Barbecue Sauce

I guess I always liked barbecue sauce as much as the next person that has casually dipped a French fry.  I never craved it, or particularly sought it out, but if it was available I would certainly enjoy eating it.

When I first met Devin I had the impression that he would eat anything.  He was in the habit of cooking something to eat for dinner, and then eating the leftovers for lunch the next day.  When we started dating I would sometimes eat lunch with him and I would see these leftovers, and I was always impressed with the variety of his meals.  One day I remember he was eating something that didn't look particularly appetizing to me, and I expressed some admiration that he liked so many different foods.  He looked at me and said, "Well, I don't really like this." And I, in some surprise, said, "Oh. Um, why are you eating it then?" And in humble sincerity he said, "Because it's what I cooked last night."  This is what cemented in my mind the idea that Devin would eat anything put in front of him.

Boy, was I wrong.  Take barbecue sauce for instance. I don't know how long we had been dating before I discovered his aversion to barbecue sauce.  I shrugged it off as merely interesting, and went on with my life. It was not a deal breaker because, as I previously mentioned, I have no deep love affair with the sauce myself.

Then we got married.  And Devin still never wanted barbecue sauce, and I didn't think about it much, at first.  But as we were walking past the barbecue sauce selection at the grocery store yesterday, all the years of pent up, subconsciously hidden longings boiled over and I suddenly lashed out. "Don't you think it's time you tried barbecue sauce again? Maybe you'd like it now. You haven't had it in years."  So, sweet sweet man that he is he let me pick out a bottle of barbecue sauce. I stood in the aisle for a long time deliberating my brand and flavor style.  This would be my first barbecue sauce in years, the one that would sway Devin, and be my daughters introduction to a whole new world of flavor, so I had to be careful.  Did you know that some have coffee listed as an ingredient? That one went back on the shelf in a hurry, don't you worry.

That evening Devin had to go in to the church to get some clerk-y stuff done.  As he was leaving he said, "It would be nice if you could have dinner ready when I got back."  I was desperate to make something with my new barbecue sauce.  So I looked up recipe after recipe trying to find something that would make him fall in love with this delicious All-American sauce.  And I think my brain must have been flying at only half mast or something because I settled on making barbecue meatloaf, and mashed potatoes with barbecue sauce gravy.  This meal plan was problematic for several reasons.
a. Another food that I discovered after marriage that Devin does not particularly like is meatloaf.
b. He does not particularly like mashed potatoes and gravy, either.
c. Devin thought eating barbecue sauce (albeit gravy) on potatoes was incredibly strange.

So basically I was trying to get Devin to like an ingredient by cooking two food items he doesn't like to begin with, and combining them with other ingredients that he thought was strange.  I was off to a great start.


As it turned out, the mashed potatoes and gravy were a big hit. I loved them, he loved them, the babies loved them. Way to go Amy. The meatloaf?  Well it's hard to say exactly what went wrong there. I tried to sum it up after the meal, "It's strange.  It has so little flavor, that I think if you were to eat it with a blind fold on you wouldn't even know that you were eating anything."
Devin summed it up this way, "It has so little flavor, you wouldn't even be able to remember what you had eaten just before the meatloaf."