Low and Slow: The Science, Culture, and Practice of True Barbecue got off to a slightly “low and slow” start on a grey, rainy day of orientation, background learning, and prepping to start serious cooking on Monday. We set up our space in Van Meter Hall, inventoried our kitchen items, researched recipes, assigned responsibilities, made spice rub, wrote shopping lists, and watched videos on the science and history of barbecue (or barbeque — a major debate!). Chase and Jack tackled a special math project involving doubling one of our recipes and then converting it from volume measures (cups and tablespoons) to mass (grams), which is harder than you might think when every ingredient has a different density!
At the risk of making y’all jealous, I’ll also reveal the invitation that Molly created for Thursday’s feast, which we’ll be sending out to some special current and former MFS community members next week.
We also did a little shopping at Wawa and Rite Aid, including some items that we planned to throw on the grill as a silly experiment if the rain stopped. Well, stop it did, and after learning how to use a charcoal chimney, we tried grilled doughnuts, grilled pineapple, grilled pickles, and made some Peeps s’mores.
Mr. Sussman will be driving up on Monday morning with a car full of over 30 lbs of meat as well as other groceries, and then we’ll really get going prepping for our first cook (6 hour pork baby back ribs). That’ll leave us less time to invent new versions of ping pong, but we’ll manage.