I'm all for nifty sustainable stuff, but it's not as if your trendy (and good-tasting) mesquite charcoal was delivered by the Mesquite Fairy. No, it's trucked in from Mexico in trucks that run on *GASP* petrochemicals. Evil, evil, wicked, Bush-voting petrochemicals. You likely also heat your home with natural gas already, as opposed to mesquite (which you probably drive home in your car, unless you're willing to walk for blocks with a bag of charcoal, since we haven't had colliers to deliver the stuff since the Victorian age). And as for the regular coal-dust, saw-dust and other industrial crud used to produce ordinary briquettes...would you rather it just sit in a slag heap or be dumped into a river somewhere?

Apart from a rancher in the southwest whacking down a stand of mesquite on his property and using it for fuel, or anyone else using completely local fuel sources, I don't think there's anyone with cause to brag on this issue. Besides which, I seriously doubt that the Mexican mesquite charcoal companies are paying their workers anything close to union wages.

What makes it a pestiferous weed in the southwest but a useful cash crop in Mexico is the amount you have to pay the people who go out to prune it. Admittedly it is a very nice third-world luxury good, but as with coffee, tea and cocoa, while it does put some money into the hands of impoverished peoples, it puts money into a lot of other hands along the way too, so don't pat your back about it too much.

I grew up out in the country, outside Tucson, at least while Tucson was small. We had Mesquite trees, and they could be quite thorny. They bred out the thorns, in nursery stock. They are pretty trees, with several varieties. In theory, they should grace every front yard in the deserts like Vegas, rather than a lawn and some kind of pine tree. Oh, well.

Referring to the previous column on the 'poor' speculator in Florida. I do remember how they used to clear the rather prolific deserts in Tucson. Basically, there's a big bulldozer over here, and one over there. Put a big, big, heavy chain between them. Drive. Push it all into a pile when you're done. Construction feeds families. Growth is good, though not in trees that are in the way of things.

Anyway, you mean the pile was full of posh charcoal, lumber for Santa Fe tables, and nitrogen fixing root systems? Too bad. Last time I was down there, there were only about 10 acres left to clear. Huh.

It's also worth mentioning that marinating meat before it's grilled, or even just coating it with some sort of liquid (soy sauce being an excellent choice) apparently cuts down enormously on carcinogens.

Thanks for these links. I've been using lump charwood for my weekly barbecues (even in winter; I've barbecued during blizzards in New England) every week for many years now, and I can't believe that I'd never found these sites!

What about your prostate?

Better get it checked if you've been enjoying a lot of barbeque lately.