Tuesday, March 28, 2006

anti-vegan bbq

I'd rather settle for Portabella mushrooms.
Posted by at

4 comments:

Tecumseh said...

Speaking of which, here is the ethymology for bbq:

La barbaque: Bad meat. Old slang word, the origins of which are uncertain. It may come from the Romanian word "berbec", lamb, that French soldiers brought back to France in 1855. But it may also be of Mexican-Caribbean origins, from the word barbecue. Again, French soldiers didn't really appreciate meat cooked that way but they brought the word back from Mexico in 1862. Anyway, whatever the exact origins of this word, nowadays it means meat of very poor quality.

3/28/2006 1:00 AM
My Frontier Thesis said...

Sir William Craigie's "Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles" says, of barbecue: "One or more hogs, oxen, or other animals, or fish, roasted in the open air, usually whole."

Sorry guys: no barbecue. So long as the husband remained whole, he met one criteria. However, he locked himself in the house and therefore wasn't in the open-air.

And oh: Craigie's got the earliest date of barbecue use listed in the Americas as 1709 (there could be an earlier one that he didn't discover): LAWSON, "Carolina 36": The fire was surrounded with roast-meat, or barbakues [sic].

3/28/2006 11:33 AM
Tecumseh said...

JJ and I have been arguing this point
(viz, the ethymology of the word "barbecue") for about 7 or 8 years now. It's an argument for the long haul - my devious plan is to wait him out, till he throws in the towel!

At anay rate, here's another reference about this weighty matter:

Le français populaire préfère franchement « barbe-cul » à « barbe-quiou », qui lève déjà le petit doigt. Les hypothèses ne manquent pas sur ce mot évocateur: il serait emprunté à l’haïtien barbacoa, désignant les piquets où l’on suspend de la viande au-dessus d’un feu pour la fumer ou la sécher. Le terme aurait pu aussi dériver du roumain berbec, le mouton. Autre version encore : le barbecue viendrait des Français de Louisiane, « qui avaient coutume de rôtir les gibiers avec la barbe, c’est-à-dire avec les poils. D’où barbecuit et barbecue ».

3/28/2006 4:33 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...

In that case, it might depend on who out-lives the other.

Maybe one of you should start feeding the other really fatty BBQ — a sort of pre-emptive cardiac/etymological strike. I suppose that isn't too good an idea though: I mean, someone is bound to pick up the argument and continue it.

A history prof of mine said the term originated with pirates or sailors in the Caribbean, something about pigs being released on all the islands, they breed, thus providing food to those that are ship-wrecked. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) in this case, I don't remember exactly how the term BBQ came about. Does it jog your memory at all?

3/29/2006 1:55 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)