20181203.0430

On 13 November 2018, Chuck Blount's "Barrel Cooking Brings It All Back to the Basics" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. In effect, the article is a reasonably favorable product review of Noah Glanville's Pit Barrel Cooker. In it, Blount discusses Glanville's background and the form of the cooker being assessed. Blount also narrates his own experience with it, determining that it is an excellent rib-cooker, a passable chicken-cooker, and a less-than-impressive brisket smoker; something of a bulleted list of features, positive and negative, concludes the piece.
The piece attracted my attention for the simple reason of being about smoking meat, something in which I have some small interest and less practice than I ought. Admittedly, I'm not in the market for a new smoker at present (though I know the day is coming when I will have to be; I've had my current rig since I lived in The City, and after several moves and more years, it's beginning to show its age), but it is always good to learn about other ways of doing things. If nothing else, it makes for good conversation later on, particularly for me, concerned about performed masculinity as I am. Nerd that I am, I am aware that "real" manhood is not something I'm prone to displaying--yet I'm still immersed enough in the prevailing culture that I'm worried about being manly. Grilling is one thing validated by social expectations of manhood--and not only in the Texas Hill Country--that I do well; I tend to attend to it therefore.
Further, as I read the article, I found it to be a useful example of the kinds of things the students I still have are asked to do; product reviews and profiles are very much in line with the writing their curricula oblige, and I always appreciate having real-world, professional examples to supplement those I already write for them. The tone of the piece is conversational without being overly familiar; the reading level is easily accessible. There is some assumption of familiarity with terms and concepts, true, but those reading profiles and product reviews are generally not ignorant of the areas of inquiry they investigate by doing so, and grilling and smoking are such embedded parts of the local culture--with "local" spanning most or all of the state, certainly in popular conceit--that some prior understanding of them is likely in place with all readers. It would make for an interesting bit of audience analysis, too...I wonder if I will remember it when the time comes to find samples for my students to look at again. I rather hope so; it's a good piece for it.
I should not wonder to find such things in the main San Antonio newspaper. I should, however, look for more of them in the days to come as my subscription continues. They're the kinds of things I find useful in several parts of my life, and I'd not have stumbled across Blount's example of them had I not taken the paper I do.