What a Blessing: Thankful for BBQ Sauce

I thank Heaven we live in a blessed nation, where we each can do things a little differently. And I'm thankful we always have blessed one another with all kinds of useful ideas.

In south Louisiana, people from many backgrounds (French, Spanish, Caribbean, African, Asian, Native American) historically shared ideas and arrived at eclectic of ways of cooking.

That history isn't in all ways good. But faithfulness has always overcome any evil of history — there, like anywhere else. And, whenever southern parts of the state have flooded, I've felt a little helpless.

There are so many good people there. ...

Years ago, someone from south Texas came to visit my elders, at least a couple of times in my witness. This visitor brought homemade jam each of the two times, and we learned about the loquat tree, which grows in abundance in south Texas.

I think the loquat may be an ingredient in a powder drink-mix that was popular when I was a child. That drink was the closest I was to being allowed, on a daily basis, to have something sweet, beyond dessert at school.

As an adult, I really appreciate sweets that are not super-sweet, especially if I know there's something healthy about a sweet.

So, I was thankful to find a way to make a healthy BBQ sauce this week, just using the few little things that may be in a pantry and fridge.

One of the things I made use of was Ms. Cynthia's* homemade jam from 2015. The jam does not include loquats. It has figs and strawberries. But any homemade jam or preserves, would have been good (rhubarb and strawberries comes to mind).

This is what I did to make a BBQ sauce:

• I cooked maybe three short stalks of celery in some vegetable oil with about two tablespoons of ginger root and four cloves of garlic, all chopped. What a blessing that both fresh ginger root and garlic are anti-inflammatory and immune boosting, something that probably was important to my elders' well-being in cooking with garlic almost daily. Celery is good for us, too.
• I decided to make the sauce in a kind of south-Asian way, using a few little spices still in our kitchen in lean times. Each spice is anti-oxidant in nature, a boost in battles against cancer. I stirred in less than a teaspoon each of ground mustard, cumin, and turmeric, while the vegetables were still simmering.
• I added maybe two or three teaspoons of red pepper flakes that I roughly chopped in a coffee-bean grinder. And I added in regular black pepper and a little onion powder.
• Then, I stirred in a 6-ounce can of tomato paste and probably six or so tablespoons of the old fruit jam, and let the pan keep warm over low heat.

I didn't do quite as well with the meat itself.

I'm not in practice of cooking pork, or any meat that doesn't have the immune-building micro-nutrients that are in baked or broiled chicken. There were long years when I even took a hiatus from pork for faith reasons, in consideration of neighbors and people I prayed for overseas.

But, this week, I had a change in heart, in favor of my freedom in Jesus. And I decided to use the pork ribs that we'd had for a little while. I directly seasoned the meat with salt, black pepper, and paprika.

I decided not to look at cooking instructions but to try to cook through guesswork. So I settled on 350-degrees Fahrenheit as a cooking temperature, knowing a low temperature would be needed to keep protein strands from getting dry and permanently tough.

But something I learned when I looked at actual instructions today, is some folk cook pork for hours, using even lower temperatures. Yikes!

For 350-degrees, it so happens I was in the right range of time with the ribs, but I needed to bake them covered for longer. And I needed to add the sauce at the very end, and put them back in the oven on broil for a short time.

The end result was okay, and I really wanted to send some to an elder's house. But the sauce was so good that neighbors swiped most of it off of the ribs, and left a watery something that tasted mostly like ginger!

While I hope neighbor's have gotten a little health boost from the sauce, I pray they will not do that again.

... Jesus is good, you all.


***

* Name changed for privacy