The second proper use of the word, the transitive verb usage, can sometimes be seen in such usage as the term "barbequed chicken" or "barbequed beef." It is common to barbeque various meats with beef and chicken being probably the most usual but real barbeque can including lamb, turkey, goat and even possum and other exotic creatures. But those animals are termed "barbequed (insert the name of the animal)" where the term "barbequed" in that usage is a transitive verb describing the way the animal was cooked.

The incorrect use of the term barbeque on television, in movies and in magazines which is, more often than not, written or spoken by people who know nothing about real barbeque, has led to the misconception, for instance, that beef is barbeque. It's not. Don't forget, barbeque is more specifically a noun, a specific thing, and that specific thing is pork, not beef or fish, or beaver, or shrimp or anything else. It's quite possible to barbeque beef; tens of thousands of people out west do it all the time. And it's oftentimes delicious. But it's "barbequed beef" not barbeque. The term barbeque is always properly reserved for pork.

Indeed, it was the Spanish who first introduced the pig into the Americas and to the American Indians. The Indians, in turn, introduced the Spanish to the concept of true slow cooking with smoke. So, in that first fateful coming together, way back in the 1500s, the Spanish supplied the pig and the Indians showed them how to cook it. That is when authentic barbeque was first eaten.

The first true colony in the Americas, by the way, was in South Carolina. The very first Spanish adventurers that one reads about in the history books were actually Conquistadores, bent on gold and conquest, not on colonizing. The Spanish colonists, who came only slightly later but still in the early 1500s, came to South Carolina and they named their colony Santa Elena. It was established in the area that we now call Port Royal in Beaufort County. That colony lasted almost 20 years and it boasted a fort with several cannons, a church, a bakery, blacksmith foundry and shop, a pottery kiln and nearly 500 colonists including over 100 families. It was in that first American colony that the white man first learned to prepare and to eat real barbeque. So, people were eating barbeque in South Carolina even before that name had been applied to the area by the English.

If one wants to experience all four of America's styles of barbeque there is only one state in the nation where that can be done - South Carolina. The true barbeque aficionado can not say that he has completed his barbeque quest without a visit to South Carolina where the art of barbeque was invented and where it is still practiced in both its purest tradition and its most diverse styles.

So, y'all come to South Carolina and eat barbeque with the people who know the most about it and have the longest history of preparing it. There is a great culinary adventure waiting in store for you in South Carolina.