This just in "The History of Barbecue" (or why Virginia is snubbed when we talk BBQ:))
as you probably well know, a lot of churches in the south have
a pit for cooking pigs. Our little church back home use to have homecoming every
year which consisted of an all night pig cookin to be followed by lots of
pig eating the next day. Of course it was a straight up vinegar based sauce with
red pepper and other ingredients added to taste (a bit of coke a cola to sweeten
the sauce
. I'm getting hungry.
The Barbecue Church
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMER1As to Virginia,
You see, growing up we were always taught by our NC parents that Virginians were
an uppity bunch. When I first moved here a fellow made a remark about Tar Heels
(not the team but the nickname for North Carolinians) I told him we got that
name because of a battle in the War Between the States when the Virginians ran
and it was later remarked that the NCers stuck like they had tar on their heels.
He wasn't to happy. Here is some fuel for that fire.
The history of barbecue itself, aside from its murky etymological origins, is more clear. For several reasons, the pig became an omnipresent food staple in the South. Pigs were a low-maintenance and convenient food source for Southerners. In the pre-Civil War period, Southerners ate, on average, five pounds of pork for every one pound of beef(Gray 27). Pigs could be put out to root in the forest and caught when food supply became low. These semi-wild pigs were tougher and stringier than modern hogs, but were a convenient and popular food source. Every part of the pig was utilized-- the meat was either eaten immediately or cured for later consumption, and the ears, organs and other parts were transformed into edible delicacies. Pig slaughtering became a time for celebration, and the neighborhood would be invited to share in the largesse. The traditional Southern barbecue grew out of these gatherings.
William Byrd, in his eighteenth century book writings The Secret History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina has some pretty snippy things to say about some Southerners' predilection for pork. He writes that hog meat was:
the staple commodity of North Carolina . . . and with pitch and tar makes up the whole of their traffic . . . these people live so much upon swine's flesh that it don't only incline them to the yaws, and consequently to the . . . [loss] of their noses, but makes them likewise extremely hoggish in their temper, and many of them seem to grunt rather than speak in their ordinary conversation(Taylor 21-2)
.
"Yaws," of course, is an infectious tropical disease closely related to syphilis. Perhaps because of natives like Byrd, Virginia is frequently considered beyond the parameters of the "barbecue belt."
At the end of the colonial period, the practice of holding neighborhood barbecues was well-established, but it was in the fifty years before the Civil War that the traditions associated with large barbecues became entrenched. Plantation owners regularly held large and festive barbecues, including "pig pickin's" for slaves (Hilliard 59). In this pre-Civil War period, a groundswell of regional patriotism made pork production more and more important. Relatively little of the pork produced was exported out of the South, and hog production became a way for Southerners to create a self-sufficient food supply-- Southern pork for Southern patriots (a href="bbqbib.html">(Hilliard 99). Hogs became fatter and better cared-for, and farmers began to feed them corn to plump them up before slaughter. The stringy and tough wild pigs of the colonial period became well-fed hogs. Barbecue was still only one facet of pork production, but more hogs meant more barbecues.
In the nineteenth century, barbecue was a feature at church picnics
