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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As caught on camera by our favorite corksoaker, Big Red

I just finished watching HBO’s film series on John Adams, starring Paul Giamatti, and it filled me with revolutionary fervor. In that spirit, here is my own petition of grievances against the meat you find in the supermarket:

It’s not good, let alone great. The meat in those Styrofoam sarcophaguses comes from animals who have been bred to put weight on quickly, not to taste great. They live short, miserable lives in horrific conditions, are slaughtered in generally unsanitary conditions, and the meat is then rushed to the supermarket without any proper aging. The problem is that a global, agro-industrial food system does not produce meat that is particularly safe or good to eat.

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Here’s a small taste of the food books and cookbooks Larbo recommends:

Bruce Aidell, Bruce Aidell’s Complete Sausage Book: Recipes from America’s Premier Sausage Maker

Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating”
Culinary Institute of America, Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The River Cottage Meat Book
Jean-Claude Frentz and Michel Poulain, Charcuterie Specialties
Robert Garlough and Angus Campbell, Modern Garde Manger
Jane Grigson, The Art of Making Sausages, Pâtés, and Other Charcuterie
Joan Dye Gussow, This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader
Fergus Henderson, The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating
Fergus Henderson and Justin Piers Gellatly, Beyond Nose to Tail: More Omnivorous Recipes for the Adventurous Cook
Cheryl and Bill Jamison, Smoke & Spice: Cooking with Smoke, the
Real Way to Barbecue
Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison, Sublime Smoke: Bold New Flavors Inspired by the Old Art of Barbecue
Pamela Sheldon Johns, Prosciutto, Pancetta, Salame: Cooking with the Cured Meats of Italy
Peter Kaminsky, Pig Perfect: Encounters with Some Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Rytek Kutas, Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing
Stanley and Adam Marianski, Polish Sausages: Authentic Recipes and Instructions
Stanley and Adam Marianski, The Art of Making Fermented Sausages
Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
Gary Paul Nabhan, Coming Home to Eat
Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism
Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health
Marion Nestle, What to Eat
Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plants-Eye View of the World
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
Stéphane Reynaud, Pork and Sons
Stéphane Reynaud, Terrine
Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Curing, and Smoking
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Fritz Sonnenschmidt, Charcuterie: Sausages/Pates/Accompaniments
Time-Life Books, Terrines, Pâtés, and Galantines
Victoria Wise, American Charcuterie
Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture

When the powers that be remain deaf to our grievances, when they tell us to be grateful for how cheap our food is and just to forget about how good it could be, then we have no choice but to take up knife and fork and start a delicious revolution to transform our food system. As one small contribution to the future of food, here are Larbo’s demands:

• The meat we eat should give us pleasure.

To start with a declaration of a right to pleasure may seem frivolous, but this is something the founders of the Slow Food movement got right: one of the best ways to oppose “the universal folly of Fast Life” is with “a firm defense of quiet material pleasure.” (more…)