I eat a lot of food, and I like it. I’m not a fatty or anything, somehow I just really pack it in. My mom used to say I had a hollow leg, in between berating me for slouching in my chair and resting my elbows on the table. I still have bad manners, I’m just conscious of them now (at least I don’t talk with food in my mouth, you Neanderthals).
Well, I don’t know about the whole hollow leg thing, I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be a cool thing to have. It sounds like a serious medical condition: Hollow Leg Syndrome. Ha, I suffer from chronic HLS. Symptoms include a heightened metabolism, fatigued jaws and enjoyment of eating at the Fountain. There could totally even be regional symptoms associated with HLS, like massive consumption of bratwurst and cheese in Wisconsin, monkey brains and eyeball soup in the Temple of Doom and of course barbecue in the great state of North Carolina.
Yeah man, I definitely suffer from the N.C. strain of HLS. I love barbecue, and I eat the stuff with a vengeance (man that’d be an awesome title for the last movie in an action trilogy).
I’m not going to bother explaining what barbecue is to all you freaking Yankees out there. Yeah, that’s right, I’ll say it. You all can take your thick ketchupy sauce and burnt-to-a-crisp chicken and go straight to Duke. Seriously, there are a bunch of people at Duke that are completely clueless about barbecue, too.
N.C. State’s legendary barbecue appreciation club, the Fine Swine Society, was putting on a pig-picking for a convention the other weekend. The folks from Duke that were attending the convention were literally shocked by the prospect of cooking an entire pig and then eating meat straight off the carcass (there’s nothing like the look on a virgin barbecue eater’s face when you lift up the lid of the cooker and show them the dead pig sitting on the grill).
At least the northerners from Duke can be excused for their ignorance. I know the Chapel Hill kids at the convention had seen a pig, those snobs just acted too good for our delicious swine.
Well, whatever. True barbecue enthusiasts in North Carolina have always had to put up with the ignorance of foreigners. I guess our mission should be to educate, rather than criticize. After all, our state is home to many acceptable incarnations of the classic barbecue meal. We’re in the middle of a battle of East versus West, pure vinegar versus tomato, shoulders versus the whole durned pig. It’s also a battle where we respect the other side, because in the end it’s all barbecue as long as it comes with tea and hushpuppies (well, I guess lemonade, Cheerwine and Sundrop could be considered acceptable beverage substitutes).
I’m actually kind of a Salisbury guy, so coming into Raleigh was a bit of a shock for my taste-buds spoiled with the sweet taste of Lexington-style barbecue. Before I came to NCSU, I thought that all barbecue came in a Styrofoam cup with a bag of day-old hamburger buns.
I was in for a surprise the first day I ate the Fountain’s barbecue. Huge glops of vinegary, salty shredded pork. It was pig, so naturally I ate a bunch of it, but I think I might have become temporarily hypertensive or something from all that sodium.
Worse was when I realized that slaw everywhere east of Asheboro is basically cabbage mixed with mayonnaise. Don’t get me wrong, I totally dig some mayo and I’ve been known to put the nasty on just about everything. Everything except barbecue.
Where I’m from slaw is red, and its marinade is just about the same consistency of the vinegar and tomato we soak our pig in. I suppose its not that big of a deal or anything, I just kind of miss red slaw every time I sit down to a Raleigh barbecue sandwich.
OK, let me stop rambling here and get to the point: North Carolinians should eat more barbecue. Of course we eat a lot of it already, I’m just throwing it out there that we should totally eat more pig (sorry Babe), especially as a University. For crying out loud, NCSU is not only a flagship school of the UNC system, we are the agricultural flagship of the state. As such, we must continue to increase the rate of on-campus pig consumption. Darn it, every student should have the opportunity to eat some pig somewhere every day.
How can we work towards the goal of universal barbecue appreciation? A great start would be an on-campus barbecue restaurant. When they finally get around to tearing down Harrelson (that’s a whole other story), perhaps we should consider building a squat, smokey building in its place with bad parking and hire some nice old women to serve pig, fresh sweet tea and fixins to students on their meal plans. That would be awesome.
If you’re Kosher, e-mail Ken at [email protected], he’ll totally trade you his banana pudding and half his fried okra for your pig.
