In honor of Crock Week, our noble authoress and dedicated staff tackle new ways to tame the pantry.

Hello there. Let me introduce myself, I am Sabrina Braswell, and I’m a lighting designer on tour with the band Iron & Wine. When I go on tour, I end up eating weird, wondrous and horrible things everyday. Let me describe them to you.

(ed: When last we saw our hero, he had asked of the heavens: True Barbeque. Can I make it? Here is Part Two of this Thrilling Tale! It is the Middle Part!)

I had no idea where to begin, so I fired up The Internet, which is loaded with information about how to make your own barbeque (and also depraved pornography). After acquiring an equal measure of each, I learned that the key to barbeque is not fire, but smoke. In learning the ways of fire, I always considered smoke a byproduct. It was something that fouled one’s eyes if you opened the lid of the grill too quickly. I never thought of it as an ingredient.

Dear Rennie,

As a novice pickler, I find myself at a loss of where to source the right sort of crock. Stoneware? Fiestaware? Does Le Crueset make an appropriate version? A householding neighbor suggested making my own, but, I can’t seem to find that back issue of ReadyMade. Help!

Yours truly,

New Undertaking of Bubbling Brine In Newcastle

Wherein notions about wheat are righted by one Oliver Ewell-Minnis.

“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions is.” Mark Twain

While she lays claim to The Golden State as home, my Mom’s side of the immediate family hails from the south. That fundamental extraction — my great grandparents, grandfolks, great aunts and uncles — were tagged with southern handles such as Ethel, Elsie, Billy, Hardy, Eddie, Jimmy, Wilma, Thelma, and Jasper. You get the idea. Bobber-fishin’, potluck-eatin’, guitar-pickin’, church-goin’ people who migrated north and west right when the gettin’ was good.

(The first installment of a serial pulled pork odyssey. Darwin had The Beagle–our author has the H.M.S. BBQ.)

Some years ago, whilst working for a New York based ad agency, I was part of a team that pitched a potential client in Atlanta. No one on the team had spent much time in The South™, and we all suffered from more than a little culture shock. Sure, we all spoke English, but the dialect spoken on our side of the conference table was completely different from the one spoken on theirs. I’m not just talking about different accents, either, though their drawls were considerable. Our very manner of communicating was different. While our speech was quick, polished and aggressive, theirs was slow, friendly and maddeningly sincere.

Wherein the author re-imagines Robert Frost’s classic ‘Mending Wall’.

When considering its cooling,
Looks like the curve of the bowl
You’ve placed it in,
Or the underside of an exposed breast;