Sometimes Monday needs nothing more than a super-cute little video from Kate Spade New York to remind us that delightful food is essential to a life lived in technicolour (but how many calories are in a rainbow?). And for your delightful, post-rainbowcake espresso, the Kate Spade Larabee Road demitasse set
February 7, 2011
Black and White and …
February 2, 2011
BB Quest!
Oh jeez, there goes the party
I’m back! Didja miss me?
During my recent and entirely (I assure you) involuntary hiatus from food and beverage products of a kind which are not delivered via intravenous drip, there was one thing and one thing alone which I craved, and I craved it both morning and night, at noon and at the witching hour, and indeed at every moment in between. Yes, it seems that a mandated cessation from oral gratification of the most basic kind has a predictable, and inescapable result.
BBQ craving.
The nurses tell me this isn’t a surprise to them. The dieticians told me nothing, because if they were in the business of paying attention to patients, they’d be providing better food, wouldn’t they? You sam hill bet they would. But no matter how many sucrose-based, saline-encrusted chemicals they pump into your arm, they can’t deliver taste or satisfaction. Curious, though, that I craved protein the entire time; I wasn’t exactly working out the whole time.
Which reminds me of my friend Christi, who used to live in North Carolina, home to Duke University, which boasts the most advanced obesity-research center in the world, ringed entirely by BBQ restaurants. She walked into one once, asked “What kind of meat is it?” and was told, “Barbeque.” That, apparently, settles that. Ah, the mysteries of American culture.
All of which is just so much preamble to the question: What can you tell me about good old American barbeque? I went out today to Vera’s, “Vancouver’s best burgers,” specifically to satisfy my craving for saucy, meaty goodness (the burlesque shows don’t open till 7 around my hood) and was, to say the least, disappointed. There was slime. There was meat. But there was no piquancy. There was no smokiness. There was no detectable level of carboniferious goodness. Ou sont les scorch marks d’antan?
I understand that in some esoteric enclaves such as San Antonio and North Carolina, BBQ is something of a religion with its own fractured family tree of orthodoxies. As I wouldn’t dream of stepping on anyone’s orthodoxies, I’m wondering if any of you are secret or not so secret acolytes, and if you wouldn’t mind enlightening us.
Besides, I’m too damn lazy to Google it.