To the editor:
I truly appreciate your work. In the very hard recent years for print media, you stand between the real local stories and the barbarians of the internet blogs and Facebook community groups. You deliver us, for the most part, good old-fashioned professional writing on the topics of interest in our little hamlet. That said, there is one thing I cannot tolerate without comment (and it’s not your sixth or seventh use of ink on my bad Hillary Clinton bathroom joke). I cannot sit idly by while you repeatedly call our first local barbecue competition “grilling.”
Grilling is what’s done to hamburgers and hot dogs. Grilling is a quick, searing run over the coals. Barbecue is a long, slow, smoky affair. Barbecue is the tender care needed to turn giant hunks of pork shoulder, spare ribs and beef brisket from fatty, gnarled, cheap cuts into something that melts in your mouth and tastes like heaven, if heaven was located somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
So, if you can’t print a correction, perhaps you can just make sure to get the nomenclature correct. We barbecue enthusiasts will appreciate it. And come by to try a rib on Aug. 12. You’ll appreciate the difference between grilling and barbecue.
Mel Thillens
Park Ridge Park District Board member
Team Captain, It’s Time for the Porkulator