He's been called "The Doctor of Ribs and the Professor of Brisket" by Chicago Tribune reporter John Kass. And when Chicago's own Gary Wiviott presents his College of Barbecue Knowledge before our group, get ready for some succulent and saucy history -- and some practical tips on ribs as well. Here's a peek at our class outline:

Where did barbecue originate? (Think caveman roasting meat over open fire.)

Evolution of barbecue in the United States.

Differences between Eastern, Western, Texas and Midwest styles and how they evolved.

How modern BBQ is not holding to the roots of traditional BBQ.

"My wife bought me a smoker 9 years ago for a birthday present; she envisioned smoked salmon and the occasional rack of ribs. Little did she know. I became obsessed, smoking 4-5 times a week, even in winter -- smoking pretty much everything that walks flies or swims. A friend of mine estimated that I have smoked more than two tons of meat in a single Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) cooker. I developed the Wiviott WSM 5-Step Method, which is a simple, yet effective, 5-step program for learning to make low and slow BBQ on the cooker. (Can be found on: wiviott.com) I've also developed and adapted a number of BBQ sauces, though I am best known for my Gary's Chili Oil, and, in all modesty, my 6-pepper BBQ sauce is a killer. To further feed my food obsession, I founded LTHFORUM, a Chicago-based culinary chat forum. The forum now has nearly 1,000 registered members.

The ribs, tips and hot links served at "The Bliss of Barbecue" were made by Honey 1 BBQ which was about to change locations. The new address:
Honey 1 BBQ
2241 N. Western
Chicago, IL
773-227-5130

Many of our members may recall hearing Mr. Jackson and his eloquent and corny program that he presented to our group on cornbread two years ago. And if Mr. Jackson seems to show a scholar's zeal for such earthy topics, he's basically just that -- an earthy scholar. A native of Missouri, and a resident of Iowa City, Iowa, he is a graduate of Vassar College and the Iowa Writers Workshop. He received a James Michener Fellowship for a novel manuscript, as well as the Henfield Prize for fiction. In addition to the Cornbread Book, a Love Story with Recipes, Mr. Jackson is also the author Desserts that Have Killed Better Men Than Me, as well as the novel, Life at These Speeds.

Mr. Jackson will sign copies of his picnic book, with all profits going to fund the Culinary Historians of Chicago.

Camilla Nielsen talked about the founding of her family's Nielsen-Massey Vanillas, Inc., nearly a century ago on Chicago's north side. Camilla, a social worker from New York, married into the family years ago, weaned her sons on vanilla, and after her husband died, headed the company and guided its expansion. Today, the company, which is now headquartered in Waukegan, is run by Camilla's sons, Craig and Matthew, while Camilla spends a good deal of time as an Ambassador of Vanilla. Camilla will tell us about the history of vanilla, and about the people and countries that produce vanilla, along with its many uses -- e.g., a little vanilla extract in tomato soup adds a magical touch; bake fresh pineapple slices in a vanilla-infused syrup, then top with whipped cream -- it's to die for! And smoothies were never so mellow when you add a touch of vanilla. (You can find many great recipes on the company's web site: www.nielsenmassey.com).

Camilla also offered several vanilla products for sale and explain their uses: vanilla extract, vanilla bean paste and vanilla powder. (All profits from the sales will be used to fund the Culinary Historians of Chicago.) And we tasted some down-home samples of foods made with vanilla.

"Food like all human inventions, has a story to tell," says May. Do join us for her tale.

The following is excerpted from Closer to the Bone, an article by Julia Moskin that appeared in the New York Times on Oct. 26

Jennifer McLagan has been preoccupied with bones for years now. "I don't think it's macabre," Ms. McLagan said. "I think it's honest." Ms. McLagan, a plain soft-spoken Australian chef based in Toronto, pulls out food's deepest flavors in her new cookbook, Bones (Morrow). Influenced by the traditional cooking of France, where she lives for part of each year, by the roast-joint-and-three-veg Sunday lunches she grew up on, and by a particular plate of tall roasted marrow bones she ate at Le Pre Catelan in Paris in 2002, Ms. McLagan has produced a work of refreshingly old-fashioned sensibility about food and -- in true Halloween spirit -- death. The recipes are perfectly timed for a season when a cook's thoughts are already turning to lamb shanks, osso buco and coq au vin. From there, it's a short trip to oxtail, duck legs and chicken-in-the-pot. But the book also details how animal bones have long been intertwined with daily life. Needles and necklaces, flutes and ice skates were all first made from bones. When Ms. McLagan was a girl in Melbourne, she played jacks as the ancient Greeks did: with the knucklebones of sheep, boiled clean. Americans have become used to a boneless world. Neighborhood butcher shops, where one might actually see a haunch of lamb or side of beef being dismantled, are fast disappearing. Our supermarkets sell more packages of boneless chicken breasts and ground beef than anything else in the butcher cases. "Bones have become totally optional -- people don't realize they have value," Ms. McLagan said. "But we are losing an important part of traditional cooking without even noticing it."

Anthony F. Buccini received his undergraduate education at Columbia University in the City of New York (B.A.) and his graduate education at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. (Ph.D.); he also studied and later conducted research as a Fulbright Scholar at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. He has published and taught extensively in his primary fields of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics, especially in connection with the Germanic, Romance and Celtic languages. He is currently working on two monographs, one on the influence of Celtic on English in the early Middle Ages, the other on selected topics in the culinary history of the Western Mediterranean.

Dr. Buccini's presentation will be based on his paper "Western Mediterranean Vegetable Stews and the Integration of Culinary Exotica," which he also presented at this year's Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. For this paper, Dr. Buccini was awarded the Sophie Coe Prize, which recognizes each year an outstanding contribution in the field of food history.