Saturday Traditions, and More Food Stuffs

I'm from the Deep South, and that means Saturdays = College Football. Around here, nobody understands because  we now live in the land of professional sports teams, so everyone gears up for Sunday afternoons and Monday nights. But not us.

Saturday afternoons usually involve a well-planned meal, which more often than not centers around the grill. Except that it's been raining cats and dogs (back home we call it a gully washer), aside from a 15 minute break in the clouds yesterday, when I witnessed a beautiful rainbow while walking Mulligan:

My smartphone didn't pick it up, but it morphed into this quadruple rainbow type thing, and it was huge. Instant smile maker. Mulligan was less enthused, but he did his business so we all went away happy.

Anyway, our menu for the day: Pork spare ribs, butter beans, and homemade macaroni and cheese. Brint is experimenting with the ribs in the oven due to the inclement weather. He's also making barbecue sauce from scratch for me, since everything in the store contained natural flavors. Luckily, Heinz ketchup doesn't have soy in it, so we can use that as the BBQ sauce base. I'll provide his recipe later. Here are the spare ribs before they went into the oven (he basted them with olive oil and liquid smoke, and rubbed with his own proprietary blend of cajun seasoning):

The butter beans come via my lovely parents. As long as I can remember, we grew our own vegetables and froze them for winter use in a huge chest freezer. Corn, okra, squash, tomatoes (we cooked those down as a base for soups and things), green beans, black eyed peas, butter beans, bell peppers.... on and on. Well last year Brint mentioned that he LOVES butter beans, so Daddy planted like 11 rows of them. Which is ridiculous. So when they visited at the end of the summer, they stocked our freezer for us like they always do. Except we have a disproportionate amount of butter beans.

Yep, that's butter floating in the pot. Just 2 tablespoons. We found out from some Boston friends that it isn't normal to put butter in everything, and yet we keep extra butter in the freezer so we don't run out. Except we've always used Country Crock. Ever looked at the ingredients list on Country Crock butter? Don't. It's long. And it shouldn't be, because butter is just cream that's been churned, right? Well CC has soy in it, of course. So today we went searching for soy-free butter.

I was not expecting what I found. I always assumed that unsalted butter was best, because it's got less sodium in it. Wrong. They replace that salt with 'natural flavors'. The salted butter contained 2 ingredients: Cream and salt. Simple. Here's the label:

The brand is Wellsley Farms, which is the BJ's store brand. I love BJ's. Warehouse shopping is wonderful. Anyway, I had another awesome find at BJ's: soy-free salsa. In a jar! And it's way more affordable than Mrs. Renfro's (sorry, Mrs. Renfro):

Welcome to Moe's! Well, I certainly feel welcome now! No soy, no natural flavors, no xanthan gum. Mmmmm.

Oh, yeah, the macaroni and cheese. So we're using whole wheat organic noodles, which are soy-free. Plus evaporated milk and sharp cheddar cheese. I'll post the entire recipe later. I was excited to see that all of the cheeses were soy-free. I just have to learn to like real cheese, instead of the fake vegetable oil spread stuff that starts with a 'V'. Small sacrifices.

So I'll be back later, to post the barbecue sauce and macaroni and cheese recipes! Enjoy the day!