Captain Morgan
Chef Extraordinaire
From the Wilmington (East) newspaper..
Food, maybe; barbecue, no way
Evidently Reps. Dewey Hill, Carolyn Justice, Danny McComas, Bonner Stiller and Thomas Wright have sold their souls to the barbarous 'cue lobbyists. Every last one of them voted for a deceitful bill that would declare Lexington's "Barbecue" Festival "the official food festival of North Carolina."
Food festival? Ha!
We all know what they serve at that "food" festival. They serve what they call "barbecue."
What it actually is, is hickory-smoked pork shoulders tainted with ketchup, sugar and possibly even Worcestershire Sauce. You can call that "barbecue" if you want to. You can call a sow a sweet potato if you want to. Doesn't make it so.
Barbecue - the kind without quotation marks - is made only the way it was created in eastern North Carolina, using whole hogs enhanced with the Lord's gifts of vinegar, pepper and sometimes a few other eccentric ingredients. But NEVER ketchup. It is an abomination.
If the General Assembly of the Great State of North Carolina were to declare Lexington's heretical debauch "the official food festival of North Carolina," it would imply that the "barbecue" dispensed there is barbecue.
Which it is not.
(It is tragically true that much of the commercial barbecue cooked in these parts these days is not prepared over smoking hickory coals; to get that genuine article, you may have to throw yourself a proper pig pickin'. Or you may have to drive up toward Ayden or some such place, where a few priests of pig still sneer at gas and electricity. But even the most crassly commercial barbecue producers in these parts have not sunk to ketchup. )
If the people of Lexington wanted to put on a real food festival, that would be grand. It could include a glorious variety of delectables, such as fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, fried pork chops, fried okra, fried squash, fresh succotash, collard greens with ham hocks, accompanied by buttered biscuits and hot rolls and spoon bread, followed by slabs of pound cake with fresh peaches and custard sauce and generous tumblers of artisanal spirits from the Smokies.
Now that's food. If Lexington wants to lay something like that on, we easterners will pile in our pickups, ride over there and dine like kings. Barbecue we can eat at home.
Which is more than you can say for the poor souls of the Piedmont.
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs ... 8236517057
Food, maybe; barbecue, no way
Evidently Reps. Dewey Hill, Carolyn Justice, Danny McComas, Bonner Stiller and Thomas Wright have sold their souls to the barbarous 'cue lobbyists. Every last one of them voted for a deceitful bill that would declare Lexington's "Barbecue" Festival "the official food festival of North Carolina."
Food festival? Ha!
We all know what they serve at that "food" festival. They serve what they call "barbecue."
What it actually is, is hickory-smoked pork shoulders tainted with ketchup, sugar and possibly even Worcestershire Sauce. You can call that "barbecue" if you want to. You can call a sow a sweet potato if you want to. Doesn't make it so.
Barbecue - the kind without quotation marks - is made only the way it was created in eastern North Carolina, using whole hogs enhanced with the Lord's gifts of vinegar, pepper and sometimes a few other eccentric ingredients. But NEVER ketchup. It is an abomination.
If the General Assembly of the Great State of North Carolina were to declare Lexington's heretical debauch "the official food festival of North Carolina," it would imply that the "barbecue" dispensed there is barbecue.
Which it is not.
(It is tragically true that much of the commercial barbecue cooked in these parts these days is not prepared over smoking hickory coals; to get that genuine article, you may have to throw yourself a proper pig pickin'. Or you may have to drive up toward Ayden or some such place, where a few priests of pig still sneer at gas and electricity. But even the most crassly commercial barbecue producers in these parts have not sunk to ketchup. )
If the people of Lexington wanted to put on a real food festival, that would be grand. It could include a glorious variety of delectables, such as fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, fried pork chops, fried okra, fried squash, fresh succotash, collard greens with ham hocks, accompanied by buttered biscuits and hot rolls and spoon bread, followed by slabs of pound cake with fresh peaches and custard sauce and generous tumblers of artisanal spirits from the Smokies.
Now that's food. If Lexington wants to lay something like that on, we easterners will pile in our pickups, ride over there and dine like kings. Barbecue we can eat at home.
Which is more than you can say for the poor souls of the Piedmont.
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs ... 8236517057