260 pieces of chicken!

An SEC tailgate at which we bar-b-qued 260 pieces of chicken.

This is big BIG food! Let me walk you through the photo. The guy in the white shirt is Mr. Big Food, and the very proud owner of all three grills. Two of the grills-- guess which one?-- our local welding guy, Jesse, made. We had one drum already, and bought the second from a fellow down the road who specializes in junk. We think they are very redneck, but some at the tailgate didn't agree--  too fancy, what with the wheels and trays.

Zoom in on the photo and you'll see, on the table to Mr. Big Food's left, five gallon wine jugs (and in front of them five plastic bowls). Four of them contain different homemade BBQ sauces: horseradish-mustard, beer, teryaki, and dark karo. The fifth jug has the "mop": green tea with a splash of hot sauce. Mop is the key to BBQed chicken. The chicken goes on skin side down and gets flipped once, as is. Then, every time the chicken is turned, it gets mopped liberally. Here in the South grocery stores sell what really are mini-mops for mopping. The mop keeps the chicken moist while it's being grilled. BBQ sauce only gets slathered on at the very last couple of chicken flips.

In total, I think we used six 16-pound bags of charcoal, and six small bags of hickory. I'm still smelling it!

Only 258 pieces of chicken got eaten, though. We dropped two.

And how's this for some Big Life? It was a night game so we had to leave the grills and some other items on campus over night. Next day it was all still there. I love it here. And there's nothing quite like an SEC tailgate. Here are a two more photos.

The grills wait patiently while we pick up the chicken.

Some chicken