nite chat: 5:3

ok
this is going to seem pretty random
but apparently this is what i'm obsessing about
so
one of the things that i missed most
other than baked chicken
which after eight years of craving it
i finally decided there must be something
something in it that i just needed
and i started eating it again
occasionally (wow spelled with an s, not t)
anyway
bar-b-que
i think i have had that once
in a weak moment
but i mostly just started
baking salmon with bar-b-que sauce
which is fine
not bar-b-que, though

so
somebody i follow on instagram
her husband and his brother
they dry farm beans in santa barbara county
and
one of the kind of beans they grow are pinquito beans
and i'm like what the hell are pinquito beans

now
beans and i have a rocky history
i didn't much like them when i was a kid
so deborah would put half a plate of canned pork and beans
which i think would be my least favorite kind anyway
and i couldn't leave the table until i ate them all
this may be part of the way
that i started checking to see what she was cooking
and just saying i was sick and didn't feel like eating
if she was making pork and beans
or that meatloaf with the raw dry oatmeal in it
or just really gross stuff
she was gonna make me eat more than an adult portion
of whatever i didn't like
so i just wouldn't eat
i'd go to my room
and feel like i had won a prize
this is third and fourth grade mostly
maybe the tail end of second
and i was out of there after fourth

anyway
i digress
because of this trauma around beans
i couldn't or wouldn't like them
until i became vegetarian
my body was craving protein so bad
it was like do not get between me and that can of refried beans
do not get between me and the peanut butter
[which i had never liked before]

so now me and beans are friends
but it's a recent thing
only the last ten years, really

except
strangely
when i was really little
like up until five or six
i loved lima beans
and then suddenly i hated them

so
these people they specialize in butter beans
which is lima beans
and then they have these weird beans i've never heard of
omg so so much wind up
so
santa maria bar-b-que
i read about it somewhere in relation to these beans
they are the kind of beans
and i still don't much like bar-b-que beans
but
for some reason i decided that these pinquito beans were the thing
so i went down a small rabbit hole
about santa maria bar-b-que
and
i was wondering if you've had it
with all your experience with california
because
i love bar-b-que
like
before i went vegetarian
which i admit i'm a little bit fallen from now
but before that

one of my pretend bucket list things was
to do like a bbq tour of the country
well, not the whole country
but i didn't realize california had a bbq tradition
and i gotta say it doesn't look the best

texas has two variants of bbq sauce
one has a vinegar element which makes it more similar
to carolina bbq sauce but with heat
that's all ya gotta know about texas
a texas burger will at least have a lot a lot of mustard
and it really should have jalapenos too
like california means avocados
when i used to road trip
it was whataburger until that last stop in the las crueses
and then
it was hunting for the first carl's jr
you cannot get avocado on a hamburger in texas
unless you are at a fancy gourmet burger restaurant
you'd think guacamole
but you'd be wrong

the other is a sweeter not quite kansas city or memphis
but in that neighborhood i think closer to memphis
[except i just looked it up and memphis is pork based
texas is more beef based]
but again with heat
and
i gotta say
the one i like better
depends on how well ya do the heat

and of course the meat is supposed to be
like amazing without any sauce at all
so if the sauce is not good, whatever,not the end of the world
and there cannot be too much mustard in the potato salad
but the sauce needs to be poured on the potato salad
so it really needs to be good

and this santa maria stuff
doesn't seem like that at all
and the recipe for the beans
has bacon
and ham
which is kinda nuts
but still
for some reason--  obsessed
so i ordered the beans
and whenever they come
i will have pinquito beans (semi santa maria style)
and butter beans
which i'm really hoping i love again