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The chop is in the mail: what's the best thing about the holidays? The food. The worst? Racing from store to store to buy it. So to help you save time--and keep your sanity--I've tasted smoked turkeys, buttermilk pies, and the like from more than one hundred Texas companies that will ship them to your door. Needless to say, my favorites are first-class.

Article Excerpt
I know, I know: You're on the way to ruining your diet with Halloween candy and here I am yakking about the holidays. But believe me, it is not too early to get your ducks--not to mention turkeys, briskets, steaks, slabs o' bacon, relishes, cheeses, sauces, jellies, cakes, pies, ice creams, and flavored salts--in a row. Because the truth is that whatever the larger spiritual meaning of Thanksgiving and Christmas, in fact, they're all about the food.

No, really. The bonding that goes along with sharing a meal or giving food as a gift is at the heart of the holidays. In an ideal world, of course, you would prepare all the meals, do all the shopping, and mail all the presents yourself. But as you know, the Ideal World as We Know It came to an end circa 1957, and ever since then, intelligent people have been asking themselves, "Why should I have a nervous breakdown doing all that work when I can pay somebody to have one for me?"

With this in mind, back in February I contacted every Texas mail-order food company I could find, and for the next seven months, I tasted, tasted, and tasted some more. Some weeks, the poor deliveryman could hardly see over his dolly. (The high, or low, point was the day he staggered in with 98 pounds of meat and an apple pie from one barbecue company alone.) By mid-September, the tally had topped out at more than four hundred products.

In the end, I chose some forty items to feature in the magazine (and more than twenty very good runners-up for texasmonthly.com/moremailorderfood). This list is wildly varied and unapologetically personal: I love barbecue and chocolate, so there are lots of briskets, ribs, and bonbons. I'm unimpressed with most jalapeno jelly, so there's just one of those. In the end, though, every item is something I would be tickled to get as a gift (especially if I were living outside Texas) or proud to serve to my friends and family.

One final word: I suggest you order ten days before a major holiday, just to be safe. And be prepared for the delivery cost to be stout (prices listed here do not include shipping, unless noted). Mail order is not the cheapest way to go, but it's worth it when you're slammed with a zillion things to do. To paraphrase that commercial: One pecan pie, sent to Aunt Ethel in Pampa: $34.31. Letting somebody else do the work: priceless.

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