Pickapeppa!

Good day, and how are you?

I found some Pickapeppa Sauce, a bottle of  it, at the Target recently, and I  bought some. Haven't seen it for years...I don't know whether it's been around all this time or if I just never thought about it. But it is attractive, with that parrot on the label, and the West Indian look of the whole thing.

Mama never had sauces, bottled sauces, on the table.  Meat was meat, and A-1, Worcester Sauce, and such were not at hand to alter the flavor of our plainly cooked meals. Mama thought that if it was good food and cooked well, no sauce, certainly no commercial bottled concoction, was needed.  And it looked tacky.

I agree with all that, up to a point, but I just couldn't resist that parrot.  I got a good use of it for supper last night, when my dinner consisted of brown rice, broccoli, and cauliflower, all admirable comestibles by all rights--but a bit dull. So out came the Pickapeppa and it was really good sprinkled on those items.

My Mexican cousins, the Basque  ones, had oil and vinegar on the table, or the sideboard.  Olive oil, and plain vinegar.  That's all very well because I think it 's really kind of healthful to add a little of either to almost anything.  But there is a caution.  Every day, the little bottles have to be taken out to the kitchen, uncorked and unstoppered, dumped, washed, and refilled.  Especially in a climate that's at eighty five degrees plus almost every day of the year. I have been in restaurants, in Brownsville, where there was a receptacle holding those two ubiquitous little bottles full of cloudy and obscure looking liquids.  "Don't touch it!!" my mother would say, as if there were a venomous substance within reach.

If you must use commercial sauces, they should be decanted into a little dish and applied with a small spoon.  Yes, they should.  Or they should be ignored, their very existence should be ignored.  Yes! But it was with pleasure and anticipation that I grabbed that parrot and opened the bottle and tipped it, and watched the thick fragrant brown sauce dotting my vegetable plate!!!  YAZZYBEL