The Cowboy Hillbilly Comes To Town

Where's the Cowboy Hillbilly???
The cowboy hillbilly is in each of us....you know that.  In our deepest secret thoughts, we all want to saddle up a horse or get out our old beat-up pickemuptruck and ride into the sunset, with a Bud Light in our saddle bags or behind the seat, tucked into an ice thingy so that beer is good and cold.  Instead, we're here acting like redneck hillbillies waiting for the next burgoo or out kicking the brush in the dead of winter to scare up a rabbit or a deer to shoot.  Or, maybe a pheasant so we can have hillbilly rabbit burgoo with pheasant under glass.  That sounds yummy....especially if the buckshot doesn't all get picked from the wild animal or maybe it doesn't get skinned right.   When it doesn't, I pick buckshot from between my teeth for two hours and find it's almost impossible to get that animal hair from under the caps in my teeth.
I've always wondered about those people who make those burgoos....do they go around and pick up roadkill??  ahhchoo!!  I know a person who would pick up roadkill, but only if it was fresh....and he also butchered deer in his bathtub....talk about a hillbilly! 

A few years ago we went to a burgoo and I swear it had elephant in it.....it looked like the hoof of something really big and it looked like it had toenails the size of a dinner plate.  Wonder where in the world they could find an elephant in the hillbilly pickemuptruck drivin country near Greenview??  But, as I sit here thinking I just don't believe it was elephant in that burgoo, I really think it was a very old rhinoseros because the meat was really tough and stringy.


As I was trying to eat that burgoo, I tried to recognize what was in each bite!  It had a couple of carrots, some corn and a lima bean or two and maybe a couple chunks of potato.  I wasn't worried so much about the vegetables, it was the meat.  Then all at once,  the funniest thing happened, I put my spoon in and out came a rib bone....they must have used a Memphis Burgoo recipe with barb-b-que ribs as one of the meats or they were throwing in extra pig parts to make the burgoo go further. 

I think I liked the burgoo, as long as I didn't really know what went into it.  I might even go to the biggest little and world's best burgoo festival in Central Illinois right over in Arenzville, IL. They've been having a burgoo for over a 100 years...just hope they haven't kept some of that burgoo that long.  The festival is coming up on Friday and Saturday, September 9th and 10th.  And if you want to help cook the burgoo, just show up on September 8th. 

See.... if you don't get enough burgoo on the first day, you can go again for a second bowl on the second day, which is actually the third day because they started cooking it on Thursday.  If the burgoo don't (hillbilly talk mind you) get you, the bacteria will.  Here's their website:  http://burgoo.org/

And, for those of you who want to start a Greenview Burgoo, I think we should use the Kentucky Burgoo recipe since burgoo originated in Kentucky back in 1810, long before our town was even thought of.  I know for a fact that Franklin IL also has a burgoo and here's what they estimated they were using in 1974  (for 30 to 35 kettles each holding 50 to 75 gallons):

1,900 lbs. - chicken	120 gals. - tomato puree
1,800 lbs. - beef plate and shanks	120 gals. - corn
1,300 lbs. - potatoes	10 lbs. - rice
650 lbs. - cabbage	15 lbs. - navy beans
700 lbs. - onions	35 lbs. - salt
500 lbs. - carrots	10 lbs. - pepper
120 gals. - canned tomatoes	30 lbs. - suet
130 lbs. - macaroni

Or maybe we can cook our own batch of burgoo, using the Kentucky recipe I found.  I have a big yard, with lots of wood piles and a few big old soup pots.  I think we can have us a hillbilly burgoo.  Come on out and help us cook it....if each of us brings  chicken, beef or pork roast, potatoes, carrots, frozen corn, lima beans, tomatoes and onions we'll have a heck of a good burgoo.  No roadkill now!  See you then!

Kentucky Burgoo Recipe

3-4 pounds pork shoulder or country ribs, cut into large pieces (3 to 4 inches wide) 

2-3 pounds chuck roast, stew meat, or other inexpensive cut of beef, cut into large pieces (3 to 4 inches wide)

3-5 chicken legs or thighs (bone-in)

1 green pepper, chopped

1 large onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

2 celery ribs, chopped

5 garlic cloves, chopped

1 quart chicken stock or broth

1 quart beef stock or broth

1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes

2 large potatoes (we used russets)

1 bag of frozen corn (about a pound)

1 bag of frozen lima beans (about 14 ounces)

Salt and pepper

 3 tablespoons oil

4-8 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Tabasco or other hot sauce - on the side

Serves a small army (about 16).

Old Tyme Greenview and Area Stuff

Russell Godbey 1800 - 1888

John Tice

Viewing Pass - Abraham Lincoln Funeral

Thought For The Day

Courage is fear

holding on a minute longer.

--General Patton

I think I have a disease called Gelotophobia.  It's kind of hard to pronounce and a lot worse to spell, but when you have it, you have a great fear of people laughing at you.  Even though it sounds like a frozen Italian ice confectionery, it's no laughing matter!  Sometimes the person gets  chills, heart palpitations, starts trembling and simply freezes up.  I think I do that a lot.  But maybe it's because I'm cold that I have the chills.  And maybe I'm trembling because my sugar is low.  Those heart papiltations can give anyone fits when they are excited.  When my mind freezes up and I just can't think, maybe it's just because I need to rest. 

I guess I talked myself out of having gelotophobia, and now I think it's just something related to getting old.  I guess I better quit diagnosing myself until after I get my medical degree.  I think I really need to stick to being a writer instead of a psuedo doctor.  But in Greenview, you have to be a person of all trades.....sometimes it's too far to go to get things done.  And, I probably know more than some of those young docs do!  

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