Paul is an amazing cook. He really is. And he loves southern food. Friends, this man knows a lot about barbeque.

We saw an interesting short documentary about a South Carolina BBQ place and the family that runs it. It’s only a few hours from here, so one lovely fall Saturday we decided to drive down there and check it out. It was a gorgeous drive, and the BBQ place was exactly like what we’d seen in the film. Their pulled pork was amazing, and even better the next day. (Yeah, we had lunch there, and then we took home about 10 pounds of pulled pork.) The do “skins,” too, which was interesting. It’s kind of like bacon, only very tough, and ¼ inch thick. It’s very hard to bite. Also, it’s impossible to forget that you’re eating an animal when you’re eating skins. You just have to be in a carnivorous state of mind. Most of the other people there were clearly local neighbors – knew the owner by name and so on. But there was one other guy there who was, like us, taking pictures of his food, so we figured he was another BBQ tourist and struck up conversation. Turned out he was actually some famous food critic from NY.

PS – Along the way we happened to pass an antique cotton press! Cotton is another of Paul’s “southern interests” so of course we pulled off the road and went to explore and take pictures. It was really neat, actually. (I don’t think I ever did a blog entry for the day we took to go interview the retired farmer in the area who’d been instrumental in the eradication of the boll weevil – that’s a whole ‘nother story.)