Early in my life I had learned that if you are out in the ‘wilds’, cooking a meal or having a night, time fire, they worked best if you had a fire pit. Always living where there was a copious amount of rocks, Texas, Arizona and Georgia, material for a pit was readily available.
In 1993, after Layla and I acquired our ranch, one of the first things I did was start collecting rocks for a fire pit. We have lots of rocks so, real quick, I had enough and quickly finished our pit. Our cooking tools and techniques are relatively simple. Our grill is one piece of expanded metal held over the fire by 2 steel, fence posts, cut to size for our pit. We use a special long handled, with a sharpened curly hook on the end, turner or a long handled flipper. The mesquite smoke and hot fire really adds to steaks, chicken and burgers!
Last Saturday afternoon it was shirt sleeve weather, so Layla and I decided to crank up our fire pit, defy our local burn ban, and cook us up a couple of rib eyes.
Adding garlic pepper and Bill’s Seasoning, our steaks were ready for the fire. I might add that Bill’s Seasoning is manufactured in San Saba, 18 miles south of us and is available in central Texas and is not nationally distributed.
Wood is no problem since our ranch is covered up with mesquite, mesquite being the State Nuisance Tree of Texas and also the State Cooking Wood Tree of Texas! Building a Boy Scout style fire and adding a little starter, I soon had a nice one going.
The coals were ready, so on went the steaks and one turn and 6 minutes later they were done to our preference.

The finished product, rib eyes cooked medium rare; a sturdy glass of Shiraz wine, excellent with steaks and good for your health when not taken to excess; home made bread with Falfurrias butter (only available in Texas); covered with green chilies and onions and we had a meal fit for royalty! The recipe for the green chilies and onions will follow shortly.