Page 8 - February 2022 Barbecue News Magazine

Ardie Davis
aka Remus Powers BBQ Hall of Famer ardiedavis@kc.rr.com
Visioning Barbecue’s Future in a Toilet Bowl!
One year while doing my usual welcoming and visiting stroll among as many teams as possible at the American Royal Barbecue when it was in Kansas City’s West Bottoms, a unique barbecue rig caught my eye. It was a spotlessly clean—except for a brown smoke patina in the bowl and lid—traditional white porcelain homestyle toilet bowl bar- becue grill. Fueled with charcoal and
wood chips in an improvised metal fire-
box, the bowl contained some expertly
smoked Bichelmeyer Meats sausages,
custom-made for Roger the Plumber’s
Burnt Ends competition barbecue team.
They looked delicious despite being in
a repurposed toilet bowl. You can imag-
ine Roger the Plumber’s humorous tell
of how those sausages tasted. I realize
now that with his upbeat mischievous
sense of humor, Roger Peugeot, the
original “Roger The Plumber,” was
decades ahead of today’s slowly chang-
ing stigma-infused culture. I’ll explain
later.
Since February is the traditional “Love Month” in Western culture, this edition
of the Barbecue News is sprinkled with talk of love, along with some Valentine’s Day recipes. Love and romance com- mand daily attention in our culture; more so in February, when sales campaigns go full throttle with ads for Valen- tine’s Day cards, chocolates, perfumes, matching services, sheets, pillows, pajamas, undergarments and erotica. Is
there anything unique to say about love and romance from as far back as the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to today? Poets, playwrights, singer/songwriters, novelists, social sci- entists and others have covered the topic often and in such artful or scien- tific detail that it’s easy to doubt that there is anything new to be said about love. Bodily waste is another matter.
Bodily waste is seldom discussed in barbecue circles—foul language, jalapeno poppers and porta potties ex- cepted. “Yuck!” you say? So did I before I read Lina Zeldovich’s new book, The Other Dark Matter—The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Health (2021).
Bodily waste as a conversation topic is the opposite of the weather: everyone is doing something about it, but seldom do they talk about it. Of course there
are the stereotypical quips about old folks discussing their bowel movements or lack thereof. Try watching TV without seeing ads for toilet paper and a variety of gastro intestinal remedies. Stereotypes and ads aside, it is estimated that each human being is doing something about bodily waste to the tune of producing an average of 400 pounds of ex- crement per year. Imagine what that adds up to from the thousands of readers of this publication, plus the other es- timated 20 million Americans who barbecue on a regular or occasional basis. That, along with waste produced by more than 320 million other Americans is an abundant underuti- lized source of fertilizers, charcoal briquets, cooking and
BarbecueNews.com - 8
FEBRUARY 2022