Origin of barbecue sauce: Is NC style the original?

Food writer Robert Moss of Charleston has a fascinating blog post this morning up on the Southern Foodways Alliance site: Barbecue sauce before the 20th century.

He points out that all the various red and sweet sauces were really a 20th century development and may be have arisen from restaurants. Before that, slowly cooking meat was basted with . . . Well, we'll let you read it.

http://southernfoodways.blogspot.com/2012/07/secret-history-of-barbecue-sauce.html

Cheese quiz: Who eats the most pimento cheese?

Which two cities are the leaders in pimento cheese consumption?

Apparently, they are . . . Charlotte and Raleigh (well, Raleigh-Durham, the Tarheel twin cities).

That's according to writer Emily Wallace, who did a report on 'minner cheese in the latest edition of Gravy, the newsletter of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Wallace interviewed Ed Simmerly, vice president of Moody Dunbar in Johnston City, Tenn., the nation's leading canner of pimentos.

Simmerly said that 80 percent of pimento cheese spreads are sold in 11 Southeastern markets, with Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte claiming the prize as the two biggest consumers of pimento cheese.

As far as which pimento cheese is best . . . let's not start that again, shall we?