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I'm going to have to say that Spooney's in Greenwood, MS is the best barbecue I've ever had. Spooney is a gregarious, verbose, suave man who opens his establishment and fires up his oil drum grill when the spirit moves him. He offers ribs, rib tips, chicken wings, hot sausage and bologne as available. It's a beautiful thing to make a drive-by and see smoke coming from his grill. The true magic is his sauce - made with love. Truly. As Spooney tells it. He moved from Mississippi to Kansas City with his wife and was in "love, love, love." Spooney got a job working at a bbq joint there and was loving life until his wife left him. He spent weeks crying alone in his house until one night the recipe for his sauce came to him. The sauce mixed with his tears and was perfection. He bandaged his heart with bbq, moved back home to Greenwood and opened his eponymous restaurant. It's good, good, good I tell ya.

I'm a planner, too. I sit down every Saturday night and make out a plan of the what we're having. I plan the whole week but leave 2 nights free. Then I sit down with my kids and they each plan a meal. We go shopping on Sunday morning and generally stick to the plan. My son wants to cook through Julie Sahni's Classic Indian cooking. Sometimes we can find the ingredients he needs (we're in small-town Mississippi), and sometimes we just make do. My daughter is cooking from a Disney cookbook so... well...we're having fun.

blue ribbon BBQ in Arlington, MA. (for easterners.)
Peggy Sue BBQ in Dallas, TX, for real real bbq.

Black's in Lockhart

Hog Heaven, Durham, NC

Rocklands in DC

Big Fatty's BBQ in Burlington, VT is pretty good! (Especially for these parts.) And when I head from VT to Boston, a stop at City Flame in Manchester, NH is a requirement.