Friday, March 20, 2020

Her Face at First Just Ghostly, Turned a Whiter Shade of Pale

Chipotle BBQ Glazed Ham
I decided to make a Chipotle BBQ sauce for my ham that I would bake and glaze.  This little guy was going to become several meals as we were officially quarantined this week. 
BBQ sauce:
- 1 can of La Morena Chipotle sauce
- Dijon mustard
- vinegar
- honey
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 4 Chipotle peppers, smashed
- cayenne, salt, pepper, cinnamon, cumin. garlic and onion powder
As I'm sure is true for many, I'm working overtime to keep fear out of my thoughts.  In a demented twist on nostalgia, I considered what scared me just a week ago before all of this Coronavirus broke so strongly in our realities. I remember riding into work for an early morning shift last Wednesday.  Music plays through speakers on the outside of our store, which is an interesting way to enter a retail environment, to ride up to songs like a mist in the air.  I was locking up my bike while the opening to Whiter Shade of Pale began.  Suddenly I was crippled with sadness out of the blue at hearing those opening notes.  There was nothing particularly wrong that day, nothing in comparison to today anyway.  There's always problems, family issues, people sick or fighting.  Instead somehow that opening verse sounded like the culmination of all my past suffering.  Why, I'm not sure.  How, I don't know.
So many fears can come right now, if you let them.  These are valid and certainly need no explanation.  But just like the sadness of the past, the fears of the future do not serve us.  I'll never question their power but I've stopped inviting them to my parties so to speak.  In this little experiment, understanding that they can feel equal based on nothing or a whole lot of something, helps me to remember that they are only thoughts. 
Even though it's hauntingly beautiful, I've never even understood this song at all.  I'm sure it was the darkest song I heard as a young girl in the dreary gray Midwestern factory town of the late 60s when it played non-stop on AM radio but how can it have that same effect today?  
Breakfast Burrito
Ham baking in the oven with a BBQ sauce glaze is the least depressing smell ever and I doubt it will ever lose it's appeal.   

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