our muse: the spitted goat. we will cook our animals whole this barbecue season.

With the Brooklyn weather report calling for temperatures approaching 80 degrees Fahrenheit tomorrow, we've declared the official start to barbecue season this Friday night. Every year we pick a barbecue theme and run with it. Last year the focus was on wild game, or as we like to call it, "game gone wild." The year before it was all about cooking meat as slowly and at the lowest temperatures possible -- aka "slow foods" meat. This year we're going for the "whole foods" theme. No, we're not getting corporate sponsorship from the grocery store. What we mean is we're keeping the animal intact (minus the innards and skin/fur) and slow roasting the animal whole.

This will be our first time trying our hands at the "whole" animal approach to barbecuing in our backyard. In Rwanda there was the attempt to roast a whole goat at our house in Kigali. We found a chef skilled at the art of skewering and roasting whole animals. The plan was that he would show up with the raw goat and teach us how to rub and prepare the meat, build a fire pit and skewer the kid up for roasting. But we knew our ability to communicate failed when he arrived with a towering platter of carved up goat meat -- very tender, but the cloven footed beast was not intact for roasting. Needless to say until now we're still virgins with spit cooking. Friday night this will change. And we plan to tackle the art of whole food roasting throughout the summer. Check back for updates on the fiascoes that we're sure will ensue.