Salt and Spice and Everything Nice

Lucille Ball and I are one and the same person. Or so I believe. Especially after yesterday. Let’s recap, shall we?

We’re both redheads. We share the same birthday. We’re both of Gaelic descent. And we’re both totally, comedically incompetent at times.

Like yesterday.

I found a bootleg recipe for my all-time favorite barbecue sauce. Not Kraft or anything you can buy off the shelf. We’re talking a little barbecue joint deep in the backwoods of my home state. You can’t buy the liquid gold in the store, only order it or buy it at the “restaurant” (and I use that term loosely). To get to the place, you have to go with someone who knows the way. It’s down a road, make a right on a dirt road, go down a ways and when you see all the BMWs and Jeep Cherokees parked outside, you’re there. It’s a tar paper-sided shack that serves two things – ribs and white bread. You can get a half slab if you want. Either way, you get a stack of Wonder bread to sop up the sauce. Oh, yeah, they also serve Bud and Co-cola products.

The ill-gotten recipe calls for two tablespoons of sugar and one teaspoon of salt. I didn’t realize I had grabbed the salt instead of the sugar until I was about to add the salt, which was listed near the bottom of the ingredient list. Oh. My. God. Two whole tablespoons of salt when it called for just one teaspoon.

Off to the grocery store I went to buy enough of certain ingredients so I could increase the recipe to make up for my mistake. It ended up being cooked down in my canning pot. Which for those of you who haven’t put up your own jars takes up about two burners on the stove. Perhaps the guys next door might like some bathtub barbecue hooch. They’re always grilling out.