This just in: A Moveable (and Barbecue-filled) Feast

If forced to choose between a platter of pastries and bucket of barbecue, I'm not sure what I'd say. I'd probably try to distract you and then take both and run away. I didn't eat any barbecue in Europe but shortly before that trip, I went to Kansas City, one of the world's great barbecue towns, for a long-anticipated feast of a roadtrip with my dad.

And now you can read all about it in (this calls for bold-faced text) my story in the new Lonely Planet travel writing anthology, A Moveable Feast.

(Also featured in the book: Jim Benning, Elisabeth Eaves, and--just pulling names randomly here--Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, Anthony Bourdain, Simon Winchester. Edited by Don George.)

Mine is a tale of two scrawny men bonding over inadvisably large quantities of food. If I were writing a movie poster about my story, it might be this: A father, a son, a city with a secret ... about smoked meat. Except that makes it sound too dark. It is anything but. This might work better: Humor! Pathos! Sauce stains! Heartburn! 

Now available at your local indie bookstore (which you can find here!) or directly from Lonely Planet or at Powell's ... or (okay, fine) at that big online store that starts with an A.*

So buy a copy or twenty. They make great stocking-stuffers or trivets to put under your Thanksgiving side-dishes or get-well gifts for anyone who has just had major jaw surgery, and whom you secretly hate and want to taunt with a book about all the great meals they can't have with their jaws wired shut like that.

Digging into the good stuff at Arthur Bryant's.

* If you do the "search inside the book" thing, you'll find the story, but rabid tigers armed with lasers will leap from your computer and then your screen will explode in a massive ball of fire ... and you just don't want to deal with that. Seriously. Too much like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Be safe and just buy the book. It's paperback--cheap!