put on the outside of the meat.

The next step is sometimes called the Texas Crutch and it is simply a way to cut down on the amount of time it takes to get tender brisket by sealing the meat and allowing it to steam itself.   I have an aluminum pan with a lid which is actually an Army field oven pan and I use it instead of wrapping the briskets in tinfoil.

 The trouble with tinfoil is if it obtains a puncture while turning all of the juice will run out and you will be left with a very dry piece of meat.  The aluminum pan takes care of that worry.  I have also used the heavy duty tinfoil pans to “steam” the briskets and just add a sheet of heavy foil across the top to seal the meat. The down side of using the Texas Crutch is that the tough exterior of the brisket is now very soft.  If you want a hard outer crust you can place it back on the fire to get the crust back…but it will be at the expense of cooking out some of the moisture.  I like them fine with a soft exterior and don’t get many complaints.  Those that do complain, well they are only able to complain once.

I place the briskets in the pan until a BBQ fork will easily puncture the brisket which is about 3-4 additional hours….sometimes less.  There are a lot of elements that can change your cooking time like wind, rain, snow, type of wood, cut of meat, distance meat is from fire, etc.

After seven hours the brisket was almost falling apart tender.  Skip is going to serve the meat on Saturday so I have to hold the meat over and will deliver it to him on Friday.  He is going to serve the meat chopped.  I have decided that I will bag the briskets in heavy zip locks and keep them on ice until I chop it up and deliver it on Friday.  He will reheat the brisket in an electric food warmer. I might add here, if you have time the briskets are a whole lot easier to chop when they are warm.  

I enjoy doing the briskets because I can open up my “cook shack” which is an outdoor wood burning stove enclosure.  This day my wife Linda and I had breakfast burritos I made on the stove along with some percolated coffee.  While all the “goings on “ are going on I am playing a little Ray, Willie, Darrell, Johnny, and Mike (did you figure out what all the last names were?) music on the stereo.  As they say in some circles “It don’t get no better than this.

Goodnight & Loving at Fort Stanton Live ...Chapter Two

This blog is a continuation of one I did earlier.  The first one was in preparation for the trip and this one will be at the fort….which is Fort Stanton, New Mexico in about 1866.  

You can take a little time and look on line to find Fort Stanton Live and the website will give you some background on the fort and they even have a Facebook page that will tell you about what the staff at the fort has been doing to upgrade the surroundings.  Larry Pope is the commander of the operation and is the person who “gets things done”.  The fort is quite impressive. 

Talk about re-enactors who know their history.  If you rolled all of the historical knowledge you would have quite an encyclopedia………….wooooo, now that is an old word.  What I am trying to say is the base line knowledge is extremely high.  Many of the historical actors have multiple uniforms.  I ask “James” what the price of the Dragoon uniform he was wearing would cost……..$350 for the headgear and the coat about twice that much.   Hummmmm, I think I will stick to cowboying because I can get into a “uniform” for say…..hat $100, shirt $65, pants $65, boots $150, vest $45, pistol & holster $325, watch $ 300, suspenders $65, wild rag $39,  shotgun $ 225, chuck wagon $16,000, trailer $7000, to say nothing of all of the antique cooking pots, pans, etc….………………hummm on second thought…..well too late now.

We arrived at Fort Stanton mid-morning and got the lay of the land from Larry and we began our methodical camp setup.  We were in a really good location which was where most of the spectators came in to the parade grounds from the parking lot. 

We were to share the fire pit with two other camps, which was no problem and it was especially nice that the fire ban was lifted that very day.  The only annoyance was the distance the fire was from the wagon which sort of limited us on what we were going to prepare.  The plan was to basically prepare food for ourselves and we were going to go Johnny Cakes for the public which requires constant attention to maintaining the fire and cooking the cakes.  We adapted and just provided historically dialog with the spectators about why a chuck wagon would have been at the fort.  We maintained that Charlie Goodnight had indeed invented the chuck wagon for the cattle drive up the Goodnight-Loving Trail, however this little drive of 500 head was a test run for the chuck wagon to see how well it would do and what provisions it would carry.  We further interpreted this drive to Fort Stanton to be just prior to the famous cattle drive up the Goodnight-Loving Trail in which Oliver Loving died from his injuries from an Indian attack.  If you haven’t seen the movie Lonesome Dove, give it a look because this portion of the movie is very accurate to what actually happened with One –Armed Bill Wilson, Charles Goodnight, and Oliver Loving. 

I met some folks in Ruidoso that later showed up at Fort Stanton and brought some Sand Plum jelly for the camp.  This was sort of the way the weekend went, that is to say, meeting people along the way and visiting about history and telling them about why we are doing this historical re-enactment.  It was great fun.  I wish we could have cooked more.

We were very lucky that we got Ann Marie, Jacob, William, and Maggie to camp beside us.  Ann Marie was the laundress and an amazing woman.  She sews all of their period clothes, makes bread, grows vegetables, sets up their camp and, by the way, this is their history class because she also home schools the children.  The other side of the laundress camp was Jennifer Breeding who was amazing in her own right serving as the fort sutler.  She had lots of clothes for sale as well as other period things that she made herself.  Eddie and I contracted her to make us each a period shirt which will be from a historically accurate pattern. 

The three camps shared the fire pit and that worked out just fine.  We made venison steaks the first night with pan de campo.  Breakfast was eggs, bacon, potatoes, onions, and tortillas.  One meal was beans and Navajo tamales.  All of these items would have been available within the premises of the fort at this period.  We brought the venison from a kill just prior to reaching the fort.   We got the pinto beans on to cook early and they were ready for the noon meal.  We had bran bread brought by the “jelly” folks and zucchini bread made from Ann Maries garden zucchini. Late evening the special treat was Shoofly Pie that James and Ann Marie cooked in a Dutch oven buried in the ground.  Quite tasty!  It is a molasses based pie. 

I had noticed on Facebook that Larry Pope’s daughter Emily had received a new guitar so when I saw her I asked if she would come to the camp in the evening to play and sing which she did most energetically.  She is quite a budding musician and has complete confidence in herself and abilities.  Not intimidated in the least.  It was very enjoyable!

The cavalry had, I think it was six cannons on a firing line, one of which was brand new and this was to be the very first firing.  It went off without a hitch. Quite explosive!! James was in charge of one cannon battery and invited me to go and become one of the crew.  The training is precise and sounded interesting but I didn’t get to the area soon enough as the cannons were about ready to fire when I arrived.  Maybe I will get another chance in the future to participate in the firing.

The thing about having a display such as our chuck wagon is that there isn’t much time to spend getting to know any of the other members of the encampment.  Several I have met on prior occasions to Fort Stanton and they were really pleasant folks to visit with.  I am hoping next year that we will know the ropes a little better and can trade off covering what we need to do at the camp and visiting and getting around to some of the scheduled activities.  I never did look at a schedule of activities and therefore missed many things I would have loved to have attended. 

I would have attended the Military Ball on Saturday night but by that time the old dogs were barking pretty good and besides there were a number of people in the wagon camp just swapping historical

Sunka (Eddie Sandoval), our Apache scout, was especially interesting to the visitors and he spent a lot of time visiting and telling about his involvement with the trail drive and how the Apache were utilized for their tracking and scouting abilities. Now on the other hand, Charles Goodnight (Steve Woods), did as he always does….went into teaching mode.  He held the adults attention as well as the younger visitors to the camp.  We had some cowboy belt buckles in a canvas bag up on the seat of the chuck wagon and when a youngster needed a little boost in his/her spirits we got them to climb up on the wheel and pull the bag out of an old boot top and dig out a buckle for their prize. 

A highlight of the activities of the day was the ambush of the cavalry by the Mescalero Apaches.  The event is staged just off the edge of the fort grounds and the cavalry were out on a patrol when they spotted a couple of Indians in the brush…..who then lured the patrol into the ambush from a ridge just about the marching patrol.  The skirmish lasted for quite a while with the soldiers taking the most punishment.  Many of them “died” before retreating to a better cover from which to fight. 

Sunka and Ronald Lah were two of the leaders of the ambush.  Afterwards everyone joined midways on the battlefield for some good natured high fives.  It was quite entertaining for a couple hundred spectators.

Larry Pope had the evening meal catered for all participants and a local group fed a BBQ plate and everyone did a bit of relaxing.  Following the supper was the military ball, which we didn’t participate in which was certainly our loss because my wife, Linda and I have attended in the past and had enormous amounts of fun. Instead of going to the ball we all set around the camp and visited and shared stories and recounted the day’s activities. 

Our plan on Sunday was to get up and have coffee and get loaded and then leisurely spend the day and then the night in Ruidoso before everyone heading home.  For me it is only a about 2-3 hours home but for them about 10-11 hours.  

We did get up and started having coffee and pretty soon there was a circle of chairs with people joining in again with stories and recounting of the weekends activities.  It was evident to all that this was more fun than packing up and leaving this peaceful setting.  It was way late in the morning, in fact, nearly noon when we got everything loaded.  Everyone was helping each other with the duties of loading and Steve and Eddie talked it over and decided to go ahead and hit the road to home.  They were home close to midnight….me …well I was home before very long.  It was Adios to a wonderful weekend and several additional new friends.

Fort Stanton is Aive!

Cup of Coffee

Is it the coffee or is it where you have it or is it who you share a cup with? All are considerations for a good cup of coffee. My suspicion is a good cup of coffee is a combination of all three. Now we have all had that cup of “coffee water” that is just barely a notch above water itself, and it probably still sufficed for that early morning pick me up. However that cup of flavor that is just right is the one that keeps us going back for more. Now on the other hand there are those places that stick in your mind as memorable. Still the last, but not least, is who you may have a cup of coffee with and that too keeps you coming back for more.









As an example of the first, Linda (my wife) and I were at Ardovino’s Desert Crossing, a local restaurant, several years ago and had the most wonderful cup of coffee. The setting was and always is very nice, but the coffee was extraordinarily good. It was a blend of Hawaiian Rain Forest. Magnificent!









An example of the 2nd and 3rd was many years ago in San Antonio, Texas. Linda and I were meeting my brother Max and his wife Jeannette for a weekend…..it may have even been a Thanksgiving family gathering. We were staying in a hotel on the River Walk and I made plans with Max the night before to meet him down on the river at a restaurant for a cup of coffee (he doesn’t even drink coffee) and read the newspaper. I remember nothing about the caliber of coffee or the restaurant. But being there on the River Walk and sharing that quiet time on the river with my brother made a lasting memory.





I have been told many times when making coffee on




a campfire at the back of my chuck wagon “Now that has got to be the best tasting coffee I have ever had.” True probably at the moment, but it also was probably not the best coffee ever, instead it was the ambience of the campfire and the chuck wagon that made the coffee taste so good. I will even go so far as to say the people making those praises of my coffee were most likely tasting some pretty good coffee.







A recent memory of “a good cup of coffee” occurred out in Ft. Thomas, Arizona at a Chuck Wagon Hoorah put on for a bunch of chuck wagon connoisseurs. It was an outstanding morning with Rex Wailes, Dave McDowell, Eddie Sandoval, Steve Woods and I sitting around a little fire out by Rex’s teepee. Rex and Dave had been up for quite some time when I joined them at the fire around 5:30 am. The others joined the campfire coffee brigade shortly after. That particular morning Rex and Dave were probably on their second to fourth cup of coffee. Their line of chat had already taken on a life by itself talking about the enjoyment of the morning and the things the desert has to offer, like the sound of the distant coyote or the cooing of the dove or even the feeling you get when you know you are in the Land of the Apache. Was it the coffee that I remember so well, no….but the times and the people there that we shared coffee with. It was a peaceful time with absolutely no pressure dealing with food




preparation. Some of you may not know that these gatherings are like a chuck wagon cook off without the competition and without anyone having to cook something at a specific time. Well, again the coffee wasn’t exactly special other than the fact that Rex puts his coffee grounds in a lady’s silk stocking and thus has no grounds to be concerned with when pouring coffee.


Now I have said on many occasions when serving cowboy coffee “I will guarantee there will be coffee ground in your cup of coffee.” People don’t mind or at least don’t say anything except for the owner of a big auto dealership where we were cooking breakfast and he said with a big smile, “I have told lots of folks that your coffee is the crunchiest ever.” I don’t know if he liked it or didn’t, I couldn’t tell. What I hope is that he remembered where he had the crunchiest coffee ever.







At home in El Paso my wife Linda and I make coffee every morning and enjoy our southwestern home and the offerings we have inside and outside. We are always searching for the better cup of coffee and have tried many since moving from the instant variety we used for such a long time. (Funny how we can get in a rut and just keep doing the same thing because it may be easier.) We recently tried a New Mexico Dark Roast Pinon Coffee and indeed it was dark roasted and we didn’t care for the nutty taste by itself. We ended up mixing it with some other blends and toning it down a little. Our usual cup of something a little different is a Mexican coffee which has just a bit of cinnamon in the it. The coffee is usually pretty good. We use a French press to achieve the result we like but it is the location and the person with whom you share it that makes the next morning worth getting up early to enjoy.


Just a few weeks ago I was in Bennett, Colorado for another chuck wagon gathering at Rex and Sheryl Wailes farm when we again were enjoying that wonderful aroma of coffee boiling over an open fire, the stillness of the early morning sitting by the fire visiting with friends and enjoying a cup of coffee taking in the distant beauty of the snow topped Colorado Rockies….indeed priceless!







Another time that will live in my memory for a long time will be when Steve Woods and I had set up the chuck wagon at Billy the Kid Days in Lincoln, New Mexico. It was an early morning with a light rain coming down on our wagon fly (this was back when it rained occasionally) with a nice fire going just prior to sunrise and the coffee in hand and as they say…kicked back. Ahhh, now this is what it is all about. Those times are special, and I am always up for the possibility of creating a memory around that cup of coffee. I look forward to those times. I have many, many memories that deal with enjoying a cup of coffee with loved ones and friends and have chosen just a few here to illustrate the meaning of a good cup of coffee





Now some of you might just want the recipe I use and it is very simple. First, I don’t know how much the coffee pot holds, but I stick my hand into the freshly ground coffee and get about 3 fingers of coffee and put into the cold water. I fill the pot up till it is where I can see the water in the spout. When it starts boiling I will place the pot off of the hottest part of the fire and let it do its thing for a little while and then it is ready. Maybe throw a couple of sticks of cinnamon in the pot. Maybe, but what does it matter? If the coffee isn’t that good then maybe the location and the friends or your significant other will make up the difference for a less than perfect cup of coffee.








See you round the campfire. I’ll have the coffee ready.