North Carolina Historic Barbecue Trail

I like North Carolina. I like BBQ. Who's in for a mid-fall trip?

From this article:

The non-profit North Carolina Barbecue Society speaks of barbecue in terms of culture, heritage and tradition. Earlier this year, the society created a historic barbecue trail spotlighting 25 joints from Ayden in the east to Murphy in the west. Each stop on the trail specializes "in roasting pig the old-fashioned way, slowly over pits of wood or charcoal," the society notes. The cited businesses also have to make their own sauce, be in business more than 15 years, provide sit-down service and provide a final product "that is a high quality representation" of the state's barbecue.

Very cool. 25 historic BBQ places serving pork the traditional way? Luckily, the North Carolina Barbecue Society has a website.

This is a link to the description of the historic BBQ trail.

This is a link to the map of the trail.

Who's it? I'm not saying we could hit all 25 places in one trip, but we could start on one side or the other and get as far as we can in an allotted time.

Nooner

That's right, a few quickies from the past few days that don't rate their own post.

Thursday night we went to Fogo de Chao so Kevin could get his meat on before moving to China. It was the usual meat orgy. I ate too much. Kolb acted like the total n3wb that he was. I've never seen someone so worried about the positioning of a red and green cardboard circle. The meats were all good. While I enjoyed the garlic beef, the pork ribs, the bacon wrapped items, and the new ribeye they are serving, the best tasting meat item the gauchos brought over: chicken legs. I've probably eaten at Fogo ten times. Each time a different meat has been prepared just a little better than the rest. For the first time it was poultry. Good work, Fogo de Chao. By the way, if you ever go to Fogo, take Thor along. Watching him narrow the meats down to the one he wants, and then watching him ask for it at every opportunity, sending the gauchos and managers scurrying to find it is highly entertaining.

Friday I didn't feel much like eating.

Saturday I did some shopping and bought some wine and good beer. I took a BR approach to beer selection: pick the beers with cool labels. Walking down the aisle at Binny's, I started looking at those big Belgian bottles that they sell, some with actual corks in them. I decided that since it would just be JL, KC, and I hanging out, I'd splurge on some good stuff. But I'm not that familiar with the large fancy bottle style of beer, where you don't by 6 or even 4 packs, you buy one 24-36 oz bottle. So I grabbed 8 different bottles from all over the world. I don't know which brands. Trust me, they were good. I know because they were expensive. Went home, did some dishes, and we started drinking the fancy beer. Turns out these nice beers have a lot of alcohol in them. I know because both Kevin and I agreed that "Employee of the Month," which we watched while drinking, was pretty funny. As the fine-beer-haze started drifting away, I offered the choice of two meals: grilled ham and cheese sandwiches with tater tots, or homemade mac & cheese. KC asked for the mac & cheese and the tots. Whatever. I don't think they have any of that stuff in China, so in about 25 minutes, it was ready. I even steamed some broccoli to make it a healthy meal.

Sunday morning we woke up and went to The Depot American Diner for breakfast. It's out of the way, on West Roosevelt. Good cooks doing classic diner food. Had to try the biscuits and gravy, which were definitely good, but I liked the ones at Tweet better. Service was so so, possibly because there was only one server. Great breakfast potatoes.

The Depot American Diner
5840 W. Roosevelt
(773) 261-8422


Sunday for dinner some Cincinnati folks had been talking about chili, so I made Cincinnati-style chili. For those who don't know, it's a ground beef chili made with some sweet spices like allspice, cinnamon, brown sugar, and cocoa powder. Usually it is served over spaghetti and topped with grated cheese, onions, and/or kidney beans. Pretty good stuff, and I do a passable version. So we ate that and watched the NBA All-star game. Which was boring. But the food was good.

Monday I received my new smoker. More on that in the future, I'm sure. Monday night I made winter vegetable chowder from all of the root vegetables that Fresh Picks has been sending. It was decent. Light and hearty at the same time. JL tried it, but the rest of the roommates went with the leftover chili. Hard to argue with that decision, I must say.

Tonight? Meal number one from this 5 step course on mastering the vertical water smoker.

Have a good day. Everyone should eat or drink something good or at least interesting tonight. Feel free to post a comment here about that.

Past Life - an informal poll

We received some good comments from some ex-Chicago people who now live elsewhere. I knew posting about tortilla chips would get people talking. So, if you used to live in Chicago, and now you don't, what restaurants, bars, or food products do you miss? Maybe some of the Scrumptulescence staff will go to the restaurant or bar or pick up some of the food and then write about it, so you can live vicariously through us.

Might as well expand it, so Drew can do the same thing. If you used to live in Philly, what do you miss?

(If you've only visited either place, and you had some good food, you're welcome to comment as well.)

Wednesday Morning Links

To all within earshot: we need to go here.

And this guy has the right idea. Quitting his cubicle job at 30, fishing for 2 years, then becoming a chef with a passion for great ingredients? Did I dream that last night, or read about it here?

Joe Needs Some Assistance

Here's something to occupy your time while sitting through this snowstorm wishing you weren't at work.

You'll notice a bit of disparity in the number of posts each of the blog authors has put up here on Scrumptulescence. I'll leave the counting to you.

Joe claims that his lack of posting is due to some lack of culinary abilities. I've tasted his food. And believe me, he can cook. He just doesn't choose to cook as often as he should. And he seems to feel that only a truly interesting gastronomic experience is worthy of posting about. I obviously don't share that view.

But in keeping with the spirit of Joe's wishes, I decided to ask you, the five readers of this blog, to leave some comments about what food-related adventure Joe should embark upon, ideally leading to a blog post, or series of posts. We are getting started with sourdough, raising a culture from scratch. We won't know for two weeks whether it will be a viable culture to use for breadmaking, but if it is, hopefully he will write about that. But think bigger.

Perhaps he should go the traditional route, and master some historic dish, like coq au vin. Or maybe he should focus on learning the building blocks of classic cooking, like learning to make the best roasted veal stock possible. Perhaps he should apprentice at a live poultry store for a week and learn to butcher and dress a chicken in under 15 minutes. Or maybe he should find the ten best ethnic grocers in a specific Chicago neighborhood. What about figuring out the 5 meals made at home that are sure to impress a date. Or he could just cook his way through a cool cookbook, perhaps by Rick Bayless or Patricia Wells. How about erotic cooking, like in that Patrick Stewart SNL sketch. He could even model them after his friends. Tell me you wouldn't want to hear about his attempts at a Tiger Titillating Tamale, Jayadev's Jackfruit Jellyroll, Luscious Lyrica's Ladyfingers, Akira's Amorous ASSpic, or George's Generous Galantine. Just reading him write about trying to get Akira to model for an Amorous ASSpic mold would be worth the price of admission.

What comestible adventure would you like to see Joe undertake? Lets get some good brainstorming going on. If we get enough good comments, we'll take the best ideas and have a little poll thing to track them.

Three posts

So, over the past week, I've started and nearly finished two posts for this fine website. I also started a third one last night. This week I will be posting all three*. It would be ideal if they had been spread out a little more. It would have also been ideal if the Bears had won the Superbowl. In other news, Joe actually posted to his blog this weekend, albeit with a failed link attempt to this blog. Maybe we'll see a post from him here someday. Joe? Maybe a comment? Throw us a bone.


FYI, I'll keep this post at the top of my three posts. I have finally posted all three of them.

*Disclaimer for the boss, who might be reading. I did not write these at work. I only posted them at work, perhaps with a few alterations.