No, Pecha Kucha is not some strange new thing made with pig parts.  As Wikipedia succintly explains: “usually pronounced in three syllables like ‘pe-chak-cha,’ Pecha Kucha is a presentation format in which content can be easily, efficiently and informally shown, usually at a public event designed for that purpose. Under the format, a presenter shows 20 images for 20 seconds apiece, for a total time of 6 minutes, 40 seconds.”

What’s this got to do with yours truly or with the meaty morsels I dish out?  Believe it or not, the folks at Champaign-Urbana Pecha Kucha Night are actually crazy enough to have invited someone as crazy as me to be one of the presenters at their second gathering, which takes place at the Canopy Club, this Saturday night. As you might expect, I’ll be letting it all hang out, wagging my tongue on the subject of abligurition.  The presentation should rewind some minds and rethread some heads.

Doors open at 7pm and the show starts at 8:20.  I’m going on just after the beer break, or around 9. But if you don’t get there early, good luck finding even a place to stand!  The first time they did this, they had a line down the block when doors opened and 500 people crowded in to see the show!  Tickets are 5 bucks in advance or $7 at the door.  Buy your ticket now and plan to get there early!

See everyone there for a great show!

Clear your calendar: This Little Piggy is hosting a free tasting party to feature all the new products that will soon be available through the private club. (Fortunately, there’s no law yet against having people over to your house for free food!)

Here’s the bat time and bat channel: Tuesday, December 8, from 4-8 pm, at 405 North Garfield Avenue, Champaign.  (Garfield is around the corner from Huber’s Tavern, just off Church Street, about halfway between Prospect and Mattis.)

Inspired by my recent deli reading, I’ll be serving up pastrami (including turkey pastrami), corned beef, and pickled tongue, ready to be slathered with homemade mustards and accompanied by some homemade pickled vegetables. In addition to this “holy trio” of deli meats, I’ll also have some Nduja pâté, as well as a rabbit or pheasant terrine. And, just because this ain’t your bubbe’s old-fashioned deli, I’ll be throwing in some rare treats, like a taste of Colonel Nancy Newsom’s Kentucky ham, aged for four years!

Slap these deli meats on some of Stewart Pequignot’s great artisanal breads and bagels, such as his sourdough rye, his olive-rosemary, and his chipotle-artichoke-tomato, and make yourself a sandwich. Or slather Stewart’s bread with some Amish butter, made from fresh, Jersey cream or some of Prairie Fruits Farm’s aged goat cheeses.

For dessert, we will be featuring Dan Schreiber’s artisan chocolates. (As seen in the News-Gazette!) Right here in Urbana, Dan is making some of the best dark chocolate you can get anywhere in the US, and he will be bringing dark chocolates made with cacao beans from Peru, Panama, and the Ivory Coast, as well as a dark milk chocolate (possibly with salted caramel).

As Larbo says, stop by for a taste and stay for a meal! Much as this might sound like a feast already, I am just touching the tip of the iceberg as far as what’s in the works.  Other friends are brainstorming and cooking.  We are lining up beer and wine as I type. Dan is so inspired, he’s talking about bringing more fermented foods, some raw milk for people to taste, homemade yogurt. He even wants to start up a club of people interested in tasting ancient or forbidden foods (called something like “The Ostrich Head”), so be sure to talk with him!

Many thanks to Bob Dirks for alerting me to a recent Tribune article about our continuing in-fat-uation with bacon in general and about Baconfest Chicago in particular. At first I was surprised that I had not heard of Baconfest before (I really have to get out from under my rock more often), and then I was even more surprised that they, apparently, have not heard of me.

After all, their first event, a VIP Bacon Cook Off, at which their “Golden Rasher” awards were given out, was this past weekend, at the Publican in Chicago, and inexplicably they were able to pull it off without me in attendance – judging, officiating, eating, or just rolling in the bacon grease. I can only guess that my official invitation, printed in edible ink on an actual slice of bacon, got confiscated by some errant envelope-sniffing dog at the Post Office. I’m sure they’ll make it up to me. Any day now.

Just what is Baconfest? I can’t do any better than quote the description on their own website:

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Houston, we have ignition! With a rocket launch, there comes a point where the fuel has ignited, you are basically sitting on a bomb, and there is no turning back.

The Lar-B-Q is at that point.

25 pounds of pork shoulder are in the smoker. The chicken is in the brine. 10 pounds of beef brisket is getting its final spicy rub-down. 15 pounds of spare ribs are on deck. The dough to make about 100 buns (for pulled pork and sausages) is already rising.  Potato salad and cole slaw are next.

I know the forecast is still saying there’s a chance of rain tomorrow, but it’s not going to stop us, and I hope it doesn’t stop you from coming out!

If you haven’t yet cleared your calendar for Saturday–WHAT ARE YOU THINKING OF! (Unless of course the weather doesn’t cooperate, in which case it will be postponed until the following Saturday. As of this morning, the National Weather Service was predicting a 40% chance of thunderstorms this Saturday, so let’s hear some praying out there!)

For you poor, benighted souls who have never heard of, let alone attended the Lar-B-Q (formerly known as Larbo’s Annual Backyard Barbecue Pigout), here’s the backstory. Since I discovered “slow and low” barbecue and true Southern hospitality on trips down to Coahoma County, in the Mississippi delta, to work for Habitat for Humanity, I like to return the favor each year and host a backyard barbecue blowout that raises money for these work trips organized by New Covenant Fellowship here in town.

Here’s the deal: the suggested donation is $20 for an individual or $40 for a family, for all you can eat. All money raised goes towards buying materials for the houses we help build in Mississippi. The Lar-B-Q starts at 2 in the afternoon on Saturday and winds down sometime in the wee hours on Sunday, prompting Saying #5 of Larbo: “Come for lunch, stay for dinner, and hang around to see the sun come up!” –We’re glad to put up out-of-town guests! Festivities are at our house and environs, 405 North Garfield Avenue, Champaign, IL, USA, on the Big Blue Marble.

Now, to get to the meat of the matter, here’s the menu for this year:

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This is it!  I had pepper plants as well, but they’ve all been snapped up.  Now it’s time for the tomato plants to go in the ground, since they won’t fit in my cold frame any more and this week’s weather forecast is calling for sunny weather and highs in the 80s by the end of this week.  I’ve got healthy, 2-3′ plants, all of which are flowering already and many of which have started to set fruit, and I’m only asking $3 per plant.  After this week, any lefovers will just end up in the compost pile.  Here are the four varieties I’ve grown this year:

Sun Gold: a hybrid cherry tomato.  Early in the season, these fruits don’t make it into the house, as we just eat them out of hand; by mid-summer it produces so many tomatoes that we eat them with everything: salads, fresh pasta, seafood.  Small apricot-colored fruits are intensely sweet, with great flavor, and refreshing acidity.  Their only drawback is that the fruits split readily after a good soaking, so you just need to get out there and harvest them when there’s rain in the forecast.

Green Zebra: this is the green tomato to eat.  Green with dark green stripes, it just blushes yellow when it’s ready to eat.  Unlike an unripe, “green” tomato, these have plenty of sweet, rich flavor, and the dense texture of a kiwi.  Fruits hold up well under all kinds of conditions and don’t crack.  If you have a problem with people helping themselves to your tomatoes, these are a great variety to grow, as they won’t ever look ripe enough for anyone else to pick!

Cherokee Purple: an heirloom variety from Tennessee, said to have originated with the Cherokee indians.  Produces good size fruits, over half a pound, with a dusky, brownish-purple skin and brick-red flesh inside.  The sweet, rich, juicy flavor has been compared to Brandywine–or even to red wine!–and most people who have tried it rank this variety in their top 5 for tomato flavor.

Pruden’s Purple: another heirloom tomato.  Here’s the description from the Fedco catalog: “Vigorous potato-leaf vines yield spreading irregular pink 1 lb. fruit with very few seeds, a silken texture and rich tomato taste, nicely tart with a balanced undertone of sweetness that is neither insipid nor cloying.”  Ripens weeks earlier than Brandywine and makes a great sandwich tomato.

At last Saturday’s farmers’ market, I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of home bakers had made it.  Some had scrambled to find a certified kitchen that would satisfy the Health District, while others simply evaded their jurisdiction by collecting “donations” instead of “selling” their baked goods.  Good for them!

As I said before, if the zealots at the Health District outlaw good food like this, then only outlaws will enjoy good food.  And personally, I would like to see more culinary outlawry–not so much in the sense of criminal violation of the law as in tactical evasions of it, as in escaping their jurisdiction, something we do every time we eat a dinner at home that we have prepared with our own hands.

Here’s another small contribution I would like to make to a flourishing, local underground food economy: this Saturday, a good friend and I will be preparing a dinner from the produce at the farmers’ market as well as other local goodies that we’ve been able to forage.  The meal will be prepared at home and served at home, above ground.  We will collect donations to cover our costs.  We can only seat a maximum of 10, so if you’re interested, let me know ASAP.

Here’s the menu so far:

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Whew, it’s been a busy week. Came back from England to see snow on the ground as we flew over Illinois (Sam just pulled his hat down over his eyes and refused to look), but fortunately the spinach that I set out before we left had established itself enough to survive the cold weather. I’ve got the first of the salad greens coming up, planted my peas before the rains this week, and potted up my first batch of seedlings. In another three weeks, these diminutive seedlings will be well-established plants, the danger of frost should be past, and it will be time to set them in the ground and sell off the ones I can’t fit in (and believe me, there will be plenty).

For sale, I’ll have a few herbs–cilantro and fernleaf dill–as well as cold-hardy greens, such as Bright Lights chard, Osaka purple mustard greens, purple peacock broccoli, Tuscan kale, and Falstaff brussel sprouts. This will also be the time to see and reserve plants that won’t be ready to go into the ground until the end of May: heat-loving herbs, such as Thai basil, lime basil, lemon basil, and, of course, Genovese basil; four kinds of tomato: Sun Gold cherry, Cherokee purple, Pruden’s purple, and Green Zebra; three kinds of hot peppers: Thai hot (a scorching 80,000 Scoville units), Fish (a beautiful and unique variety of serrano chili), and Czech Black (a little less heat than jalapeños).

Sale will start late morning and end around mid-afternoon (gotta leave time to get to the wine tasting!). First come, first served. Plants are $1.75 each, which includes a 25¢ deposit on the pot. So, mark your calendar! You can pick up your April order from This Little Piggy and get rooting in your garden at the same time.

As mentioned in the newsletter, I’ll be travelling to London this spring break to visit my mum, to introduce Sam to some of his English relatives, and, of course, to cram in as much as I can of the best food and drink London has to offer. Since I won’t be able to eat it all, I plan to bring back a selection of goodies to share–whatever I can get by that bitch USDA . . .

I’ll have my entire computer support team with me–namely my sixteen-year-old son–so hopefully I’ll still be able to download photos and attach them to my posts so you can see as well as read about what I’m up to.

In the meantime, enjoy these photos. The first is of my father’s parents house in a little village in the Cotswolds called South Cerney, located near Cirencester. My grandfather was the village butcher (so maybe it does run in the blood), and his shop was in the small outbuilding on the right with the pink roses and the sign. That’s him just coming out of the house with his apron on. My grandmother ran a tiny green grocery shop, where he’s headed, on the left side of the picture, in the shed added on to the front of the house. The bedroom that my brother and I shared was just above the shop.

Many of the fruits, vegetables, and flowers they sold came from a small orchard and market garden they maintained on the edge of the village. As they were getting on in years, our job, when we came for the summer, was to mow, till, weed, harvest, hack away at the stinging nettles, collect eggs, repair stone walls, and whatever else needed doing. Being a lazy sod, I hated it. As I recall, I wouldn’t even eat the fresh, ripe cherry tomatoes that I gathered for our salads. Didn’t like tomatoes.

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Why a photo of a six-pack of beer? Because it’s Bell’s beer. And it’s my very last six-pack.

Bell’s has been a scarce commodity in Illinois for the last two years, ever since the distribution rights were sold to a new company that didn’t care much about craft beers. When Larry Bell talked to them about his concerns that they wouldn’t carry or promote the whole line of Bell’s beers, just the few that they thought would be big sellers, he was pretty much told to siddown and shaddup. Under Illinois law, they owned the exclusive right to distribute his beer, and they owned him; if Larry Bell wanted to sell his beer in Illinois, he would take whatever the distributor was willing to give him. Larry decided he didn’t want to sell his beer that much and pulled out of Illinois.

Since then, a taste of Bell’s has only been available to those of us travelling to Michigan. When I drove the van up to Detroit last year to pick up a commercial freezer for TLP, I started taking orders for Bell’s beer over the phone by text message. Driving home, I was amused to find that the beer I was bringing back had cost more than the freezer. Now, six months later, I’m down to my last six-pack of Two-Hearted Ale, one of the greatest American beers ever brewed.

So I’m delighted to find out that Bell’s is back in Illinois, thanks to a new distribution agreement! The first shipments (truckments?) arrived in Chicago last week, and local stores expect to see their first deliveries within the week. It will probably take a little longer for their smaller-production beers, like the Two-Hearted, to trickle down from the great, guzzling beer belly that is Chicago, so I’m not ready to pop all mine open in celebration just yet. But I’ll open at least one today, just to say “Welcome back! God, how we missed ya!”