Two dishes with Dziuk's fully cooked sausage

To the southwest of San Antonio, about a half hour out U.S. 90 West, you come to a quaint Hill Country town called Castroville.

Founded in 1844, Castroville is called The Little Alsace of Texas because the first settlers were from Alsace, France. It is a small and scenic town. Castroville is also home to Dziuk's Meat Market.

Like just about every other building in Castroville, the meat market is built from the yellow limestone that quarried from strip mines all over the Hill Country.

Dziuk's opened in 1975, which would make it one of the more recent sausage-processing butcher shops in Texas. It soon became a local favorite and is today a landmark tourist destination for meat-lovers in the region.

Dziuk's sausage from Castroville

Although, Dziuk's is in a French Alsatian town, this is a Polish family. Edwin Dziuk started the first Dziuk's Meat Market in Poth, Texas. His parents were farmers in the Poth area, but with all due respect to the Dziuk's, who goes to Poth? A tiny town for to the southeast of San Antonio, it's really off the beaten trail.

The Castroville store is the one the Dziuk's are known for, but I think they still have a shop in Poth.

Once established in Castroville, Dziuk's became one of a very few Texas meat shops known to make Alsatian-style sausage. Of course, they also make Polish-style and other meats. Dziuk's is popular with wild game hunters, who bring their kill in for rendering.

I'm showing two dishes today, both served up with Dziuk's beef and pork Polish-style sausage.

I'm not doing a dang thing with this sausage but grilling it up and putting it on the plate. What I spent most of my time doing here was baking a Tex-Mex cornbread (the main ingredients being corn meal, cream corn, chopped poblano pepper, smoked cheddar cheese).

Serve with a vegetable. I used a mix of diced tomato, corn and okra.

Simple, quick, tasty, healthy. What more can you ask for?

The next dish took a little more time because I wanted to cook beans. So, I soaked pinto beans for a couple hours, then drained and put them in a crockpot for cook for several hours with a couple cubes of cilantro salt season, chopped fresh garlic and (very important) two chopped dried peppers; I used morita seca, as it is known in Florida.

This is smoked jalapeno, a/k/a chipotle. This gives the pinto beans a smokey, spicy, full-bodied flavor. And paired with Dziuk's sausage and Tex-Mex cornbread it makes me feel like I'm right back in the hills, eating at an old picnic table and catching the Hill Country air and sights.

I chowed on this with a dark beer, a Yuengling Bock. Based in Pottsville, Pa., Yuengling is the oldest brewery in the USA, and they make great beers!

Buen provecho!