It's Not Easy

Sweet and sour ribs ain't easy. But Mother makes the best kind. Just as Dan's mother is queen supreme over cookies, so Mother makes the best sweet and sour ribs I know. They're not like the restaurant kind. Or the kind other moms make. They're dark, dark brown and wonderful. So this week, I asked Mother to make them. And today, she gave in, after letting us eat nothing but leftovers for one too many meals.

Her recipe is simple. Ribs, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, and a bit of ketchup. Today, the bottle of normal ketchup (i.e. supermarket brand red ketchup) was mostly empty, so Mother tried something adventurous. She reached for the bottle of green Heinz ketchup I miraculously convinced her into buying a few years back, during a period in my life when I thought green ketchup was cool. ("But we've had that ketchup for years, I was still in high school!" I said. "So? Ketchup doesn't go bad.") Because my mother is freaking awesome and thought well, green ribs will taste the same anyway, and maybe the change will look cool.

Unfortunately, it didn't. And no amount of soy sauce or the last vestiges of normal ketchup could save it. The ribs tasted fine (a little off the A-game today, too much ketchup, but great nevertheless) but looking at it, I felt like I was eating rotten meat. Forgive me for being unimaginative, but that's the only other circumstance when I've seen green meat.