Vegetable Garden and BBQ

On my July 13th post, I mentioned some guilt I have been feeling recently. After reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, my guilt was confounded. Well, of course. It was my first reading of a CAFO description (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation). Cows+Manure+Corn+Disease+Tiny Spaces= Guilt. I have wanted my own vegetable garden for a while now. Gardening is difficult in most college-living spaces. Dorms, no. Sorority? I did make one desperate attempt and sprouted heirloom tomato and lavender seeds on my small windowsill in the sorority. No fully-grown heirloom ever came from that seedling, I can promise you that. After graduating in June, with a full time job and some sense of now being an adult in the real world, I just signed a lease for a real house with a real deck, sun room and real large back yard. Perfect places for a real, adult vegetable garden.

This Saturday, my roommate and I went to buy the basics for our late summer, early fall vegetable garden. A trip to the Mecca of garden stores seemed in order, with Passion Fruit Iced Teas in hand. We traveled to Molbak's in Woodinville, spending sufficient time exploring the aisles of dense shrubberies, trees and flowering forgery. Then to the seed aisle for our vegetable staples: beets, radishes, wintergreens, broccoli, pumpkin, parsnips, carrots, and a collection for a bad-ass herb garden, Basil Thugs ‘n Harmony. Yep, dorks.

After heading back along Lake City, and feeling the first step of achievement in our anti-industrial, resourcefully sustainable project, we decided to stop for lunch. But not just any lunch, the behemoth beast of BBQ. Rainin Ribs in Lake Forest Park. A place known to marinade, smoke, tare, and sauce up pork, brisket, and chicken like no other. I mean, what more could motivate germinating seeds like a pulled pork sandwich?

We’ll be enjoying our winter greens and home grown squash all winter long. A summer BBQ sandwich slathered in the voo-doo hot sauce needed to fortify us now. The amount of petrol energy and corn-fed piggies we will save with our veggie patch will more than make up for one Brierley Bomber (the special jalapeno-infused pulled pork + hot link sausage sandwich I ordered). It was worth it. No doubt.

In addition to extensive entrees/sandwiches, the place had a great list of sides including fried pickles, fried okra, collard greens, sweet potato fries, rice and beans and more. The homemade hot sauce collection was impressive: Sweet Caribbean, Spicy, Texas Spicy, The Big Red (Ketchup under pseudonym). I’ve decided good lunch places must provide hot sauces/salsa for me to experiment with on every bite. I love hot sauce. We were commenting on the lack of kicking hot in this selection, when the guy came out of the side door with a sauce pan of the voo-doo hot sauce, the realll hot sauce, fresh of the burner. Guess we didn’t look like serious eaters at first glance. Psshht. We told him to dollop it on!

Not an immediate kick, but a slowly rising spice that fills the entire mouth and bite, more than just immediate burn of the tongue and eyes. A real mature champ, a sophisticated sauce I’d say. To finish off my sweet potato fries as a sort of dessert, I mixed the voo-doo with some sweet Caribbean; my sweet and spicy. This is going to be a great vegetable garden.