REFLECTING THE MOC COMMUNITY REFLECTING THE MOC COMMUNITY Thursday, February 27, 2020Thursday, February 27, 2020 Vol. 114, No. 9 McGregor, TX 76657 $ .75 Vol. 114, No. 9 McGregor, TX 76657 $ .75Your Stories • Your Community • Your Newspaper Your Stories • Your Community • Your Newspaper

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It’s time to get your tick-ets to the 2020 McGregor Chamber of Commerce An-nual Chamber of Commerce Banquet. The March 5th ban-quet will be centered around the Reflection of our Past and a Vision for our Future. Mc-Gregor’s Outstanding Citi-zen will be presented along with Community Partner and Chairman’s awards.

The banquet will be at The Exchange Event Center at 300 S. Jefferson in Mc-Gregor Texas. Tickets may be purchased on the McGregor Chamber Facebook page. Those wishing to purchase a table may call the Chamber office at 254-840-2292.

This year’s speaker will be Chet Garner, The Day Tripper. Chet Garner is the creator, host, and executive producer of The Daytripper, a 9-time Emmy-award-winning Texas travel show airing on PBS stations across the coun-try.

“McGregor is in a re-vitalization period with the building of the 1M Economic Development Project, The Exchange Event Center just completed, the McGregor Industrial Park Mega Site Certification process final-ized and a Main Street Master Plan proposed with the Texas Downtown Association,” said

Daytripper Chet Garner Chamber’s keynote speakerChamber Executive Director Dinah Mills.

“Having Chet Garner at our banquet is very timely,” said Mills. “The Chamber is working on a Main Street Master Plan that will need the input of all of our downtown businesses and building own-ers. Chet Garner has been there and done that in George-town, Texas.”

As a building owner, business owner, and preser-vationist, Garner realized that they needed businesses that added to the community en-joyment of downtown. Work-ing with other building and business owners to create a common vision was very im-portant, the growth was com-ing, but how did they want it to impact their downtown?

“The fact that he has a PBS television show “The Daytripper” and visits with cities and towns all across the state gives him a unique per-spective on businesses and redevelopment,” Mills added. “We were so lucky to get to film a mini “daytripper” show here in McGregor in prepa-ration for the banquet a few weeks ago. It was exciting to ‘daytrip’ McGregor from the eyes of an outsider. We can’t wait to present it at the Banquet. You know we make great videos.”

If you love your city and want to see it grow and thrive, this is the event to attend to inspire you to invest in where you live, work, play, and love.

More on the speaker . . . Chet was born in Comanche and raised in Port Neches, Texas, His love for story-telling began at a young age

around the Boy Scout camp-fire and toting around his grandfather’s VHS video camera around his backyard while staging elaborate pro-ductions.

Chet earned a degree in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas at Austin and went on to gradu-ate first in his class from Bay-lor Law School. However, after practicing law for three years, he decided to follow his passions and simultaneously inspire folks to appreciate the beauty, history, and food of the Lone Star State.

What followed was a crash course in travel, film-making, marketing, and do-ing whatever it takes to start a successful TV show.

When not traveling Chet is at home in Georgetown, Texas with his wife and 5 children (ages 11, 9, 6, 4, and 0) – although he’s usually got them on the road too.

Learn more about The Daytripper at http://theday-tripper.com.

Annual awards will again feature the Citizen of the Year, Community Partner of the Year and others includ-ing the presentation of Texas Treasure Awards, an award given by the Texas Historic

Commission recognizing businesses in McGregor or Chamber members who have been in business for over 50 years.

This year’s recognized Texas Treasure businesses will include Germania Farm Mutual Local Chapter 11, Heart of Texas Electric Coop-erative, Inc., Irene’s Flowers & Gifts, and Rocket Federal Credit Union. They join past recipients, The McGregor Mirror and TFNB—Your Bank For Life in receiving this Texas honor.

“We know we have other businesses in McGregor eli-gible for this award, but have not yet applied,” Mills said. “If you are a member of the McGregor Chamber and you own a business that has been in continous operation for over 50 years, contact me at the Chamber office and I will be happy to help in the ap-plication process for recogni-tion at a later time.”

The application process takes about two months.

The Presenting Sponsor for this year’s Chamber Ban-quet is TFNB—Your Bank for Life. Rocket Federal Credit Union is the Speaker Sponsor.

DAYTRIPPER CHET GARNER is enjoying a piece of pie and good conversation with Chamber Banquet Chairman Kevin Houchin and McGregor Mayor Jimmy Hering at The Coffee Shop Cafe on a recent visit to McGregor. Garner will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Chamber Banquet March 5th. Make plans to attend.

RIBBON CUTTING—The McGregor Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting for new Farmers Insurance agent Natalie Meeks (pictured center) in the 200 block of South Main last week. Welcome to McGregor.

This veteran deer hunter and Mirror outdoors writ-er has hunted many years, skinned, quartered and pro-cessed many deer, but sau-sage making is something he has had very little experience with.

When my son, Michael, and I were invited to observe and participate in a sausage making session with some friends, we jumped at the chance.

Pete and Linda Martinka, who live outside of Craw-ford, their sons, Eddie and Jason, and daughter, Melissa are seasoned pros at the art of sausage making. They have it down to a fine art.

As soon as my son and I arrived at his place Saturday morning around 7:30 a.m.,

By Charles E. Mooney

Making smoke deer sausage is a family gathering experiencehis sons and a relative were already busy mixing venison and pork trimmings together for a nice batch of deer sau-sage.

One of the large grinders was humming as we entered into the building. Soon, more nephews and kinfolk started showing up and you could instantly tell that this was go-ing to be a unique experience among good friends.

Pete said he used to be more heavily involved, but had since turned over most of the sausage making to his sons, daughter, nephews and kin. Pete managed to get his hand in the process, but main-ly had everything well orga-nized.

Michael and I brought enough deer meat to make 50 pounds of smoked sau-

sage, but one of his nephews brought 200 pounds of veni-son for 400 pounds of fin-ished smoked sausage. In all there was around 500 pounds of sausage made that day.

After years of trying dif-ferent variations, the Mar-tinkas have come up with their original recipe. From that recipe more things can be added to suit each individual’s palate.

My son and I decided to go with the original recipe, that basically includes salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, gar-lic, and some cure.

His nephew, with the bulk of the deer meat at this session, starts with the origi-nal recipe, but then kicks it up a notch, or two, or three. He had Pete’s daughter, Melissa, dicing up jalapeno peppers all

morning. He also adds plenty of cayenne pepp er to the mix along with green chilies and high temp cheese. He added at least a couple of cases of green chilies to add to the pork and venison mix

One thing I noticed is they like to test the sausage before making the entire batch by forming some into a few patties and pan frying it. They even cooked some link sausage left over from last year and it tasted delicious wrapped in a piece of white bread.

Jason Martinka was in charge of the seasoning. His recipe calls for 100 pounds of meat, but can quickly be con-verted to any amount whether it is 50 or 25 pounds.

After grinding the veni-son and pork, in a 50/50 ratio,

through the course grinder, they then spread it out on the stainless steel table and sprinkle the seasoning. After all the seasoning has been distributed, it is time to mix it thoroughly by hand.

With our 50 pounds of sausage, my son, Michael and Eddie did the mixing while I observed and took pictures and video. Eddie then put the mixture back into the grinder with a smaller plate quickly ran it through.

The mixture was then placed in stainless steel bowls and placed in the refrigerator to rest.

Later, the meat was brought out and placed into one of the vertical stuffers. Michael stuffed the machine while Eddie slipped the hog casing onto the tube. As Mi-

chael slowly cranked the han-dle, the sausage flowed out steadily into the casing and resembled a long rattlesnake as it was coiled around into a circle.

This ended up being a three person operation. Pete took the coiled sausage, mea-sured it off and started spin-ning it into lengths of sau-sage. After he finished with the coil, he would snip it be-tween every two sausages and place it in a box to be carried to the outdoor smoking shed.

By the time Michael and I had to leave around lunch time, all of our sausage was hanging on racks in the smoke house.

They put all the sausage on the racks and started cold smoking it by 6 p.m. and it