Lift-Off.

T-minus six hours to lift-off ...

Love.

With apologies to Uncle Walt and his Preface to Leaves of Grass ...

This is what you shall do: Love the grill and charcoal and the fire, despise boneless, skinless chicken breasts, give tastes to every one that asks, stand up for the chicken skin and butter, devote your income and labor to applewood chunks, hate barbeque sauce, argue not concerning wings, have patience and indulgence toward the white wine, take off your grill’s lid to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated propane users and with the young and with the turkey-dog-feeding mothers of families, light these fires in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told on YouTube or TikTok or by Gordon Bourdain, dismiss whatever insults your tongue, and your chicken thigh shall be a great poem and have the richest smokiness not only in its taste but in the silent wafts of its scent and color and on your fingertips and in every motion and joint of your tongs. . . . The griller shall not spend his time in unneeded trimming of fat. He shall know that the charcoal is always ready banked and lit . . . . others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the beer frig. His thermometer shall master the trust of everything he touches  . . .  and shall master all temps and timing.

Dream.

The working guest list for my dream cook-out ...

1. Jim Harrison: It's a cookout. Food and drink must be prepared, consumed ... and the whole process repeated as needed.
2. Thomas Jefferson: Architect, musician, designer, gourmand ... we'll learn along the way.
3. William Wordsworth: Poetics, awareness, and exuberance (He's the Hold-My-Beer, "Surprised by Joy—Impatient as the Wind" Guy) ... plus he's had plenty of experience sleeping under the stars.
4. Franklin Furman: My all-time favorite customer, a daily source of peace, quiet, and simple contentment; "Enjoy the day."
5. Leonardo: It's a cookout. Something will need to be fixed, rigged, modified, figured out.
6. Georgia O'Keeffe: A great cook, exuding beauty within and without.
7. Jerry Jeff Walker: Cookouts require great music ... and childish humor.
8. Mozart: Cookouts require great music ... and childish humor.
9. John Colter: A master at field-dressing, plus a campfire will follow and stories will be told.
10. Great-Grandpa Firchau: Someone to teach us all something and I have more questions for him.
11. A stump left for a walk-in.

I please my imagination more with a circle of godlike men and women variously related to each other, and between whom subsists a lofty intelligence. But I find this law of one to one peremptory for conversation, which is the practice and consummation of friendship. Do not mix waters too much. The best mix as ill as good and bad. You shall have very useful and cheering discourse at several times with two several men, but let all three of you come together, and you shall not have one new and hearty word. Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort. In good company there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly co-extensive with the several consciousnesses there present. No partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running of two souls into one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "Friendship"

Doug Sahm, "Papa Ain't Salty"

As the ancient and sacred rite of The Grillables is begun yet again ...

Jerk.

Few Caribbean dishes are as well-traveled, or as beloved, as Jamaican jerk, a humble meal of bone-in chicken or pork parts doused in a blend of spices and hot peppers, and cooked slowly over smoldering pimento wood branches. Peppered across the island, roadside jerk stands entice passersby with wafts of fragrant smoke rising from makeshift grills encased in sheets of tin siding. Supple, juicy, and crispy in spots where the meat has been charred by the fire, jerk is an integral part of Jamaica's economy too, with restaurants like the perpetually busy Scotchies or the relaxed Pepper's Jerk Center serving tourists and locals year-round. It's typically eaten with your hands alongside fried cornmeal "festivals" (dumplings), scorching-­hot Scotch bonnet pepper sauce, and cold beer.

Although jerk comes across as a leisurely beach food, it's actually a dish of resistance, born out of necessity and circumstance. The origins can be traced to the Maroons of the 17th century, a tribe of enslaved Africans who fled into the mountains of Jamaica's eastern Portland parish to escape Spanish-owned plantations. Here, the Maroons barbecued whole wild hogs, burying the meat in the earth to smother the smoke and keep the Spanish and British forces from discovering them. "They had to live off the land and find ways to survive," explains Suzanne Rousseau, co-­author, with her sister Michelle, of Provisions: The Roots of Caribbean Cooking.

Thanks to the popularity of bottled jerk seasonings such as Walkerswood and Grace brands, the flavors of jerk have become one of Jamaica’s most famous exports worldwide. But Suzanne believes the roots of the dish have been lost. “Jerk is not a seasoning; it’s a type of cooking,” Michelle says. “It’s like whole-hog barbecue [in the American South].” The singular combination of ingredients found on the island, and the technique of smoking with the leaves and branches of the pimento tree (also known as the allspice tree), are what make “jerking” so deeply connected to the island—so much so that it’s become a part of Jamaicans’ shared heritage. As Michelle says, “It’s truly tied to our identity.”

Jamaica-born chef Cheryl Smith—who serves jerk at her Brooklyn, New York, restaurant, Cheryl's Global Soul—says that even if it's not grilled over a smoldering pile of pimento logs, her version is still a tribute to the dish's history, and to the people of the island, past and present. "It's the ingenuity of Jamaicans," she says, "who figured out how to make something out of nothing. You've got some meat, some vegetables, some wood—and you've got a way to make a living."

CONNECT

Nearly.

Mix 4 parts Ginger Pear Butter with 1 part Mount Gay rum for a glaze on grilled pork loin.

'Tis (nearly) the season ... CONNECT

Willie Nelson, "Funny How Time Slips Away/Nightlife"

The soundtrack to The Ancient and Scared Rite of The Grillables ...