Homesick no more

By the time you see this post, I will be in The Homeland. The homeland of good friends, good food, and good family, including this guy:

 Yeah, I know I'm handsome

The hottest invitation in town? That would be this one:

Rain, rain, stay AWAY!

And don't forget this little event, either:

I leave you with this poem from the utterly amazing Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue. I can never say enough about this series from the Southern Foodways Alliance. This one explores barbecue in every way possible, through the most interesting anthropological, social, cultural, and political perspectives. What it comes down to is, it makes me homesick. No need to be homesick this weekend, though.

To family, history, tradition, and the meaty stuff that holds it all together:

Barbecue Service

by James Applewhite

I have sought the elusive aroma

Around outlying cornfields, turned corners

Near the site of a Civil War surrender.

The transformation may take place

At a pit no wider than a grave,

Behind a single family's barn.

These weathered ministers

Preside with the simplest of elements:

Vinegar and pepper, split pig and fire.

Underneath a glistening mountain in air,

Something is converted to a savor: the pig

Flesh purified by far atmosphere.

Like the slick-sided sensation from last summer

A fish pulled quick from a creek

By a boy. Like breasts in a motel

With whiskey and twilight

Now a blue smoke in memory.

This smolder draws the soul of our longing.

I want to see all the old home folks,

Ones who may not last another year.

We will rock on porches like chapels

And not say anything, their faces

Impenetrable as different barks of trees.

After the brother who drank has been buried,

The graveplot stunned by sun

In the woods,

We men still living pass the bottle.

We barbecue pigs.

The tin-roofed sheds with embers

Are smoking their blue sacrifice

Across Carolina.