KatieWhooooo, it’s Barbecue week, y’all! (If you’re new around here, read a little about what that means in my previous post: So How Did We Get Here? )
Prep is underway– today was Sauce Day, spent making 7 of the 8 sauces I usually serve alongside my smoked treats. I totaled them up and there are more than 30 ingredients between them all, and it was a whole crazy process getting them done today before and after work. (Lesson learned: set up a sauce, move it to a burner, put. on. the. lid. so you won’t be tempted to accidentally add the Five Spice powder to the Kansas City sauce. Crisis averted, no Kansas City sauce was harmed in this mishap and it will be deliciously deployed this weekend. Whew.) The few extra days of resting will let the sauces develop maximum flavor, and it’s nice to have those work items checked off my list for now.
Now it’s on to cleaning and planning and yard prep and grocery order customizing today. Cooking for an event this long and for this many folks requires a carefully planned process in a home kitchen, often spanning days in order to get through setting up the smoker schedule, prep time, and refrigerator Tetris. I have one fridge, one freezer, and only two hands (at least until Wednesday night when my fabulous auntie arrives) and so on the weekend before the shindig I always set about writing out a huge to do list on a big paper pad that stays out for me to see all week.
Except this time, I haven’t written it out yet.
It still feels a little bit unreal, that the big event is back. For the past three years, we hemmed and hawed, tried other options and different processes, did gathering experiments. We mourned those would never join us at our table again. We tried to celebrate those we loved even more fiercely. And we waited for some right sign that the time had again come to gather, all together. In the end, we took a deep breath and sent the invitations last week. I think I’m still waiting for the rug to get pulled out from under my feet as has happened so many times since 2020. I’m so excited. I’m so anxious. I’m so ready.
This gathering will be so, so sweet, much like the sauces I put up today, for the waiting. There are so many people I haven’t seen in three years. There is so much laughter I’ve been waiting to have. So many stories I’ve been waiting to hear.
I. Cannot. Wait.
To those of y’all who can’t be there, keep your eyes here and on Instagram and you’ll be able to live vicariously through the food photos. And expect a lot more activity here as well as I ramp up to the release of the first cookbook (surprise! If you didn’t know, now you know.) Share your barbecue stories here and let’s remake the world around food and love.