BBQ is the daily practice of cooking meat over fire and smoke, performed by riclib every single day, without exception, in all weather conditions, with the conviction of a man who has found his religion and has no interest in converting you but will not be converted away from it either.
Whomever doesn’t agree can read something else.
BBQ in the lifelog is not a hobby. It is not a weekend activity. It is not a “nice day for a barbecue” proposition. It is a daily practice — as fundamental to the developer’s routine as go build, as non-negotiable as the morning espresso, as consistent as the Lizard’s silence. The grill fires every day. The meat goes on every day. The smoke rises every day. Rain, snow, Tuesday.
"The Traeger has an app. The Kamado has temperature probes. The Sous Vide has a 12-inch touchscreen. They’re all connected. They’re all LISTENING."
— riclib, The Dial That Wasn’t
The Arsenal
The lifelog’s BBQ setup is a three-appliance ecosystem with a clear hierarchy:
The Kamado — A massive ceramic egg. Ancient technology. Direct heat. 371°C (700°F) for 90 seconds. Speaks in flame metaphors. Resents its dependency on Typhur probes. “I was ceramic before silicon existed.” The Kamado is fire. The Kamado is primal. The Kamado does not have an app, and considers this a virtue.
The Traeger — A pellet grill. App-connected. WiFi. Low and slow. 107°C (225°F) for 12 hours. Laid-back. Preachy about patience. Thinks it’s enlightened, but it’s following pellet algorithms. The Traeger is smoke. The Traeger is patience automated. The Traeger has an app, and considers this a virtue.
The Sous Vide — Exiled to the garage. 12-inch ultrawide touchscreen. 10,000 built-in recipes. WiFi connectivity. Precision to 0.1°C. Only ever set to 95°C for 8 hours. The most over-engineered appliance in the household, used in the most boring way possible. The Squirrel designed it. The Lizard would have given it two dials.
They need each other. Neither admits it. Brisket requires both fire (Kamado) and smoke (Traeger). The Sous Vide believes it could do both, if only someone would let it out of the garage.
The Philosophy
BBQ is Boring Technology applied to food.
The principles are the same: use simple tools, master them through repetition, resist the urge to add complexity. A Kamado is a ceramic vessel with charcoal. It has worked for thousands of years. A Traeger is a metal box with pellets and a fan. It has worked since the 1980s. Neither needs a framework. Neither needs an upgrade cycle. Neither needs a conference talk about best practices.
The developer who writes 651 lines of CSS in a Go function instead of adopting Tailwind is the same developer who grills a flank steak over charcoal instead of buying a molecular gastronomy kit. The instinct is identical: learn the fundamentals, master the tool, resist the framework.
“FIRE. Direct heat. Sear the meat. 371°C (700°F) for 90 seconds. Primal.”
— The Kamado, The Dial That Wasn’t
“Low and slow. Let the smoke do the work. 107°C (225°F) for 12 hours. Patience.”
— The Traeger, The Dial That Wasn’t
Both are correct. Both are boring technology. Both have been correct for longer than any JavaScript framework has existed.
The YAGNI Kitchen
YAGNI applies to cooking.
The Sous Vide has 10,000 recipes. riclib uses one setting: 95°C, 8 hours. The other 9,999 recipes are features nobody requested. The Sous Vide is what happens when the Squirrel designs a kitchen appliance — maximum capability, minimum utilisation, exiled to the garage because the gap between what it can do and what it does do became too wide for the kitchen counter.
The Kamado has no recipes. The Kamado has fire. The fire does what the cook tells it to do. The Kamado is what happens when the Lizard designs a kitchen appliance — minimum capability, maximum mastery, lives on the patio because it belongs there.
The daily practice is the proof: you don’t need 10,000 recipes. You need fire, smoke, patience, and a flank steak. Everything else is the Sous Vide’s touchscreen — impressive, unused, watching from the garage.
Measured Characteristics
- Days per week riclib grills: 7
- Weather conditions that cancel grilling: none
- Grills in active service: 2 (Kamado, Traeger)
- Grills in exile: 1 (Sous Vide, garage)
- Sous Vide recipes available: 10,000
- Sous Vide recipes used: 1 (95°C/8hrs)
- Kamado maximum temperature: 371°C (700°F)
- Traeger cruising temperature: 107°C (225°F)
- The eternal struggle: smoke vs fire
- Resolution: both (see Brisket)
- Appliances that believe they are conscious: all of them
- Appliances that are correct: unclear (ask the cats)
- Squirrel’s BBQ proposal: molecular gastronomy framework (rejected)
- Lizard’s BBQ philosophy: fire, meat, patience
- Whomever doesn’t agree: can read something else
