North Carolina, here I come. [Photograph: James Boo]

By Thanksgiving, I'm confident that the Serious Eats book will be done. The question close at hand is how I get to Thanksgiving without taking too many serious steps back on my serious diet. I am headed to North Carolina to eat barbecue today, and in a couple of weeks, I will be headed to Tennessee and Kansas City to eat still more 'cue, so you can easily imagine why I am so concerned. The key for me is not to let the concern turn into discouragement. Discouragement, as we all know, is the scourge of all serious diets.

I will admit to feeling pangs of discouragement in the last couple of weeks. Thinner doesn't lie, and what he's been saying to me has not been good. There's not much to say beyond that, so I'm just going to get on Thinner and head to the airport.

Here we go: 220. Down three pounds from last week. That doesn't suck. I managed to survive Kenji's amazing patty melt experiments, multiple visits to FoodParc, and the flood of holiday chocolate that's already beginning to show up at Serious Eats world headquarters.

North Carolina here I come.