Some thoughts and some barbecue sauce

It's been a slow grind of a day. I had an afternoon nap, something I almost never do. I tried doing a bike ride, but 8km killed me, as opposed to last week when I rode 25km and got home and had the energy to go for a long walk. I guess I'm a little more drained than I'd realized. Thinking has been the main activity this week, and I believe sometimes mental calisthenics can take more out of us than we'd like.

So, in keeping with being drained, I took the easy way out and simplified my homemade BBQ sauce. Normally I'd caramelize an onion or two, some garlic, and pureed it into the sauce, but this time I just used onion and garlic powder. Still quite good.

I've been writing about 9/11 for much of the last hour, just reflecting on it. I want to do a rant on the social loss of innocence that was the fallout of that day, but I'm not in the right place for the rant yet. I think I need to distill what these past five years have meant to me. I've become a jaded, disenfranchised person. I don't care about the news anymore. I'm not plugged in. I don't get involved. Once upon a world I'd read three newspapers a day. Now I'm as ignorant as the next dumb-fuck, and it's because I just feel we're losing hope as a society. I despise feeling the way I do about the world around me, and I know who it is I blame for it all.

I was once politically passionate, and now I'm just loud and cynical. It's a travesty.

I'm half-watching Bob Roberts, the old political mockumentary (watch for a small scene with a very, very, very young and very, very, very thin Jack Black as an insane, obsessed political groupie) starring Tim Robbins as the uber-sleaze Republican-esque senatorial candidate who'll stop at nothing to get elected. I remember seeing it as a teenager with my mother. She asked me what I wanted to see, and I chose that. She was surprised when we left, surprised to learn I was so impassioned and cynical about politics even then. I still am, but it's far worse than ever before, and I wonder if there will ever be a candidate that invigorates me and restores my faith in the system.

Every now and then I heave a wistful sigh and wish it wouldn't be so outlandish to expect Justin Trudeau to run for office, because if anyone could unbreak my political heart, it might just be him. I loved his father, a man who, for me, still speaks loud and clear about what the Canadian identity ought to be even five years after his death. Sigh. Pierre Trudeau and Terry Fox, for me, are the ultimate Canadians.

So, yes, I have to get to a place where I feel ready to say what I think about the system borne of 9/11. What a world we're living in now. What a travesty the kids just don't give a fuck. They have so much power and they don't even know it. Sigh.

All right. Onward and upward. I call this:

Quick'n'Dirty BBQ Sauce
for Those Too Lazy to Invest Serious Time

3 cups ketchup (cheap'll do)
1 bottle Worcestshire sauce (Lee & Perrins; accept no substitutes!)
1/2 cup blackstrap molasses (I use organic)
3 tbsps mustard powder
2 tbsps chili powder
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp coriander
1 tbsp Tabasco sauce
1 tbsp garlic powder (not garlic salt!)
1 tbsp onion powder (not onion salt!)

Give it a good mix in a saucepot and cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes. Then, smother the meat of your choice (I did pork ribs today but chicken legs rock) in a deep baking pan just big enough to hold your meats in a single layer, cover tightly with foil, and slow cook at about 250 for five or six hours, and check on it from time to time, making sure the sauce doesn't dry up too much. If it does, you could add water to thin it out, but why would you if you could add bourbon or rye instead? Finish the meat off with a quick 2-minute blast on a high-heat BBQ to char the sauce, and don't forget to take your Bean-O before you dig in. ;)

For a lighter sauce, use honey or brown sugar. But, really, have some balls. Molasses is the only way to go!

God, was it yummy. Burp.