I was trying to explain to my 10 month old what Christmas tastes like. It was a fairly one-sided conversation but I’m pretty sure she got the gist of it.
I was cutting pomegranate seeds in half for her like the paranoid mom that I have become and she was mmmm-ing as she swallowed fistfuls of them whole. These had been preceded by some sage-y buckwheat with mushrooms, all flavours that seem very Christmassy to me.
Hi! You may (or may not) have noticed we disappeared for a few weeks. My excuse is boring and kind of gross but it feels great to be back, I’ve missed you all.
Remember the Game of Thrones Season Finale? It seems like it was a long time ago now. We recorded it because we had people for dinner and then stayed up to watch it after they left. It was past our bedtime (any time after 9pm, these days) so between the two of us falling asleep and rewinding it to re-watch parts, it took us about three hours to watch.
The idea for making my own BBQ spice blend was born out of trying to block BBQ chips from becoming the norm at my house. I’m not proud of it, but when I was pregnant I had cravings for salt and vinegar chips that I could not shake, and no matter what I tried, no healthy substitute would do.
I didn’t eat them as much as I wanted to (good thing because I would have given birth to a potato chip or worse, a Costco-sized bag of them) (let’s be honest, it kind of felt like I did anyway), but when I did, I got my husband his own bag because I was not sharing. I got him BBQ, because that is his thing whether or not he’s pregnant. He was in hog heaven because chip-eating was not a regular event in our house before then.
This recipe was a long time coming. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that my husband has a thing for spicy food, so this hot sauce (and/or this spicy ‘compote’) is something that I make all of the time and is always in our fridge.
I guess I was waiting for a week during this end of summer time, when so many of the most exciting local fruits and veggies are at their best, to find room in my heart for something as everyday as hot sauce. Evidently this was the year, and I hope you find it to be worth the wait.
