$1.23 compared to $8 now?

Yeah, no kidding.

Um, and then it went up.

There were some droughts, and then the prices went up, and then they stabilized about, I don't know, I guess about five or six years ago, and we were at 3.21 a pound for a very long time, and then COVID happened.

The highest they ever got during COVID was 4.58, and now we're just below $8.

So have you had to get creative with, like, new dishes that are more affordable than beef? Have y'all played around with that?

We, we have been playing around with that stuff.

You know, I think for us it's mostly about what can we do with, you know, like, absolutely no waste.

Tell, tell me about that.

Yeah, yeah.

So that actual barbecue I probably remember because we wrote about it.

'Cause otherwise I, my memory's really not that great.

Um, but that was the first barbecue that we had in our backyard where people kinda like lined up.

And it was, you know, it was, a lot of cool things happened at that particular barbecue.

It's about 130 people.

Mm-hmm.

And did you teach yourself the science of smoke from scratch? I mean, how did it all happen

for you? Well, I mean, like any good Texan, I thought I could probably smoke a pretty good brisket.

And it turns out that wasn't true, but I got good at it pretty quick.

Yeah, I mean, you know, Stacy and I just started having backyard barbecues, like you said.

And, you know, they got a little bit bigger, and we tried to do one big one every summer.

and eventually opened up a little trailer and really you know we're still still teaching ourselves uh you know didn't learn from anyone necessarily um but you know i think yeah that's just kind of the cool thing about barbecue is you just work on stuff and you know you can sweat the details you cannot sweat the details you can really really choose your own adventure

So what would be your advice for home chefs if they're trying to cook a good brisket?

I think, you know, I mean, having sort of the right-ish equipment is pretty key.